Susan J. Harriman

When the destructive 2019 Kinkade wildfire ravaged Sonoma County, Harriman was in trial out of state while her vacation home in Healdsburg was threatened. The city was evacuated and the Keker, Van Nest & Peters partner foresaw more of the same in the climate change era. So she sold the place and bought a summer home near Providence, Rhode Island.

“It’s my base now for the fire season,” Harriman said from the East Coast in early October. She was right: Healdsburg was again threatened in 2020 by the Walbridge Fire. “It’s been easy and seamless working from here, though my days start late in the morning and go into the night. I’ll be back in Northern California at the end of October. All I have to do,” she laughed, “is ask judges to hold no trials during the summer.”

Harriman, who handles complex business disputes, represents a labor union and its Portland, Oregon, locals as lead trial counsel in a bitter three-year dispute over refrigerated cargo work at the Port of Portland. The plaintiff is a Philippines-owned company operating container terminals there. It contends the union engaged in unauthorized work stoppages and slowdowns.

After a two-week trial last fall ended with a plaintiffs’ win, U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon of Portland granted Harriman’s motion for a new trial on the grounds that the jury’s verdict was excessive and against the clear weight of the evidence. Harriman is now asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal to review the case, contending that the plaintiff is misusing the Taft-Hartley Act and violating the First Amendment. ICTSI Oregon Inc. v. International Longshore and Warehouse Union and ILWU Local 8, 20-80086 (9th Cir., petition for appeal filed June 5, 2020).

“It was a horrible verdict. I had no idea the jury would go so far off the rails,” Harriman said. “The jury found the union engaged in impermissible secondary activity when it was complaining about the employer, and that can’t be.”

In her petition for permission to lodge an interlocutory appeal, Harriman contended that all of the disputes at the port were about matters within the employer’s control and therefore primary and lawful. The case is pending at the appeals court.

— John Roemer