Hopkins v. Oxley Stave Co.

• Decision Date: 08 November 1897
• Docket Number: 789.
• Parties: HOPKINS et al. v. OXLEY STAVE CO.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

83 F. 912

HOPKINS et al. v. OXLEY STAVE CO.

No. 789.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

November 8, 1897

Appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Kansas.

James F. Getty (F. D. Hutchings, on the brief) for appellants.

David Overmyer (David W. Mulvane, on the brief), for appellee.

Before CALDWELL, SANBORN, and THAYER, Circuit Judges.

THAYER Circuit Judge.

This case comes on appeal from an order made by the circuit court of the United States for the district of Kansas, granting an interlocutory injunction. The motion for the injunction was heard on the bill and supporting affidavits, and on certain opposing affidavits. There is no substantial controversy with reference to the material facts disclosed by the bill and accompanying affidavits, which may be summarized as follows The appellants, H. C. Hopkins and others, who were the defendants below, are members of two voluntary unincorporated associations, termed, respectively, the Coopers' International Union of North America, Lodge No 18, of Kansas City, Kan., and the Trades Assembly of Kansas City, Kan. The first of these associations is a labor organization composed of coopers, which has local lodges in all the important trade centers throughout the United States and Canada. The other association, the Trades Assembly of Kansas City, Kan., is a body composed of representatives of many different labor organizations of Kansas City, Kan., and is a branch of a general organization of the same name which exists and operates, by means of local assemblies, in all the principal commercial centers of the United States and Europe. The Oxley Stave Company, the plaintiff below and appellee here, is a Missouri corporation, which is engaged at Kansas City, Kan., where it has a large cooperage plant, in the manufacture of barrels and casks for packing meats, flour, and other commodities. It sells many barrels and casks annually to several large packing associations located at Kansas City, Mo., and Kansas City, Kan., and also has customers for its products in 16 other states of the Union, and in Europe. Its annual output for the year 1895 was of the value of $164,173. For some time prior to November 16, 1895, the plaintiff company had used successfully in its cooperage plant at Kansas City, Kan., certain machines for hooping barrels, which materially lessened the cost of making the same. It did not confine itself exclusively to the manufacture of machine-hooped barrels, but manufactured, besides, many hand-hooped barrels, and employed a large number of coopers for that purpose, The wages paid to the coopers in its employ were satisfactory, and no controversy had arisen between the plaintiff and its employes on that score. On or about November 16, 1895, the plaintiff company was informed by a committee of persons representing the local lodge of the Coopers' Union, No. 18, at Kansas City, Kan., that it must discontinue the use of hooping machines in its plant. Said committee further informed the plaintiff that they had already notified one of its largest customers, Swift & Co., that, in making contracts with the plaintiff for barrels, the Coopers' Union would require such customer, in future, to specify for all barrels supplied to it by the plaintiff must be hand-hooped. None of the members of this committee were employes of the plaintiff company, and, with one exception, none of the present appellants were or are in its employ. At a later date, the Coopers' Union, No. 18, called to its assistance the Trades Assembly of Kansas City, Kan., for the purpose of enforcing its aforesaid demand; and on or about January 14, 1896, a committee of persons representing both of said organizations waited upon the manager of the plaintiff company, and notified him, in substance, that said organizations had each determined to boycott the product of the plaintiff company unless it discontinued the use of hooping machines in its plant, and that the boycott would be made effective on January 15, 1896. The formal action taken by the Trades Assembly was evidenced by the following resolution:

'To the Officers and Members of the Trades Assembly-- Greeting: Whereas, the cooperage firms of J. R. Kelley and the Oxley Cooperage Company have placed in their plants hooping machines operated by child labor; and whereas, said hooping machines is the direct cause of at least one hundred coopers being out of employment, of which a great many are unable to do anything else, on account of age, and at a meeting held by Coopers' Union No. 18 on the 31st of December, 1895, a committee was appointed to notify the above firms that unless they discontinued the use of said machines on and after the 15th of January, 1896, that Coopers' Union No. 18 would cause a boycott to be placed on all packages hooped by said machines the 15th of January, 1896, and at a meeting held by Coopers' Union No. 18 on the 4th of January, 1896, delegates were authorized to bring the matter before the Trades Assembly in proper form, and petition the assembly to indorse our action, and to place the matter in the hands of their grievance committee, to act in conjunction with the committee appointed by Coopers' Union No. 18, to notify the packers before letting their contracts for their cooperage: Therefore, be it resolved, that this Trades Assembly indorse the action of Coopers' Union No. 18, and the matter be left in the hands of the grievance committee for immediate action. 10)'Yours, respectfully,

J. L. Collins, 'Sec'y Coopers' International Union of North America, Lodge 18.

It was also charged, and the charge was not denied, that the members of the voluntary organizations to which the defendants belonged had conspired and agreed to force the plaintiff, against its will, to abandon the use of hooping machines in its plant, and that this object was to be accomplished by dissuading the plaintiff's customers from buying machine hooped barrels and casks; such customers to be so dissuaded through fear, inspired by concerted action of the two organizations, that the members of all the labor organizations throughout the country would be induced not to purchase any commodity which might be packed in such machine-hooped barrels or casks. The bill charged, by proper averments (and no attempt was made to prove the contrary), that the defendants were persons of small means, and that the plaintiff would suffer a great and irreparable loss, exceeding $100,000, if the defendants were allowed to carry the threatened boycott into effect in the manner and form proposed. The injunction which the court awarded against the defendants was, in substance, one which prohibited them, until the final hearing of the case, from making effective the threatened boycott, and from in any way menacing, hindering, or obstructing the plaintiff company, by interfering with its business or customers, from the full enjoyment of such patronage and business as it might enjoy or possess independent of such interference.

The first proposition contended for by the appellants is that the trial court acted without jurisdiction in awarding an injunction. The ground for this contention consists in the fact that in the bill, as originally filed, two persons were named as defendants who were citizens and residents of the state of Missouri, under whose laws the Oxley Stave Company was incorporated. But as the case was dismissed as to these defendants, and as the two voluntary unincorporated associations, and as to all the members thereof who were not specifically named as defendants in the bill of complaint before an injunction was awarded, and as the bill was retained only as against persons concerned in the alleged conspiracy who were citizens and residents of the state of Kansas, the objection to the jurisdiction of the trial court is, in our opinion, without merit. Oxley Stave Co. V. Coopers' International Union of North America, 72 F. 695. It is further urged that the trial court had no right to proceed with the hearing of the case in the absence of any of the persons who were members of the two voluntary organizations, to wit, the Coopers' Union, No. 18, and the Trades Assembly of Kansas City, Kan., because all the members of those organizations were parties to the alleged conspiracy. This contention seems to be based on the assumption that every member of the two organizations had the right to call upon every member for aid and assistance in carrying out the alleged conspiracy, and that an injunction restraining a part of the members from rendering such aid and assistance would necessarily operate to the prejudice of those members who had not been made parties to the suit. In other words, the argument is that certain indispensable parties to the suit have not been made parties, and that full relief, consistent with equity, cannot be administered without their presence upon the record. We do not dispute the existence of the rule which the defendants invoke, but it is apparent, we think, that it has no application to the case in hand. The present suit proceeds upon the theory-- without which no relief can be afforded-- that the agreement entered into between the members of the two voluntary associations aforesaid is an unlawful conspiracy oppress and injure the plaintiff company; that no right whatsoever can be predicated upon, or have its origin in, such an agreement; and that the members of the two organizations are jointly and severally liable for whatever injury would be done to the plaintiff company by carrying out the object of the alleged agreement. The rule is as well settled in equity as it is at law that, where the right of action arises ex delicto, the tort may be treated as joint or several, at the election of the injured party,...