Allow me to introduce you to the concept of vexatious litigation.
Nobody here is arguing the courts do not or should not have authority or roles here. Instead what you are missing is that people are arguing that if a company is granted the power and ability to claim illegal strike activity and bring lawsuits directly, that this ability can and will be used by companies to abuse the legal system to chill legitimate strikes and grievances.
It effectively gives companies the power, through their financial and legal resources, to quash any strike by making it financially impossible to defend. By filing meritless lawsuits against legal strike activity, they can still force an outcome in their favor because the union and workers lack the resources to fight it through the courts every time.
It is a way to neuter the NLRB and unions through litigation rather than legislation or merit.
It is certainly conservative to think that only courts should make decisions; that most regulations are unnecessary and that officials can’t enforce them. DoubleG is right; this is an attempt to narrow the scope of the regulatory authority of the NLRB, which has already decided the merits of the case.
It’s also quite weird to believe that any Court — much less this Court — will likely decide a case on the basis of past precedent.
That there should be no regulations or regulators and everything should be decided by the court is pure libertarianism, and thus, by definition, a stupid idea.
How will this work, given that they would need to win their court case based on merit?
The argument being presented here seems to suggest that the courts themselves are nothing more than a tool to be abused, rather than a fundamental requirement of the rule of law.
There are things that limit and punish frivolous lawsuits, right?
Certainly in this case, we are talking about the teamsters. They have essentially infinite money and lawyers. They aren’t going to be crushed by glacier’s legal machine.
This is not at all true. It’s just a caricature of the argument being presented here. Nobody here says the courts are nothing more than a tool to be abused.
Again, you seem to be suggesting that the legal system simply does not work anymore, and then proposing that since the courts cannot be trusted, that we should simply circumvent them somehow.
But that doesn’t really work, because you can’t really have a system based on the rule of law without the courts.
The idea that the executive branch should be able to act without intervention by the courts, because you don’t like the court, obviously doesn’t work when you think about it. I mean, in this case, you are imagining a situation where there is some regulatory action taken that you like, and you don’t like the idea that the courts may intervene.
But it’s just as easy to imagine a set of laws or an executive action imposed by people in government who are not ideologically aligned with you, which you would not agree with. If you do not have the ability to appeal to the legal system, then you are not in good shape.
It reminds me of the devil speech from “A man for all seasons”
And doing it repeatedly, no matter how many times it is pointed out.
Imagine a wealthy person litigating a traffic violation, for the purpose of eliminating the power of the state to establish and enforce traffic safety rules. You could argue similarly, that this is what courts are for, to decide who is right in this particular controversy; after all, what’s the harm; how can you be saying that courts aren’t to be trusted, that they aren’t necessary?
Indeed, this is what courts are for, to decide who is right in this particular controversy; after all, what’s the harm; how can anyone say that courts aren’t to be trusted, that they aren’t necessary?
You: This is really about union workers sabotaging company equipment, which is obviously bad.
Everyone else: I don’t think that’s what happened.
You: This is really about union workers sabotaging company equipment, which is obviously bad.
Everyone else: Here are some links that make it seem like that’s not really the case.
You: This is really about union workers sabotaging company equipment, which is obviously bad.
Everyone else: …
I think that the problem is that people are reacting quite differently to the (apparent) fact that the facts in the case do not seem to be of general applicability.
If this were a lower court, I would agree with your take. But SCOTUS does not see itself as the righter of specific wrongs in specific cases, so much as the righter of general principles. They see something which rankles them and then look for a case where they can set down a ruling – and do not necessarily wait for a case where the facts of the particular case line up perfectly with the general principle they wish to make.
The fact that they took on this case is cause for concern that they mean to “fix” more than some concrete.
I think what people are afraid of is that SCOTUS will take what should be a narrow issue and balloon it into a major reduction in worker’s rights to represent themselves via unions
To be clear, what people are saying is that this is not a case where Glacier is trying to recover damages for ruined equipment, because there was no actual ruined equipment. It is not a case where Glacier have been denied their day in court, because they had their day in court, and it went against them, because of a plain and uncontroversial reading of the existing law and precedent.
Glacier sued Local 174 in state court for six tort claims arising from Local 174’s alleged role that resulted in Glacier’s loss of concrete. The trial court dismissed the claims arising before the CBA was reached, finding they were preempted by the federal National Labor Relations Act, and it granted summary judgment dismissal of the remaining claims primarily on state law grounds. The appellate court reversed as to the pre-CBA claims, finding the NLRA did not preempt those claims. The state supreme court reversed as to the preemption issue.
Glacier is suing in order to change the prevailing understanding of the existing law. It is an attempt to weaken the regulatory authority of the NLRB, not an attempt to recover damages for ruined trucks. There were no ruined trucks. They are essentially posing a hypothetical question to the Court, which the Court ought to ignore. There is no injured party here.
Question
Does the National Labor Relations Act preempt a state-court lawsuit against a union for intentionally destroying an employer’s property during a labor dispute?
