Constar, Inc. v. Plumbers Local 447

The developer of an office building and the general contractor on the project brought this suit against a local of the plumbers’ union. The plaintiffs allege that the defendant’s activities at the construction site constituted an illegal secondary boycott which damaged the plaintiffs. As I shall explain, the union cannot be held liable for those damages, for it did not act with the intent proscribed by the statute.

Ordinarily, judicial memoranda begin with a discussion of the facts, proceed to a review of the relevant law, and conclude with an application of law to facts which thus resolves the case. This opinion takes an unusual form, however; before discussing the specific facts of the dispute, I shall attempt a fairly detailed explanation of the development of the pertinent law. I believe that only by describing both what the law has become, and what the parties misapprehend the law to be, can I make explicable the behavior of the parties — which would otherwise appear to be very strange indeed.

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FROM THE WAGNER ACT TO THE TAFT-HARTLEY ACT OR — WHAT HATH CONGRESS WROUGHT?

Since the advent of the industrial revolution, the struggle between capital and labor has…