''Vegelahn v. Guntner'', 167 Mass. 92 (1896) is a

United States labor law United States labor law sets the rights and duties for employees, labor unions, and employers in the United States. Labor law's basic aim is to remedy the "inequality of bargaining power" between employees and employers, especially employers "org ...

decision from the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. It is noted for its famous dissent, written by

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (March 8, 1841 – March 6, 1935) was an American jurist and legal scholar who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932.Holmes was Acting Chief Justice of the Un ...

., rather than its majority opinion.

Facts

The union had picketed in front of the employer's business with the object of persuading current employees and job applicants to not enter the building. The union also picketed to pressure workers to break employment contracts with the company. The objective was to force higher wages. The company successfully sought an injunction in court, under the doctrine of intentional interference with contract, alleging that the union was

tort A tort is a civil wrong that causes a claimant to suffer loss or harm, resulting in legal liability for the person who commits the tortious act. Tort law can be contrasted with criminal law, which deals with criminal wrongs that are punishable ...

iously interfering with the relations between management and worker. In this era employers frequently resorted to state and federal courts to get restraining orders and injunctions to stop picketing, strikes, and boycotts.

Judgment

On appeal from the trial court, Justice Allen held that the coercion and intimidation found to have occurred interfered with the right of an employer to hire whom it pleases, and the right of workers to enter into employment. The court ruled that the union was guilty of an intentional tort. Justice Holmes disagreed, equating the use of collective force by workers to the corporate use of force to compete. This was one of the first occasions when any judge of prominence had made such a declaration.

Significance

The ''Vegelahn'' case was decided in 1896, when immigration was steadily increasing and union membership was also increasing. The public had witnessed violent and far-flung labor unrest: with the

Pullman Strike The Pullman Strike was two interrelated strikes in 1894 that shaped national labor policy in the United States during a period of deep economic depression. First came a strike by the American Railway Union (ARU) against the Pullman factory in Chi ...

, the

Homestead Homestead may refer to: *Homestead (buildings), a farmhouse and its adjacent outbuildings; by extension, it can mean any small cluster of houses * Homestead (unit), a unit of measurement equal to 160 acres *Homestead principle, a legal concept t ...

, Pennsylvania violence between steel workers and Carnegie Steel, and the

Haymarket Haymarket may refer to: Places Australia * Haymarket, New South Wales, area of Sydney, Australia Germany * Heumarkt (KVB), transport interchange in Cologne on the site of the Heumarkt (literally: hay market) Russia * Sennaya Square (''Hay Squ ...

riot in Chicago. It would be another twenty-five years before the law would catch up to Holmes's dissent, with the passage of the federal Anti-Injunction Act ( Norris-LaGuardia Act).

Notes

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References

* Massachusetts state case law 1896 in United States case law 1896 in Massachusetts United States labor case law Law articles needing an infobox