Callaghan & Co. v. Smith
| Decision Date | 21 October 1922 |
| Docket Number | No. 14476.,14476. |
| Citation | 304 Ill. 532,136 N.E. 748 |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
| Parties | CALLAGHAN & CO. v. SMITH et al. |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Bill by Callaghan & Co. against Burdette J. Smith and others. Bill dismissed, and complainant appeals.
Reversed and remanded, with directions.
Appeal from Superior Court, Cook County; Charles M. Foell, judge.
Isham, Lincoln & Beale, of Chicago, for appellant.
Edward J. Brundage, Atty. Gen., George E. Dierssen, and Landon & Holt, all of Chicago (O. A. Harker, of Champaign, and Robert N. Holt, of Chicago, of counsel), for appellees.
By an act of the General Assembly, entitled ‘An act to provide for the publication of the general statutes of Illinois together with all amendments,’ approved June 28, 1921, it is provided:
Laws of 1921, p. 843.
Callaghan & Co. filed a bill in the superior court of Cook county against Burdette J. Smith and Edward J. Brundage, Attorney General, for an injunction to restrain Smith from publishing or submitting to the Attorney General a compilation of the statutes of the state of Illinois or from giving bond as provided in the act, and to restrain the Attorney General from approving any such compilation, and for general relief. General demurrers to the bill were sustained, it was dismissed for want of equity, and the complainant has appealed.
The bill makes the following averments: The complainant is an Illinois corporation having its principal place of business in the city of Chicago, is a taxpayer in Cook county, and is, and has been for more than 15 years, engaged in the business of publishing, printing, selling, and distributing law text-books, reports of the decisions of courts, legal digests and encyclopedias, and has invested in said business over $1,000,000. In 1913 it published and copyrighted a compilation of the revision of the statutes of Illinois of 1874 and all of the general statutes enacted since such revision and in force on January 1, 1913, together with annotations, known as ‘Jones & Addington's Illinois Statutes, Annotated.’ In 1916 the complainant published and copyrighted a book known as ‘Callaghan's Illinois Laws, Annotated, 1913-1916,’ embracing all the general acts passed by the Legislature of Illinois from January 1, 1913, to June 1, 1916, with annotations, and in 1920 published and copyrighted a volume entitled ‘Callaghan's Illinois Laws, Annotated, 1917-1920,’ embracing all the general acts passed by the Legislature of Illinois between January 1, 1917, and July 1, 1919, with annotations. The complainant has expended large sums of money in the preparation and compilation of these works, in preparation of the plates for their publication and in printing and binding copies of said works and has in its stock a large number of printed copies of such works, and the copyrights owned by the company upon the annotated statutes have been and still are of great value. The complainant has sold and is now selling and distributing the edition of the Revised Statutes of Illinois known as ‘Hurd's Revised Statutes of 1919’ and editions of Hurd's Revised Statutes of previous years, and has since the publication of such works sold and distributed large numbers of them, and has derived from such sales large and substantial profits. The act of the Legislature which has been set out is contrary to the Constitution of the state of Illinois, in that it provides for the printing, binding, and distributing of the laws of the state and other printing by a private individual without contract or competition and without the fixing of a maximum price, contrary to section 25 of article 4 of the Constitution, and it grants to a private individual a special or exclusive privilege, immunity, and franchise, contrary to section 22 of article 4 of the Constitution. Burdette J. Smith, a resident of Cook county, doing business under the name of Burdette J. Smith & Co., contemplates and has taken steps toward the compilation and publication of the statutes of the state of Illinois pursuant to the terms of the said act, and is engaged upon the preparation and printing of the text of such compilation. No publication of the general statutes of the state of Illinois has been made under the authority of the Legislature since the year 1874, and there is no complete compilation of the general statutes of Illinois published under state authority, except the session laws printed after the close of each session of the Legislature. By virtue of the act of the Legislature in question Smith will become the sole publisher and distributor of the only official edition of the general laws of Illinois published under the authority of the Legislature and with the approval of the Attorney General, and upon the publication of such authorized and official edition of the statutes the copyrights of the complainant upon Jones & Addington's Illinois Statutes, Annotated, and the two editions of Callaghan's Illinois Laws, will be made practically worthless, and the plates from which said books are printed will become of little or no value, and the printed copies of said books and of the editions known as Hurd's Revised Statutes, owned by the complainant, will be greatly reduced in value, and the sales by the complainant of all of said works will be greatly decreased, if they do not cease entirely, and the complainant will be deprived of large profits, and will suffer loss and injury in its business impossible to estimate. The preparation of the compilation of the general laws of the state of Illinois is a matter involving great care and skill, and the expenditure of large sums of money in editing, compiling, and printing the statutes, and no publisher will undertake to publish an edition of the general laws of Illinois which has not the express authority or approval of the Legislature, in competition with the edition provided to be published by Smith and officially authorized by the act referred to. Moreover, the duty imposed upon the Attorney General by said bill of approving the compilation to be prepared by Smith will necessitate a great amount of work by the Attorney General or his assistants, and the right or privilege of compiling, printing, and distributing the authorized and approved edition of the general laws of the state of Illinois is of great and substantial value, and will enable Smith to sell and dispose of many thousands of copies of such publication practically without competition and make large profits therefrom, and if the requirement of the Constitution of the state of Illinois with respect to the printing and distribution of the laws of the state had been complied with and the right conferred upon Smith had been offered to competitive bids, the state of Illinois would have derived from the sale of said right a substantial sum of money, and the complainant and other publishers of said books in this state and elsewhere would have bid large sums for the privilege so offered, of which the state of Illinois will be deprived in case the provisions of the aforeasaid act are carried out. By the compilation and publication of the laws of the state of Illinois as provided for in the act in question the complainant is deprived of its constitutional right to bid in competition for the privilege of compiling, printing and publishing said statutes, the people of the state of Illinois will be deprived of their right to have published and to purchase an authorized edition of the laws of the state of Illinois at a maximum price to be fixed by the Legislature, and the complainant, as a large dealer in and distributor of said books, will be deprived of its right to purchase for sale and distribution to the public an authorized editionof the laws of the state of Illinois at a maximum price to be fixed by the...
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...of a business proprietor, the language and reasoning of this case are directly applicable to the case at bar. In Callaghan & Co. v. Smith, 304 Ill. 532, 136 N. E. 748, 750, one publishing company sued to enjoin another from publishing a compilation of the state laws under what was said to b......
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...without a reasonable basis. Section 11.2(a) was not special legislation. Plaintiff's reliance on cases such as Callaghan & Co. v. Smith, 304 Ill. 532, 136 N.E. 748 (1922), In re Day, 181 Ill. 73, 54 N.E. 646 (1899), People ex rel. City of Kewanee v. Kewanee Light & Power Co., 262 Ill. 255, ......
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