Consolidated Electric Storage Co. v. Accumulator Co.

• Decision Date: 25 April 1893
• Citation: 55 F. 485
• Parties: CONSOLIDATED ELECTRIC STORAGE CO. et al. v. ACCUMULATOR CO.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

55 F. 485

CONSOLIDATED ELECTRIC STORAGE CO. et al. v. ACCUMULATOR CO.

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

April 25, 1893

Wm. H Kenyon and C. E. Mitchell, for appellants.

Frederic H. Betts, for appellee.

Before ACHESON, Circuit Judge, and BUTLER and WALES, District Judges.

ACHESON Circuit Judge.

This being an appeal from an interlocutory decree granting a provisional injunction, the only question properly before us for determination is whether or not the legal discretionary power of the court below was fairly exercised under all the circumstances. It would be altogether premature for us to pass upon the merits of the case, or to consider with a view to a definitive judgment the important and close questions involved in this litigation. The action of the court below complained of was based upon adjudications of the United States circuit court for the southern district of New York. Judge Coxe, in Electrical Accumulator Co. v. Julien Electric Co., 38 F. 117, 39 F. 490, after a protracted litigation, at final hearing sustained the first claim of Faure's patent, (here in suit,) and granted an injunction. In a later suit for the infringement of the patent (Electrical Accumulator Co. v. New York & H. R Co., 40 F. 328) Judge Lacombe granted a preliminary injunction. Thereafter the Julien Electric Company, which was a New York corporation, ceased to do business, and a New Jersey corporation, the present appellant, (the defendant company below,) was formed; and this new company transferred to New Jersey the plant and business of the New York corporation. William Bracken, who had been president of the Julien Electric Company, and was a codefendant with it in the first New York suit, became the president of the New Jersey Company, and is a defendant in the present suit. Whether or not legal privity, strictly speaking, exists between the enjoined New York corporation and the New Jersey corporation the court below has found, and the fact seems to be, that the appellant company is substantially the old concern, with another name, acting under a new corporate organization. Mr. Bracken's affidavit impliedly concedes that since October, 1891, the appellant company has been doing that which Judge Lacombe held to be an infringement of Faure's patent.

In October, 1891, the Julien Electric Company made application to Judge Coxe to dissolve the injunction which had been granted against that company, on the ground that Faure's American patent had terminated on June 27, 1891, by reason of the expiration at that date of a Spanish patent which had been granted to him. While the court opene...