National Labor Relations Board v. Howell Chevrolet Co.

Respondent is a California corporation which operates an automobile agency and repair and service shop at Glendale, California. It operates under a non-exclusive agreement with General Motors Corporation to sell Chevrolet cars and trucks. It is supplied with new cars and trucks from an assembly plant maintained at Van Nuys, California, where all of the new cars and *81 trucks purchased by respondent were assembled and the process of manufacture completed. Approximately 43 per cent of the component parts of automobiles and trucks which were shipped to the Van Nuys plant and used in the assembling and manufacturing process there carried on, were obtained from points located outside of California. All of the respondent’s sales were made within California.

Upon the threshold we are confronted with the contention that the respondent is not subject to the jurisdiction of the Board. We think that the record requires an affirmance of the Board’s findings of jurisdiction. In National Labor Relations Board v. Townsend, 9 Cir., 185 F.2d 378 , this court found jurisdiction in respect to the activities of a local Hudson automobile dealer where it appeared that while the respondent, operating…

(concurring).

Once the business of the automobile dealer is held to be in interstate commerce, there is nothing to do but order the Board’s order enforced. And this we must do under National Labor Relations Board v. Hearst Publications, Inc., 1944, 322 U.S. 111 , 64 S.Ct. 851 , 88 L.Ed. 1170 , and National Labor Relations Board v. Townsend, 9 Cir., 1950, 185 F.2d 378 .

Notwithstanding, I remain unconvinced that the word “employee” actually means more in the Wagner Act than elsewhere (Hearst case) or that a simple business transaction within a state is interstate commerce because of a fine-spun tracing of a remotely possible and unmeasurable relation to trade across a state line (Townsend case). Judge Harrison joins me in this concurrence.

204 F.2d 79 NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD v. HOWELL CHEVROLET CO. No. 13140. United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit. February 26, 1953. Writ of Certiorari Granted May 18, 1953. See 73 S.Ct. 940 . George J. Bott, Gen. Counsel, N.L.R.B., David P. Findling, A. Norman Somers, Asst. Gen. Counsel, Marcel Mallet-Prevost, William J. Avrutis, Attys., N.L.R.B., Washington, D. C., for petitioner. Findlay A. Carter, Frederick A. Portruch and James M. Nicoson, Los Angeles, Cal., for respondent. Before STEPHENS and POPE, Circuit Judges, and HARRISON, District Judge. POPE, Circuit Judge. 1 Respondent is a California corporation which operates an automobile agency and repair and service shop at Glendale, California. It operates under a non-exclusive agreement with General Motors Corporation to sell Chevrolet cars and trucks. It is supplied with new cars and trucks from an assembly plant maintained at Van Nuys, California, where all of the new cars and trucks purchased by respondent were assembled and the process of manufacture completed. Approximately 43 per cent of the component parts of automobiles and trucks which were shipped to the Van Nuys plant and used in the assembling and…