Linn v. United Plant Guard Workers of America, Local 114/Dissent Black

by Hugo Black

United States Supreme Court

383 U.S. 53

Linn  v.  United Plant Guard Workers of America, Local 114

 Argued: Nov. 18, 1965. --- Decided: Feb 21, 1966

Mr. Justice BLACK, dissenting.

The Court holds that an individual participant on the employer's side of a labor dispute can sue the union for libel on account of charges made by the union in the heat of the dispute. By the same token I assume that under the Court's holding, individual labor union members now have the right to sue their employers when they say naughty things during labor disputes. This new Court-made law tosses a monkey wrench into the collective bargaining machinery Congress set up to try to settle labor disputes, and at the same time exalts the law of libel to an even higher level of importance in the regulation of day-to-day life in this country.

When Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act, it must have known, as almost all people do, that in labor disputes both sides are masters of the arts of vilification, invective and exaggeration. In passing this law Congress indicated no purpose to try to purify the language of labor disputes or force the disputants to say nice things about one another. Nor do I believe Congress intended to leave participants free to sue one another for libel for insults they hurl at one another in the heat of battle. The object of the National Labor Relations Act was to bring about agreements by collective bargaining, not to add fuel to the fire by encouraging libel suits with their inevitable irritations and disputeprolonging tendencies. Yet it is difficult to conceive of an element more certain to create irritations guaranteed to prevent fruitful collective bargaining discussions than the threat or presence of a large monetary judgment gained in a libel suit generating anger and a desire for vengeance on the part of one or the other of the bargaining parties. I think, therefore, that libel suits are not only 'arguably' but inevitably in conflict with the basic purpose of the Act to settle disputes peaceably-not to aggravate them, but to end them. For this reason I would affirm the judgment of the two lower courts.

Moreover, we held in Thornhill v. State of Alabama, 310 U.S. 88, 102, 60 S.Ct. 736, 744, 84 L.Ed. 1093, that 'In the circumstances of our times the dissemination of information concerning the facts of a labor dispute must be regarded as within that area of free discussion that is guaranteed by the Constitution.' Discussion is not free, however, within the meaning of our First Amendment, if that discussion may be penalized by judgments for damages in libel actions. See the concurring opinions of Mr. Justice Douglas and myself in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 84 S.Ct. 710, 11 L.Ed.2d 686, and Garrison v. State of Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64, 85 S.Ct. 209, 13 L.Ed.2d 125, and my opinion in Rosenblatt v. Baer, 383 U.S. 94, 86 S.Ct. 669. It is rather strange for this Court to import its novel ideas on libel suits into the area of labor controversies where the effect is bound to abridge the freedom of the parties to discuss their disputes and to settle them through peaceful negotiations. It is strange because one of the hopes of those responsible for modern collective bargaining was that peaceful settlements among the parties working by themselves under the aegis of federal law would be substituted for the old-time labor feuds too frequently accompanied by bitter strife and wasteful, dangerous conflicts verging on private war. Because libel suits in my judgment are inconsistent with both the Constitution of the United States and the policies of the Act, I dissent from the holding of the Court reversing the judgment below.

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