Bogni v. Perotti

• Decision Date: 19 May 1916
• Citation: 224 Mass. 152,112 N.E. 853
• Parties: BOGNI et al. v. PEROTTI et al.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

224 Mass. 152

112 N.E. 853

BOGNI et al.

v.PEROTTI et al.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

May 19, 1916.

Appeal from Superior Court, Suffolk County.

Bill for injunction by John Bogni and others against Giovanni Perotti and others. From an order sustaining a demurrer to the bill, and decree dismissing it, plaintiffs appeal. Reversed.

Thos. G. Connolly, of Boston, for appellants.

Frederick W. Mansfield and Jas. A. Donovan, both of Boston, for appellees.

RUGG, C. J.

This is a contest between two labor unions seeking similar employment as laborers in the building trades. The plaintiffs are members of the General Laborers' Industrial Union No. 324, a voluntary unincorporated association which is a branch of the national organization known as the Industrial Workers of the World. The defendants are members of the Hod Carriers,' Building and Common Laborers' Union, Local 209, a like association, affiliated with a national organization known as the American Federation of Labor. The plaintiffs in their bill allege that there have been, are now and will be numerous buildings under construction in Boston and its vicinity, in connection with which they have been, are now and will be engaged and ready to offer their services, in profitable, useful and pleasant employment, and that they all have no means of supporting themselves except through such employment; but the defendants, well aware of the plaintiffs' conditions in respect of such employment, have conspired to deprive the plaintiffs of their employment, have threatened that if they did not desert their own organization and cease to be members thereof and join the organization of the defendants, the latter would cause them to be discharged from their employment, and that the defendants have used unlawful pressure upon and have intimidated certain owners of property not to employ the plaintiffs by threats of sympathetic strikes and otherwise, and in some instances by these means have caused the discharge of the plaintiffs from employment.

The conduct thus described plainly was calculated to harm the rights of the plaintiffs. Under general principles of the common law, which now have become well settled, the plaintiffs' bill sets out a wrong against their rights committed by the defendants, for which ordinarily relief would be afforded in equity by injunction (Plant v. Woods, 176 Mass. 492, 57 N. E. 1011,51 L. R. A. 339, 79 Am. St. Rep. 330;Pickett v. Walsh, 192 Mass. 572, 78 N. E. 753,6 L. R. A. [N. S.] 1067, 116 Am. St. Rep. 272,7 Ann. Cas. 638;De Minico v. Craig, 207 Mass. 593, 94 N. E. 317,42 L. R. A. [N. S.] 1048;Hanson v. Innis, 211 Mass. 301, 97 N. E. 756;Folsom v. Lewis, 208 Mass. 336, 94 N. E. 316,35 L. R. A. [N. S.] 787;New England Cement Gun Co. v. McGivern, 218 Mass. 198, 203, 105 N. E. 885), as well as at law (Berry v. Donovan, 188 Mass. 353, 74 N. E. 603,5 L. R. A. [N. S.] 899, 108 Am. St. Rep. 499,3 Ann. Cas. 738).

But the defendants justify their conduct as legal under St. 1914, c. 778.¹

The words of section 2 declare unmistakably that the right to labor and to make and to modify contracts to work shall no longer be a property right, so far as that question arises ‘in construing this act.’ These last four words are not a limitation upon the broad enactment that the right to labor and to contract respecting labor shall not be property, for the right to work, if it cannot be protected as are other rights of property, ceases to have the attributes of other property in all their fullness and ceases to that extent to be property. A declaration of a right coupled with a prohibition against its protection by ordinary means renders the right a vain and insubstantial shadow.

That the right to work is property cannot be regarded longer an open question. It was held in Cornellier v. Haverhill Shoe Mfrs.' Ass'n, 221 Mass. 554, at page 560, 109 N. E. 643, at page 645, that:

‘The right to labor and to its protection from unlawful interference is a constitutional as well as a common law right.’

It was said in State v. Stewart, 59 Vt. 273, 289,9 Atl. 559, 568 (59 Am. Rep. 710):

‘The labor and skill of the workmen, be it of high or low degree, the plant of the manufacturer, the equipment of the farmer, the investments of commerce, are all in equal sense property.’

In the Slaughter House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 127 (21 L. Ed. 394), in the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Swayne, but respecting a subject as to which there was no controversy, occur these words:

‘Labor is property and as such merits protection. The right to make it available is next in importance to the rights of life and liberty.’

It was settled that the right to labor and to make contracts to work is a property right by Adair v. U. S., 208 U. S. 161, 173-175, 28 Sup. Ct. 277, 52 L. Ed. 436, 13 Ann. Cas. 7648 and Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U. S. 1, 10, 35 Sup. Ct. 240, L. R. A. 1915C, 960,59 L. Ed. 441. Controversy on that subject before this court must be regarded as put at rest by those decisions. The right to work, therefore, is property. One cannot be deprived of it by simple mandate of the Legislature. It is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and by numerous guarantees of our Constitution. It is as much propertly as the more obvious forms of goods and merchandise, stocks and bonds. That it may be also a part of the liberty of the citizen does not affect its character as property. It was said in Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U. S. 1, at page 14, 35 Sup. Ct. 240, at page 243 (L. R. A. 1915C, 960, 59 L. Ed. 441):

‘Included in the right of personal liberty and the right of private property-partaking of the nature of each-is the right to make contracts for the acquisition of property. Chief among such contracts is that of personal employment, by which labor and other services are exchanged for money or other forms of property. If this right be struck down or arbitrarily interfered with, there is a substantial impairment of liberty in the long-established constitutional sense.’

No discussion is required to show that it is beyond the power of the Legislature under Constitutions which guard the individual against being deprived of property without due process of law, to declare without any process at all that a well recognized kind of property shall no longer be property. ‘Lawful property cannot be confiscated’ under the guise of a statute. Durgin v. Minot, 203 Mass. 26-28, 89 N. E. 144,24 L. R. A. (N. S.) 241, 133 Am. St. Rep. 276. When legislative attempts to compel the deprivation of certain comparatively small sums of money without due process of law invariably fail (see, for example, Northern Pacific Ry. v. No. Dakota, 236 U. S. 585, 35 Sup. Ct. 429, 59 L. Ed. 735;Great Northern Ry. Co. v. Minnesota, 238 U. S. 340, 35 Sup. Ct. 753, 59 L. Ed. 1337;Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Ry. v. Wisconsin, 238 U. S. 491, 35 Sup. Ct. 869, 59 L. Ed. 1423, L. R. A. 1916A, 1133;Louisville & Nashville Rd. v. Central Stockyards Co., 212 U. S. 132, 29 Sup. Ct. 246, 53 L. Ed. 441), it is manifest that something recognized as property by the law of the land cannot be extinguished utterly.

A further effect of the present statute is to deprive the plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws. The statute provides in substance that the property right to labor of any individual or number of individuals associated together shall not be recognized in equity as property when assailed by a labor combination, unless irreparable damage is about to be committed and that no relief by injunction shall be granted save in like cases for which there is no relief at law. That a man cannot resort to equity respecting his property right to work in the ordinary case simply because he is a laboring man, and that he cannot have the benefit of an injunction when such remedies are open freely to owners of other kinds of property, needs scarcely more than a statement to demonstrate that such man is not guarded in his property rights under the law to the same extent as others.

If a laborer must stand helpless in a court while others there receive protection respecting the same general subject which is denied to him, it cannot be said with a due regard to the meaning of constitutional guarantees that he is afforded ‘the equal protection of the laws' within the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and similar provisions of our own Constitution. The right to make contracts to earn money by labor is at least as essential to the laborer as is any property right to other members of society. If as much protection is not given by the laws to this property, which often may be the owner's only substantial asset, as is given other kinds of property, the laborer stands on a plane inferior to that of other property owners. Absolute equality before the law is a fundamental principle of our own Constitution. To the extent that the laborer is not given the same security to his property by the law that is granted to the landowner or capitalist, to that extent discrimination is exercised against him. It is an essential element of equal protection of the laws that each person shall possess the unhampered right to assert in the courts his rights, without discrimination, by the same processes against those who wrong him as are open to every other person. The courts must be open to all upon the same terms. No obstacles can be thrown in the way of some which are not interposed in the path of others. Recourse to the law by all alike without partiality or favor, for the vindication of rights and the redress of wrongs, is essential to equality before the law....