Lustgarten v. Felt & Tarrant Mfg. Co.
Decision Date | 27 September 1937 |
Docket Number | No. 6402.,6402. |
Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit |
Parties | LUSTGARTEN et al. v. FELT & TARRANT MFG. CO. et al. |
Freedman & Freedman, of Jersey City, N. J. (Benjamin Freedman, of Jersey City, N. J., of counsel), for appellants.
Waugh & McClellan, of Chicago, Ill., (Wm. F. Waugh, of Chicago, Ill., of counsel), for appellees.
Before THOMPSON and BIGGS, Circuit Judges, and DICKINSON, District Judge.
The appellee, Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing Company, in the summer of 1929, was, and still is, manufacturing and selling calculating machines under the trade-mark "Comptometer." In connection therewith, and as an aid to its commercial enterprise, this appellee established and licensed numerous schools wherein students were instructed in the correct use of the calculating machines. One of these schools had been established and licensed in the Concourse building in Jersey City, N. J., with the other appellee, Hugo S. Phillipson, in charge thereof. By a bill of complaint filed in the District Court of the United States for the District of New Jersey the appellees alleged that the appellants, in order to trade upon the name and good will of the Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing Company and this established school, added the name "School of Comptometry" to the name "Jersey City Preparatory School" under which the appellants had been conducting a commercial school, and leased the floor of the Concourse building immediately below the school which Phillipson was conducting for the Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing Company under the name "Comptometer School." The bill of complaint further alleged that misleading signs were put by the appellants upon the hallways and across the ways of ingress to the school conducted by Phillipson to the end that the public and those seeking instruction might be led to believe that the appellants' school was in fact the school conducted by Phillipson for the Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing Company.
No answer was filed to this bill of complaint. On the contrary, upon December 8, 1931, a final decree was entered by the court upon the consent of the parties. Since the questions in controversy here turn in a large part upon the interpretation of the terms of this decree, it is set out in full:
Following this final decree, upon January 23, 1932, a decree of perpetual injunction was entered by the court, which, in its injunctive provisions, followed in identical terms the decree of December 8, 1931.
What immediately followed is not entirely clear from the record, but upon December 1, 1936, the appellees filed a petition in the case alleging that the appellants had violated the terms of the perpetual injunction by a catalogue offering instruction in "Comptometry" and by a sign affixed to the building in which the appellants' school is located advertising instruction in comptometry. The petition further alleges that the appellants confuse calculating machines of other manufacturers with the calculating machine manufactured and sold by the Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing Company and that by offering and continuing to offer instruction in comptometry in the teaching and operation of calculating machines.
There are no basic facts in dispute. The dispute is rather in the interpretation of the facts in the light of the final decree of December 8, 1931, and the perpetual injunction based thereon. The final decree made by consent of the parties cannot now be altered in the absence of fraud, Thompson v. Maxwell, 95 U.S. 391, 398, 24 L.Ed. 481, and no fraud is alleged. The facts of the case appear from the affidavits in support of the petition and those in opposition to it. Those facts are as follows:
After the entering of the perpetual injunction, and in response to it, the appellants moved their school to a new location over a quarter of a mile distant from the school licensed by the Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing Company and operated by the appellee Phillipson, and in addition thereto changed the name of the commercial division of their school, first to "Institute of Business" and then to "Webster Institute of Business." They further refrained from using the word "Comptometry" in connection with the title of their school. That part of the catalogue issued by the appellants, dealing specifically with the course relating to the science of calculation, stated: "In addition, this course includes thorough training in the theory and operation of the comptometer and calculator." Upon the same page of the catalogue under the subjects listed for second term study reference is made to "Comptometry and Calculating." Under the title "Comptometry course," the appellants state through their catalogue that "This course is designed to train the student in the theory and practice of both the Comptometer (Felt & Tarrant) and the Calculator (Burroughs)." Upon page 5 of the catalogue reference is made to the subjects listed for third term study among which again appear "Comptometry and Calculating." Upon page 7 reference is again made to a "Comptometry Course," and on page 9 of the catalogue the description of the course is headed "Comptometry and Calculating," and that description states: "This course includes theory and practice in the operation of the Felt & Tarrant Comptometer and the Burroughs Calculator." The affidavit of the appellant, Lustgarten, states that his school possesses a comptometer which he acquired by legitimate purchase, that this comptometer is copper-colored, as are all comptometers manufactured by the Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing Company, and that the Calculators of the Burroughs Company are black. The statements contained in the last sentence are in fact controverted by the petition and affidavits of the appellees, but we take them to be true.
Upon these facts, the learned District Judge made the following findings and order:
The contentions of the appellants are as follows: First, that they have exactly fulfilled the duties laid upon them by the perpetual injunction in that they...
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