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Professional Staff Nurses Association v. Dimensions Health Corp.6/3/1996
The gradual deterioration of the collective bargaining process between labor and management resulted in labor giving notice to management of labor's intent to strike, and management, in anticipation thereof, seeking replacement workers. The Circuit Court for Prince George's County considered labor's complaint, in which labor alleged that the firm offering replacement workers to management had maliciously and wrongfully interfered with the economic relationship between labor and management, based on § 4-403 of the Labor and Employment Article (strikebreaker statute), and dismissed it under the doctrine of federal preemption and for failing to state a cause of action. Aggrieved with that result, labor exercised its prerogative and noted an appeal to this Court. For reasons discussed below, we shall affirm the judgment of the circuit court.
The parties to this dispute are members of the health-care industry. Dimensions Health Corporation, appellee ("Dimensions"), owns and operates health-care facilities in Maryland. Professional Staff Nurses Association, appellant ("Professional"), is an unincorporated labor union that represents nursing professionals throughout Maryland, including approximately seven hundred registered nurses employed by Dimensions. The last party to this triangle is Favorite Nurses, Inc., appellee ("Favorite"), a company that provides replacement registered nurses to employers whose employees are on strike.
Professional presents three issues for our consideration. Slightly rephrased, they are as follows:
I. Did the court below err in permitting DHC to intervene as a party defendant when no claim was asserted against it, and assuming intervention in some form were appropriate, did the lower court err in treating DHC's answer as though it constituted an amendment to plaintiff's complaint, adding a non-existent and meritless tort claim against DHC, and then holding the non-asserted tort claim both preempted and dismissed for failure to state the elements of the tort?
II. Did the lower court improperly consider and rely on matters outside the pleadings in ruling on a motion to dismiss, and did the complaint in any event plead the elements of the claim that Favorite Nurses tortiously interfered with economic and business relations between PSNA and DHC?
III. Is the tortious interference claim against FN preempted by either Garmon or Machinists NLRA preemption where FN is not in an employer-employee or employer-union relationship with either PSNA or DHC, and where the narrow regulatory range of the tort and the strikebreaker act as to FN place the claim squarely within preemption exceptions for matters deeply rooted in local feeling and responsibility and for matters of only peripheral concern to the federal labor law system?
I.
Facts
Dimensions owns and operates four health-care facilities in Prince George's County: Prince George's Hospital Center, Laurel Regional Medical Center, Gladys Spellman Nursing Center, and the Bowie Health Center. Professional, an unincorporated labor union, represents approximately seven hundred registered nurses who work at Dimensions's Prince George's County facilities. For eight years, beginning in 1986, Dimensions and Professional successfully negotiated collective bargaining agreements relating to the wages, hours, and other terms and conditions affecting Professional's union members employed by Dimensions. Beginning in the summer of 1994, and continuing into early winter of that same year, the parties engaged in collective bargaining negotiations. The efforts were to no avail, and Professional served Dimensions with a ten day notice that its members would go on st
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