Corporate, Litigation, and Labor & Employment Lawyers

Honolulu and Hilo, HI

Hawaii Employment Law Cases July 23, 2017 to July 29, 2017 – Jeffrey S. Harris

U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

District Court properly granted summary judgment against crewmember’s claim of alleged harassment and termination by captain after romantic relationship ended.  Her claim did not involve “savage and vicious physical attack” needed to state Jones Act “unseaworthiness” claim and California courts did not apply law against harassment, discrimination and retaliation extraterritorially.  Russo v. APL Marine Servs., 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 13732 (9th Cir. July 28, 2017).

Multi-employer bargaining association member had antitrust standing to sue association and union.  Member alleged association and union harmed competition by raising prices to supra competitive levels and filed sham lawsuits to enforce arbitration award of work to ILWU despite NLRB Section 10(k) award of work to IBEW.  The Noerr Pennington protection for petitioning government barred member’s claim about the lawsuits, because two lawsuits alleged were not enough to show a pattern of baseless or repetitive claims, and the lawsuits collaterally attacking the Section 10(k) award and enforcing the arbitration award were not objectively baseless.  The nonstatutory labor exemption to antitrust laws barred the claim even if the union and association they violated labor law, because they sought assignment of the work to ILWU.  Int’l Longshoremen & Warehouse Union v. ICTSI Or., Inc., 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 13271 (9th Cir. July 24, 2017).

Note: We analyze cases to learn rules courts will follow or disappoint us if they do not. Rules courts follow allow us to behave and provide explanations they accept. Competent advocates may limit the rules to the facts of the case that discuss them, or expand the rules by showing differences in other cases are irrelevant.