Frank Schmidt Planing Mill Co. v. Mueller

• Decision Date: 14 February 1941
• Docket Number: 37150
• Parties: Frank Schmidt Planing Mill Company, a Corporation, Appellant, v. Julius Mueller, President of the District Council of United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America for the City and County of St. Louis and Vicinity et al
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

147 S.W.2d 670

347 Mo. 466

Frank Schmidt Planing Mill Company, a Corporation, Appellant, v. Julius Mueller, President of the District Council of United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America for the City and County of St. Louis and Vicinity et al

No. 37150

Supreme Court of Missouri

February 14, 1941

Appeal from Circuit Court of City of St. Louis; Hon. John W Joynt, Judge.

Transferred to the St. Louis Court of Appeals.

Sullivan Reeder, Finley & Gaines for appellant.

Grimm Mueller & Roberts for respondents.

OPINION

Douglas, J.

Appellant is engaged in the planing mill business and manufactures and sells a general line of mill and cabinet work for houses. It operates an open shop. The Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners is endeavoring to unionize planing mill workers and has adopted a trade rule prohibiting union men from handling mill and cabinet work not bearing the union label. Appellant brought this action in the Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis against respondent Mueller, President of the Brotherhood's District Council, and others to restrain a boycott of its business and products entered into for the enforcement of the trade rule. After trial, the court below dismissed the petition and an appeal was taken to this court.

The relief sought in this proceeding is the protection of the right of appellant to the full and free pursuit and enjoyment of its business and custom. To obtain this relief appellant wants respondents enjoined from hindering, obstructing and interfering with this right.

This action seeks the same relief against the same parties which was sought in Crescent Planing Mill Co. v. Mueller et al. (Mo.), 117 S.W.2d 247. We transferred the appeal in that case to the St. Louis Court of Appeals on the ground the issues presented in it did not invoke the jurisdiction of this court. In this appeal we are likewise confronted with the question of our jurisdiction. If we have jurisdiction it can be only on the ground of the amount in dispute; none other of the constitutional grounds are presented. Our jurisdiction is confined to the matters specified by the Constitution in Article VI, Section 12; by the Amendment of Article VI in 1884; and by the pecuniary limit established by Section 2078, Revised Statutes 1939, Mo. Stat. Ann., sec. 1914, p. 2587. The amount in dispute must exceed $ 7500.

Where our jurisdiction is invoked on the basis of the amount in dispute and a money judgment is not sought, then such amount must be determined by the money value of the relief to plaintiff, or of the loss to defendant, should the relief be granted, or vice versa, should the relief be denied. This rule was announced in Evens & Howard Fire Brick Co. v. St. Louis Smelting & Refining Co., 48 Mo.App. 634, and was adopted by this court in Gast Bank Note & L. Co. v. Fennimore Association, 147 Mo. 557, 49 S.W. 511. The latter case was, incidentally, a like proceeding to the one at bar. The rule was also applied in other like proceedings in Berry Foundry & Mfg. Co. v. International Moulders' Union, 251 Mo. 448, 158 S.W. 18, and Marx & Haas Jeans Clothing Co. v. Watson, 168 Mo. 133, 67 S.W. 391.

There is a further requirement for jurisdiction which has long been enforced. The amount in dispute cannot be left to speculation or conjecture but must affirmatively appear from the record in the cause to be in excess of $ 7500. [Crescent Planing Mill Co. v. Mueller, supra.]

We must first determine whether the money value of the injunctive relief is properly shown by the record. The petition offers no help. In the first place no money judgment for loss or damage to appellant's business is sought. The petition states merely in general terms that appellant's business has been damaged but the extent of the damage is not expressed in terms of dollars. The evidence in the record bearing on the question of damage is found in the testimony that appellant's yearly volume of business for the past five years averaged $ 40,000; that fifty to seventy-five per cent of that volume was with union contractors; that the actions of respondents have reduced the volume of business with union contractors, to five to ten per cent of the whole. That's all the evidence there is on the question involved; there isn't any more. However appellant's counsel contends that this evidence is sufficient to endue this court with jurisdiction. He argues that the right to carry on business is property; the appellant has lost fifty per...