Gibbs v. United Mine Workers of America

OSULLIVAN, C. J.: Plaintiff Paul Gibbs, appellee in No. 15,624 and cross-appellant in No. 15,625, recovered a $75,000 judgment entered on a jury verdict against defendant United Mine Workers, appellant in No. 15,624 and appellee in No. 15,625. No 15,624 presents the United Mine Workers appeal from such judgment. No. 15,625 is Gibbs cross-appeal from the setting aside of one item of the jurys award of damages.This case is the latest in a series in which we have considered the collisions between the UMW and those who have sought to operate coal mines in Kentucky and Tennessee without signing UMW contracts. The violence here involved was less spectacular than that described in those decisions. From the evidence, the jury could and did find that by violence and continued picketing the UMW prevented the Grundy Mining Company from opening a coal mine field in the Grays Creek area of Marion County, Tennessee, and thereby deprived plaintiff Gibbs of his contracts to superintend the mine operation and to truck coal from the mines. Gibbs complaint charged in substance that the objective of defendants conduct was to induce and force employees of Grundy Mining Company to refrain from working in the mines, thereby causing Grundy to cease doing business with him as its superintendent and as an independent trucking contractor. His pleadings asserted that defendants actions constituted a secondary boycott prohibited by Sections 8(b)(4) and 303 of the National Labor Relations and Taft-Hartley Acts, 29 U.S.C.A. §§ 158(b)(4) and 187, and violated the common law of Tennessee as an unlawful interference with his contracts of employment and haulage.