Eagle Oil Co. of New York v. Vacuum Oil Co.
| Decision Date | 18 June 1908 |
| Docket Number | 14. |
| Citation | 162 F. 671 |
| Parties | EAGLE OIL CO. OF NEW YORK et al. v. VACUUM OIL CO. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit |
Eugene Mackey, for appellants.
C Schuyler Davis and Edmund Wetmore, for appellee.
Before DALLAS, GRAY, and BUFFINGTON, Circuit Judges.
The appellee was plaintiff and the appellants were defendants in a suit in equity for alleged infringement of trade-marks and unfair competition. The bills, original and supplemental alleged the adoption, use and registration by the complainant of certain words, which it charged the defendants with having applied to goods of the Eagle Oil Company, fraudulently and in violation of complainant's rights, by branding goods of that company with the complainant's trade-marks in this country, and selling the same in this country, by placing said brands upon its goods in this country and selling the goods so branded in foreign markets and by exporting its goods from this country with the intention of selling them under said brands in foreign countries and actually selling them in the foreign market under said brands.
The Eagle Oil Company and F. W. Hastings, Jr., 'as secretary and treasurer and a director of said corporation, and individually,' filed a joint plea and answer, and the defendant George F. Von Krogh, as a director and individually, filed a separate but substantially identical plea and answer. The first-mentioned plea is copied in the margin. [1] It was interposed, as will be observed, 'to all the relief and discovery sought by the said bills, both original and supplemental, except only so much thereof as prays for relief against and discovery of all acts and deeds of these defendants done in these United States'; it was pleaded 'in bar of all relief and discovery sought in said bills of complaint against or for all acts and deeds of these defendants or their agents or officers, alleged to have been done in some foreign country or nation'; and it alleged and averred 'that such acts or deeds, if performed or done at all, * * * were wholly done or performed without the borders or boundaries of these United States, and wholly within the borders and boundaries of some foreign country or nation, and that of such acts and deeds only the courts of such foreign country or nation, and not this court, or any court within these United States, has jurisdiction.'
This plea was connectedly followed by an answer to so much of the original bill as the plea did not cover, in which the charges of wrongful acts committed by the defendants in this country were denied. In June, 1903, the plea was set down to be argued, and, after hearing, was 'allowed, with liberty to the complainant to take issue thereon. ' In November, 1904, the sufficiency of the answer was in the main sustained, and on December 23, 1904, general replications to the plea and to the answer, respectively, were filed
It appears from the foregoing synopsis that the plea and answer conjointly, purported to set up, affirmatively or by way of denial, all matters of fact upon which the defendants relied, whether to defeat the jurisdiction of the court or to bar the relief sought by the bill, and that issue was taken upon the plea as long ago as in December, 1904. Yet we are now asked to say that when, upon the proofs, that issue was determined against the defendants, the court below erred in refusing their 'demand for an opportunity to answer over. ' But, in our opinion, that demand was neither reasonable nor warranted. If the fact stated in the plea had been determined for the defendants, it would have availed them as far as in law and equity it ought to avail them, and surely its determination for the complainant should not be wholly without avail to it. The contention that equity rule 34 entitled the defendants to answer over after the issue upon their plea had been decided against them is founded upon a mistaken understanding of the effect to be attributed to its use of the word 'overruled.' Wherever, in the series of rules...
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