UFW Ordered to Pay Grower $5.4 Million
For the second time in a year, the United Farm Workers Union has been stung by a major court decision ordering it to pay a huge damage award to a farm owner.
A Yuma, Ariz., jury awarded $5.4 million in damages to Bruce Church Inc., a Salinas-based firm, late Wednesday. The decision stemmed from a 1984 suit alleging that the UFW violated Arizona’s secondary boycott law in connection with a boycott the union waged against Church lettuce starting in 1979.
The Church suit charged that the UFW had used untruthful and deceptive publicity in a secondary boycott seeking to induce consumers not to buy the company’s Red Coach brand of lettuce and other products, had induced stores to make a management decision to cease selling Red Coach lettuce and other products, and had libeled the company in an attempt to prevent the sale of the company’s lettuce and other products.
Directed Verdict
After Arizona Superior Court Judge H. Stewart Bradshaw issued a directed verdict on the secondary boycott issue, the jury awarded the company $4,911,833 in actual damages and $491,183 in punitive damages.
“As a result of this decision, the union should recognize it cannot use deception and coercion to publicize itself and attract supporters,” said James Clark, one of Church’s attorneys.
But UFW President Cesar Chavez asserted that the union will prevail on appeal and argued that the Arizona statute is unconstitutional. “How can a rural Arizona court award damages for a boycott which occurred in California, New York, Massachusetts and Illinois?” Chavez said in a prepared statement. “The UFW did not boycott stores in Arizona.”
A year ago, an Imperial County Superior Court judge awarded Maggio Inc., a large California vegetable grower, $1.7 million in damages due to violence in a 1979 strike. The union posted a $2.5-million bond to appeal that decision, but a hearing on the appeal has not been held. Church lawyer Paul Goldberg said the union would have to post a $5.4-million bond to appeal the Arizona decision.
The Arizona case had its roots in a longstanding dispute. UFW’s contract with Church expired in 1979, and negotiations to renew it broke down. For several years, the union urged consumers in several states not to buy Red Coach lettuce, and the product was put on the “unfair” list of the AFL-CIO. Then, early in 1984, the UFW launched a so-called “high-tech” boycott, a direct mail campaign urging people in selected areas not to buy the lettuce.
Site of Suit Criticized
The union asserted that the suit was filed in Yuma in March, 1984, because the company thought it would find a more sympathetic judge and jury there. But Goldberg said the suit was filed there because much of the lettuce that was being boycotted was grown in that area.
