Court rules against union in labor dispute involving truck drivers and wet concrete
By Jessica Gresko
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a dispute about the pressure that organized labor can exert during a strike, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday against unionized drivers who walked off the job with their trucks full of wet concrete.
The decision united liberal and conservative justices in labor's latest loss at the high court. The lone dissenter in the case, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, said the ruling would hinder the development of labor law and "erode the right to strike."
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority, said the union failed to take reasonable precautions to protect the company's concrete when the drivers went on strike. Barrett wrote that the drivers for Washington state-based Glacier Northwest quit work suddenly, putting the company's property in "foreseeable and imminent danger."
"The Union's actions not only resulted in the destruction of all the concrete Glacier had prepared that day; they also posed a risk of foreseeable, aggravated, and imminent harm to Glacier's trucks," Barrett wrote in a decision joined by four other justices. Three more justices agreed with the outcome in the case but did not join Barrett's opinion.
In 2018, the court's conservative majority overturned a decades-old pro-union decision involving fees paid by government workers. More recently, the justices rejected a California regulation giving unions access to farm property so they could organize workers.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a separate opinion in the Washington state case that the federal National Labor Relations Act protects the right to strike, but with limits. He said it "does not protect striking employees who engage in the type of conduct alleged here."
In her dissent, Jackson wrote: "Workers are not indentured servants, bound to continue laboring until any planned work stoppage would be as painless as possible for their master."
This case stemmed from contract negotiations in 2017 between Glacier Northwest and the local Teamsters union, representing the drivers. When negotiations broke down, the union called for a strike. Drivers walked off the job while their trucks were full of concrete, which must be used quickly and can damage the trucks if it's not.
Glacier says the union timed the strike to create chaos and inflict damage. Glacier not only had to dump the concrete but also pay for the wasted concrete to be broken up and hauled away.
The company sued the union in state court for intentionally damaging its property; the lawsuit was initially dismissed.
The question for the Supreme Court was about how the case should proceed. Glacier said its lawsuit in state court should not have been dismissed at the outset. The union said Glacier's lawsuit should only be allowed to go forward in state court if the federal National Labor Relations Board first found that the union's actions were not protected by federal law.
Barrett wrote that because the union did not take reasonable precautions to protect Glacier's property, the trial court was wrong to think federal law required dismissing the lawsuit. By "reporting for duty and pretending as if they would deliver the concrete, the drivers prompted the creation of the perishable product. Then, they waited to walk off the job until the concrete was mixed and poured in the trucks," Barrett wrote.
Lawyers for the union had said that in this case the drivers were instructed to be conscientious when they walked off the job, to bring their full trucks back to Glacier's facility and to leave the trucks' mixing drums spinning so that the concrete would not immediately begin to harden.
Barrett said that argument wasn't persuasive. "That the drivers returned the trucks to Glacier's facility does not do much for the Union — refraining from stealing an employer's vehicles does not demonstrate that one took reasonable precautions to protect them," Barrett wrote.
In a statement, Glacier Northwest's lawyer, Noel Francisco, said the decision "vindicates the longstanding principle that federal law does not shield labor unions ... when they intentionally destroy an employer's property,"
"Our client is entitled to just compensation for its property that the union intentionally destroyed," he said.
Darin Dalmat, a lawyer for the union, said in a statement that while the union was disappointed, "nothing in this decision will stop workers from exercising their federally protected rights to strike when necessary to achieve better wages, benefits, and working conditions."
Dalmat said that in "this particular case, Glacier has found a way to prolong its meritless lawsuit" and get past a motion to dismiss. But, he said, he was confident that the union's actions would ultimately be found to be protected by the NLRB.
The case is Glacier Northwest v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local Union No. 174, 21-1449.
Claims that SuperValu, Safeway overcharged governments for generic drugs revived
By Mark Sherman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously revived whistleblower lawsuits claiming that supermarket and pharmacy chains SuperValu and Safeway overcharged government health-care programs for prescription drugs by hundreds of millions of dollars.
The decision gives the whistleblowers another chance to pursue their claims that the companies defrauded the Medicare and Medicaid programs when they reported retail prices for generic prescription drugs, even though they had mainly been sold to customers at deeply discounted prices.
The cases stem from the companies' effort to match a 2006 decision by Walmart to offer 30-day supplies of many generic drugs for $4.
SuperValu and Safeway matched the discounted price at their pharmacies, but they reported to the federal and various state governments a much higher "usual and customary" price when seeking reimbursement.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the suits against both companies, holding that their decisions to report the higher prices were "not objectively unreasonable" under the federal False Claims Act.
Writing for the high court Thursday, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the appeals court applied the wrong standard. "What matters for an FCA case is whether the defendant knew the claim was false," Thomas wrote.
An expert for the whistleblower in the Safeway lawsuit testified that the company received $127 million more than it would have gotten had it reported the discounted price, according to court papers.
In the case against SuperValu, the whistleblower said the company matched Walmart's discounted price 6.3 million times over 11 years, according to court papers.
A lawyer for the company told the justices at arguments in April that figuring out the correct price to report is harder than it seems.
But Thomas said the whistleblowers had amassed evidence showing that executives believed the discounted prices should have been reported and took steps to hide the lower prices from state and federal authorities.
The justices did not issue a final ruling on the claims, which will be left for lower courts to sort out.
