Gast Bank Note & Lithograph Company v. Fennimore Association

• Decision Date: 07 February 1899
• Citation: 49 S.W. 511,147 Mo. 557
• Parties: Gast Bank Note & Lithograph Company, Appellant, v. Fennimore Association et al
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

49 S.W. 511

147 Mo. 557

Gast Bank Note & Lithograph Company, Appellant, v. Fennimore Association et al

Supreme Court of Missouri, Second Division

February 7, 1899

Appeal from St. Louis City Circuit Court. -- Hon. John M. Wood Judge.

Transferred to St. Louis court of appeals.

Fisse & Kortjohn for appellant.

Minor Meriwether and H. A. Loevy for respondents.

BURGESS J. Gantt, P. J., and Sherwood, J., concur.

OPINION

BURGESS, J.

This is an injunctive proceeding against certain employees of the plaintiff and other persons who are alleged to have been carrying on a strike to restrain them from interfering with the plaintiff's other workmen or otherwise disturbing its business affairs.

A preliminary injunction was granted upon the filing of the petition, and summons issued against all of the defendants returnable to the October term, 1895, of the circuit court of the city of St. Louis by one of whose judges the preliminary writ was issued.

Before the return day of the writs some of the defendants filed answers in the cause, and motions to dissolve the injunction. There was also filed before the return day, and before all of the defendants answered, appeared or had been served with process, a motion to dissolve the injunction. This motion to dissolve appears to have been filed on behalf of all of the defendants.

Before the return day, and before a number of the defendants had answered, the motion to dissolve was, over plaintiff's objection, taken up and sustained as to the defendants who had answered and as to them the petition dismissed. Plaintiff then filed a motion for new trial.

After the return day certain of the defendants, who had not theretofore answered, answered and also filed a motion to dissolve.

The cause was thereafter called for trial and plaintiff objected to proceeding with the case, because the motion for new trial theretofore filed by it was yet pending and undisposed of, but the objection was overruled, and plaintiff declining to proceed with the case, judgment was entered sustaining the second motion to dissolve, and dismissing the bill as to those defendants.

Plaintiff then filed another motion for a new trial, which was overruled, and plaintiff appealed.

The first question presented by this appeal is with respect to the jurisdiction of this court. There is nothing in the record which confers jurisdiction in the Supreme Court unless it be the allegation in the petition that plaintiff's property is of the value of $ 225,000. The petition does not allege any damage to plaintiff's property or business by reason of the wrongdoing of defendants, but simply asks for an injunction to prevent them from interfering with its employees, etc.

In Evans & Howard Fire Brick Co. v. St. L. Smelting & Ref Co., 48 Mo.App. 643, it was said: "When the object of a suit is not to obtain a money judgment, but other relief" [in this case an injunction], "the amount...