Court Upholds Ruling Against UFW in Strike : Labor: Appeal by farm workers’ union of $1.7-million judgment for destruction in 1979 Imperial Valley strike is denied by 4th District court.
Dealing the United Farm Workers a significant legal and financial blow, a state appellate court has upheld virtually all of a $1.7-million judgment leveled against the union in connection with a violent 1979 strike against a large Imperial Valley vegetable grower.
With the exception of about $1,000, the San Diego-based 4th District Court of Appeal, in a decision issued last Friday, told the union that it must pay all the rest of the cash to Maggio Inc., for losses the company suffered during the strike.
Unanimously rejecting union claims that it was not liable for the damages, and that, even if it was, damages were excessive, a three-judge panel of the court essentially upheld the award, issued by an Imperial County Superior Court judge in 1987 after a lengthy trial. At the time, the $1.7-million award was the largest judgment ever rendered against the UFW.
With interest, the $1.7 million has since grown to about $2.4 million, lawyers involved in the case said Tuesday. The union’s attorneys promised an appeal to the California Supreme Court, saying that being forced to pay out that much money would represent a serious financial burden.
“It would be devastating, absolutely devastating,” said Dianna Lyons, a Sacramento lawyer for the union.
And, Lyons contended, if it stands, the 4th District court’s ruling would set back more than just the UFW’s checkbook. The magnitude of the award sends a message to workers that hard-won labor rights are of no true value, since asserting those rights could mean a multimillion-dollar legal headache, she said.
“It would basically mean that all the guarantees under California law, the rights workers have to engage in protective conduct such as strikes and a picket line for mutual aid and protection, would become meaningless,” Lyons said.
Lawyers for Maggio, however, said that line of thought missed the point. The 1979 strike was violent--one man died--and it would be unusual for a court to condone violence, said Marcie Mihalia, a San Diego attorney.
“Stepping back and looking at the bigger picture, I think it is significant that the court has now affirmed a decision that essentially says the UFW is not above the law,” Mihalia said. “To the extent (the union) uses violent means, it is going to have to pay damages.”
At a press conference Tuesday in San Diego, Carl J. Maggio, 44, the head of the company, said the threat of violence during the strike so alarmed him that he had his wife and four children temporarily moved to San Diego.
“The violence was more than I, or anyone I was involved with, could ever have imagined,” he said.
The strike began in the Imperial Valley in January, 1979, and lasted through the summer. During the strike, UFW striker Rufino Contreras was killed by an unknown assailant, several other pickets were wounded by gunfire and another was hurt when hit by a pickup truck.
During an 11-month trial, Maggio’s lawyers presented videotapes showing large numbers of strikers rushing into the fields carrying clubs and throwing rocks at strikebreakers and farm vehicles.
In May, 1986, Imperial County Superior Court Judge William E. Lehnhardt ruled that the UFW was responsible for the violence. In January, 1987, he fixed Maggio’s damages at $1.7 million, told the UFW to pay up and sparked the UFW’s appeal to the 4th District court.
On appeal, the UFW contended that it could not be held liable for the violence because top union leaders did not approve of it and did not even know about it until after it happened.
But, in a 55-page opinion, Judge Daniel J. Kremer said the long trial showed that union leadership, including the strike coordinator and picket captains, were “actively involved in instigating violence.”
Strike coordinator Richard King and picket captains were there when rocks were thrown and fields were rushed, Kremer said. King and the captains made threats to kill replacement workers, Kremer said. The captains urged strikers to throw rocks and to vandalize equipment, Kremer said.
The union’s illegal activity, Kremer said, was a “substantial cause” of all the losses Maggio suffered in its carrot, lettuce and broccoli fields. He affirmed a series of complex calculations that figured Maggio’s harvest losses, the bulk of the $1.7 million award.
Kremer rejected the union’s claim that Maggio took an “ordinary business risk”--for which the law does not allow damages--by weathering a strike rather than coming to terms with the union, saying that “illegal and violent conduct by strikers” is not ordinary.
He also turned down the union’s novel claim that the strike turned Maggio, with a host of freshly recruited workers, into a “new business” that had no track record by which to compute harvest losses. With or without new field hands, Maggio has been doing business in the Imperial Valley for years, Kremer said.
Kremer did cut $936 from the $1.7 million, the cost of housing replacement workers in a motel. Maggio admitted it was not entitled to that $936, since a mistake had been made on a receipt, Kremer said.
Finally, Kremer reduced the $1.7 million by $75.26, the cost of fixing windows on a pickup damaged during the strike. There was not enough evidence to link the union to the damaged windows, Kremer said.
More to Read
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.