- Posts by Stuart M. GersonMember of the Firm
Attorney Stuart Gerson’s respected trial and appellate skills and power of persuasion help him successfully represent health care, life sciences, and financial services clients in high-stakes civil and criminal matters ...
Management-side attorneys and the businesses that they represent will be pleased with the Supreme Court’s holding in Glacier Northwest, Inc. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
The case concerned the issue of whether the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 151–169 (“NLRA” or the “Act”), preempted a state tort claim seeking damages for harm suffered by their employer, caused by employees’ inaction in failing to deliver concrete that had already been loaded into the employer’s trucks or otherwise taking action to prevent the hardening concrete from damaging the trucks, thus intentionally destroying property owned by Glacier. Notably, the striking employees and their union knew that the trucks had been loaded when they began their strike. An eight-justice majority held that the union and its members were, on the facts of the case, not engaged in protected conduct as that term is defined under the NLRA. Justice Barrett delivered the opinion of the Court, in which the Chief Justice and Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Kavanaugh joined. Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito concurred. As against this jurisprudentially diverse array, Justice Jackson was the only dissenter.
Resolving a split between circuits, this week the United States Supreme Court, in CNH Industrial v. Reese rejected what has come to be known as the Yard-Man standard, and reaffirmed that collective bargaining agreements must be interpreted according ordinary contract principles. Although the Supreme Court has long held ordinary cannons of contract construction apply to collective bargaining agreements, some federal courts developed a specialized set of inferences, known as the Yard-Man inferences, which allowed them to read beyond the actual contract terms, to reach what ...
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Recent Updates
- New York State Bans Workplace “Captive Audience” Meetings
- Federal Government Continues Initiatives to Limit Employer Opposition to Union Organizing
- NLRB Issues Final Rule on Joint-Employer Status, Answering a Major Question No One Asked
- NLRB Delivers Labor Day Gifts to Unions
- NLRB Issues Final Rule on NLRB Election Procedures; Returns to “Quickie Election” Procedures