By now, you’ve likely read or heard about the Federal Appeals Court in D.C. blasting the Hawaii Tribune-Herald’s union busting actions in a decision issued on Friday.

The ruling came on an appeal by T-H owner, Stephens Media LLC, of a prior scathing ruling of the National Labor Relations Board which found the newspaper had a committed a string of violations of federal labor law.

At issue were the suspensions of several employees and firing of reporters Dave Smith and Hunter Bishop for what the NLRB says were union activities protected by federal law.

A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals rejected all of the company’s defenses, calling one justification “pretextual,” while others were rejected after being supported by testimony of what the court said were “expressly discredited witnesses.”

Sherry Bracken did a good summary of the decision, as did Jennifer Sinco Kelleher of Associated Press.

The decision contained on specific item of special interest to bloggers. The company pointed to blog posts about the newspaper by Hunter Bishop following his firing.

From the court decision:

The Company argues that it had cause to fire Bishop, because his postdischarge conduct was blatantly disloyal to the Company. In support of this claim, the Company points out that Bishop stated at a public event that the Company suffered from organizational and management problems…and that he made other
disparaging statements about the Company on his blog….

But the company arguments had been rejected earlier by both the original administrative law judge, and later by the NLRB.

The administrative law judge ruled the comments, including blog posts, were not “maliciously false, i.e., statements made with knowledge of their falsity or with reckless disregard for their truth or falsity.”

The NLRB’s took a slightly different position:

The Board held that in the latter set of circumstances – i.e., where an employer seeks to avoid its obligations based on an employee’s postdischarge misconduct – the employer “has the burden of proving misconduct so flagrant as to render the employee unfit for further service, or a threat to efficiency in the plant.”

Both found Hunters comments, made following his firing, were proper.

Additional company arguments were rejected on a legal technicality, with the court ruling they had not been raised before the NLRB and so were effectively waived.

But the advice to bloggers writing about their former companies is clear. Avoid those “maliciously false” statements if you want to stay out of trouble. Of course, that’s very good advice generally.

In any case, the decision also reviews the factual background of the case, including descriptions of union-management clashes within the newspaper. It certainly sounds like a dismal workplace environment.