Electrical Accumulator Co. v. Julien Electric Co.

• Decision Date: 22 July 1889
• Citation: 39 F. 490
• Parties: ELECTRICAL ACCUMULATOR CO. v. JULIEN ELECTRIC CO. et al.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York

39 F. 490

ELECTRICAL ACCUMULATOR CO. v. JULIEN ELECTRIC CO. et al.

United States Circuit Court, S.D. New York.

July 22, 1889

Frederick H. Betts, for complainant.

Thomas W. Osborn and Edmund Wetmore, for defendants.

COXE J.

A rehearing is asked upon the following principal grounds First. The court was in error in holding that the patent, as limited by the disclaimer, discloses invention; for the reason that an electrode to which the active material is applied in the form of a paint, paste, or cement has no advantages over electrodes otherwise mechanically coated. This proposition the defendants seek to establish by further experiments, and by the opinions of experts. Second. On the ground of newly-discovered evidence. Third. Because the complainant should not have been permitted to file a disclaimer. When this enormous record was taken up for examination the court confidently entertained the conviction that it presented a controversy in which nothing relevant to the art in question, which human ingenuity and diligence could supply, had been omitted, and that no proposition of law or fact, actual or contingent, which was germane to the subject, had been neglected and unexplained. Where time and labor have been so lavishly expended, where the presentation of the cause has been so thorough, and where every opportunity has been offered counsel to present their views the court should be unusually reluctant to reconsider a conclusion deliberately reached. The administration of the law will become vexatious and intolerable if, upon slight pretexts or unsubstantial grounds, parties are permitted because the decision changes to some extent the status of the controversy, to try again and again issues which were, or which might have been, disposed of at the hearing. The notice that a disclaimer would in certain contingencies, be insisted upon, was unusually full and explicit. It was suggested by the proof and at the hearing the defendants were clearly advised, that a disclaimer might be necessary, the complainant even going so far as to suggest its form. The question was orally argued. It was again discussed in the learned and comprehensive brief submitted by the defendants, and the right to file a disclaimer was strenuously controverted. And yet during all this time it was never intimated-- as the facts are now recalled-- that the record did not sufficiently present the question. That position was taken...