By Michael Abcarian ( August 24, 2017, 12:53 PM EDT) -- Earlier this month, a federal jury acquitted four members of Teamsters Local 25 in Boston on charges of criminally threatening Padma Lakshmi, the host of television's popular cooking competition show "Top Chef." The charges alleged that union members conspired to extort money from the show's production company. The case arose out of events in June of 2014, when the television series was filming at the Steel & Rye restaurant just south of Boston. At the epicenter of the extortion allegations was an underlying labor dispute concerning the show's use of nonunion vehicle drivers. Teamsters Local 25 wanted the show to hire Teamster drivers. But the employer declined, explaining that it already had other (nonunion) employees on the payroll who performed all needed driving tasks....