Sometimes, grown men can only take so much whining and pathetic excuses before putting the hammer down.

On August 11, 2009, U.S. District Judge Richard W. Story ruled in Atlanta federal court that a $1.7 million jury award against the Southeastern Carpenters Regional Council will stand. The move by Judge Story is just one more nail in the coffin of a failed, and very expensive, attempt by the Atlanta carpenters union to illegally drive a small Atlanta drywall contractor out of business.

Readers of this website know that on February 10, 2009, a jury awarded plaintiff Fidelity Interiors, LLC, $1.7 million at the conclusion of a civil trial where Fidelity claimed it had suffered considerable financial damages due to a series of illegal secondary boycotts staged by the Atlanta carpenters union Local 225.

For months, the Atlanta carpenters have used union dues to pay a battery of lawyers to inundate Judge Story with a flurry of motions designed to allow the union bosses to get out of paying the money owed to Fidelity.

On Tuesday, the judge put an end to all the nonsense. Unless the union burns through hundreds of thousands of more dollars in member dues filing an appeal, it’s time for the union bosses to pay the man at Fidelity. Here’s the judge’s ruling.

We here at The Circle Group applaud the proud men and women who work at Fidelity, Judge Story, and the courageous jury that last February looked the union thugs in the eye and used their power to right a considerable wrong.

Here’s the press release and statement from the attorney for Fidelity announcing the judge’s decision to uphold the jury award:

JUDGE UPHOLDS $1.7 MILLION SECONDARY BOYCOTT RULING AGAINST UNION "AREA STANDARDS" CAMPAIGN

Earlier this year, a federal jury in Atlanta returned a verdict in favor of Fidelity Interiors, LLC, an Atlanta area drywall subcontractor, against the Southeastern Carpenters Regional Council (the Union), for $1.7 million, finding that the Carpenters Union conducted an illegal secondary boycott in its Atlanta “area standards” campaign. Subsequently, the defendant union submitted a motion to the judge seeking a ruling in its favor or, in the alternative, a new trial. Among other things, the union claimed that the jury had been improperly instructed, because the jury was allowed to consider both lawful and allegedly unlawful union conduct without being more specific in the jury charge. The judge rejected this union argument, finding that the appropriate test is to consider the totality of the evidence in determining the motive or object of the picketing.

The union also argued that the damages awarded by the jury were excessive and against the great weight of the evidence, and that most of the damages were pure conjecture and speculation. The court rejected this argument as well, finding that the company had offered substantial evidence suggesting that its business would have grown and that income and profits would have grown, but for the secondary conduct of the union. The court noted that the history of Fidelity provided the basis for an appropriate projection of the profits it would have earned but for the actions of the union, and that the jury had the discretion to accept or reject Fidelity’s projections. The court suggested that the union was trying to avoid significant monetary liability by arguing that it was too difficult to quantify the work that the union prevented Fidelity from obtaining. Finally, the court concluded that the union interfered with Fidelity’s work on projects in progress or to be awarded, resulting in Fidelity’s dismissal from those projects before completion, and that the union had interfered with Fidelity’s established client relationships, resulting in clients’ refusal to invite Fidelity to bid on new projects because of the union’s conduct.

The case involved a factual pattern beginning in 2004, in which the union sent Atlanta building owners, property managers, and general contractors, a “warning letter” indicating that if a “non-area standard” paying employer worked at their premises, there would be demonstrations and other forms of union activities directed at their locations. Where the “substandard” contractor or subcontractor was not removed by the owner, property manager, or general contractor, picketing often occurred. In some instances, the picket signs did not clearly identify whom the primary labor dispute was with, and the chanting, noise making, and other such tactics were often directed against the building owners, property managers, and even tenants.

The secondary boycott laws prohibit a union from threatening or coercing a neutral third party, to cause that neutral third party to cease or reduce doing business with the employer that is the subject of the labor dispute, or to require the subject of the labor dispute to enter into a union agreement.

According to attorney Jim Wimberly, who along with Kathleen Jennings of Wimberly, Lawson, Steckel, Schneider & Stine, P.C., represented the plaintiff, “I am pleased that the court did not let the union hide behind the “smoke screen” that the damages were too indefinite to be the subject of a legal claim. A union that is engaged in illegal secondary boycotts, and thereby hurts innocent third parties, should not be able to hide behind such technicalities to avoid the consequences of its own wrongful conduct. Innocent third parties were hurt, and indeed terrorized, and both the judge and jury recognize that this type of conduct should not go unpunished.”

James Wimberly, Esquire

The case is Fidelity Interior Construction v. Southeastern Carpenters Regional Council, No. 1: 05 CV 2938 (N.D. Ga.) and Judge Richard Story's order denying the union's post-trial motions issued on August 11, 2009.