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192 Misc. 520

Colson v. Gelber

New York Supreme Court

Decided July 14, 1948

New York Supreme Court · decided 1948-07-14

Relies on Dusing v. Nuzzo · Miller v. Ruehl · Acierno v. North Shore Bus Co.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1948-07-14

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently July 1966

2 federal appellate · 2 state decisions

40194819501960decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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BoieiN, J.

¶1The gravamen of plaintiff’s complaint against an officer and nnnamed employees of a labor union is a combination of fraud and conspiracy which, it is alleged, resnlted in the union’s failure to act upon plaintiff’s application for membership and plaintiff’s being deprived of union membership.

¶2In the absence of the allegation of facts showing that plaintiff had the necessary qualifications for membership and would have been admitted to membership but for the acts of fraud and conspiracy the complaint is insufficient. Membership in a labor union, despite its economic importance {Dusing v. Nuzzo, 177 Misc. 35) is still regarded as a privilege which may be granted or withheld by a union {Simons v. Berry, 210 App. Div. 90; Murphy v. Higgins, 12 N. Y. S. 2d 913, affd. 260 App. Div. 854; Acierno v. North Shore Bus Co., 173 Misc. 79; Matter of Miller v. Ruehl, 166 Misc. 479; Shein v. Rose, 12 N. Y. S. 2d 87). It follows that no cause of action is stated for obstructing membership in a union without allegation of facts which show that, but for the wrongful acts of defendants, plaintiff would have been admitted to membership.

¶3The complaint is dismissed, with leave to plaintiff to serve a second amended complaint within twenty days after service of a copy of the order entered hereon, with notice of entry.

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