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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29209 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 29, 2023

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If you read the decision, the judges believed that the union deliberately timed the strike to happen after the concrete was mixed. If so, they deliberately caused the damage and the strike shouldn't be permitted.

At least as a legal question, this case was not about whether the strike could happen, but whether the union could be held liable in a civil context for damages caused by the protest.

Exactly. That is a question of fact for a jury to decide. This case is about whether a jury would be allowed to decide.

The counterargument would be if the company knew when the strike was timed for, and yet mixed the concrete anyway. I've heard conflicting reports on that.

From the lower court decision:

But there were rumors that drivers would not work on August 19 (ed: the day of the strike and concrete loss). Because of these rumors, both Glacier and GLY wanted assurances from the union that the mat pour would be serviced if scheduled. At Glacier’s request, Ted Herb, GLY president, called Hicks around 12:35 p.m. on August 18 to discuss whether the drivers would be available that night and early the next morning to service the mat pour. Herb alleged that Hicks told him that “‘[t]he drivers have been instructed to respond to dispatch’” and that “‘[w]e have specifically instructed the drivers to respond to dispatch.’” CP at 1648. After Herb told Glacier of Hicks’s assurances, Glacier remained concerned about drivers servicing the mat pour, and it requested that Herb call Hicks again. Herb refused this request, as he was confident in Hicks’s response because Hicks had given him the same answer twice. Glacier never spoke directly with Hicks, and Hicks denies making these statements.

In Hicks’s deposition, he denied providing any instructions to drivers about when to return to work and specifically denied telling Herb that he had told drivers to report to work on Saturday, August 19. A driver testified that Hicks told the members to go back to work on Monday, August 21. For purposes of summary judgment, we view the facts in the light most favorable to Glacier as the nonmoving party and thus accept as true that Hicks made the alleged statements.

That is, we don't know, and there is no strong evidence either way at this stage. Because Teamsters 174 were the group motioning to dismiss, the motion to dismiss was reviewed assuming Glacier's statements were true. The actual questions of fact would be reviewed during the later trial itself, to whatever extent is possible.

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