This is the Libertarian Podcast from the Hoover Institution.

I'm your host Tom Church and I'm joined as always by the Libertarian himself

Professor Richard Epstein.

Richard is the Peter and Kirsten Bedford, senior fellow here at the Hoover Institution.

He's the Lawrence A Tish Professor of Law at NYU and is a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago.

And Richard this week I'd like to discuss

what I think is a fascinating legal fight involving unions and the methods in which they

protest. The case I want to talk about just was argued in front of the Supreme Court. It's Glacier

Northwest versus the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Now, the context I suppose I want to lay down is that the

Teamsters drive cement trucks for Glacier Northwest and when upcoming negotiations failed and right before the contract was about to expire, the union drivers took off with loaded cement trucks and then returned them when the contract expired with wet cement still in them. Now obviously the company was unable to offload all the cement in times causing it to harden and ruining several or many vehicles and the key questions I think in this case are well there's a lower level one where there were their actions a protected strike practice under the National Labor Relations Act, and then the bigger one here is which court has jurisdiction to resolve this case.

Now, Richard, I have a feeling you're going to give me a history lesson in order to begin to understand how to parse through this.

But how is this at the Supreme Court was through an unconventional route.

The case was brought actually by the employer, the The

Gayshia company. It was brought against the Union in Washington State Court,

and the tort that was alleged was the intentional destruction of physical property to with the trucks and the cement.

What happened is under the traditional rule, the union could defend and say, oh no, you're not allowed to bring this here because this is material which is in fact effectively covered under the National Labor Relations Act, and that will preclude the tort action.

Well, to decide that, you then have to figure out just how far is the reach of that statute.

And there's a famous case called Garman against another one of these unions, and what happened in that case this case

in another one of these unions. And what happened in that case, a very different California

Supreme Court in the 1980s, was faced with a union organizing drive.

And what happened is the employer... their union organizing drive.

And what happened is the employer brought an action

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