Graham v. St. Charles Street Railroad Company

• Decision Date: 01 January 1895
• Docket Number: 11,512
• Citation: 16 So. 806,47 La.Ann. 214
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
• Parties: PETER GRAHAM v. ST. CHARLES STREET RAILROAD COMPANY ET AL

16 So. 806

47 La.Ann. 214

PETER GRAHAM v. ST. CHARLES STREET RAILROAD COMPANY ET AL

No. 11,512

Supreme Court of Louisiana

January 1, 1895

APPEAL from the Civil District Court for the Parish of Orleans. Rightor, J.

Walter H. Rogers and William B. Lancaster, for Plaintiff, Appellant.

Harry H. Hall, for Defendants, Appellees.

OPINION

NICHOLLS, C.J.

Plaintiff seeks to recover a judgment against the St. Charles Street Railroad Company and Thomas Newman in solido for five thousand dollars.

Defendants filed an exception of "no cause of action," which having been sustained and the suit dismissed plaintiff has appealed.

The action is grounded upon the following allegations:

"That Newman is the foreman of the company, and as such has the power of employing and discharging its employes; that for a considerable time, less than one year, he has persistently abused said power in making use of it for persecuting petitioner and injuring him in his business. That petitioner is proprietor of a substantial grocery store at the corner of Baronne and Eighth streets of New Orleans -- the stable and buildings of said company occupying another corner of the same street intersection; that Newman has frequently and continuously instructed the men under his control in said capacity, that they must not deal at petitioner's store and that he would discharge them if they did; that he especially directed such commands and threats to Henry Rigner, Joseph Santos and Lee Halliday in the early part of the year 1893, say in the months of February and March and thereabouts, and to various other persons within the past eight months; that he did discharge one Andrew Heffner from the employ of said company, on or about the 19th of March 1893, for no other cause than that said Heffner had manifested a friendship for petitioner by speaking in his favor; that the animus of all this was that of ill will against petitioner and the deliberate desire to injure him; that in all said conduct and actions he was within the scope of his employment by said company; that in many other ways said Newman has manifested his ill feeling and malevolence toward petitioner; that petitioner has suffered loss in his business to the extent of one thousand dollars in the patronage thus driven away and diverted, which he would otherwise have enjoyed; that petitioner has also suffered great annoyance and humiliation from the notoriety which their persecution has obtained in the neighborhood through the openness with which it was carried on and from the ridicule thereby engendered, the injury from which he estimates at not less than five hundred dollars; that he is entitled to punitory and exemplary damages in the further sum of thirty-five hundred dollars for said tortious, wanton, malicious and unprovoked persecution."

Defendants' counsel in his brief refers us to the case of Orr vs. Home Mutual Insurance Company et al., 12 An. 255, as containing a clear exposition of the principle upon which this defence rests. He says: "Defendants had the legal right to discharge their servants arbitrarily and without cause. The exercise of a legal right gives no cause of action against them. If the plaintiff be injured it is damnum absque injuria. No authority has been suggested in opposition to the principle that a man has an undoubted right to employ labor and fix the terms and conditions of that employment in his discretion. In the instant case defendants had the absolute legal right, the exercise of which was proper in the conduct of their business, to prohibit their employes from going to grocery stores or barrooms or from dealing in any way or with any person in such manner as might be prejudicial to the interest of their business. They had the legal right to insist upon abstention in dealing as a condition precedent to their employment or retention in service. If the employes did not see fit to comply with these restrictions they were at liberty to leave the employment. They were not coerced in any sense of the word. They were free agents. They could have continued dealing with plaintiff if they saw fit, but they could not so deal and remain in the employment of the defendant company. Defendants were exercising a legal right."

The plaintiff in this case does not appear before us either as one who, having sought employment from defendants, and been refused by reason of what he alleges to be unreasonable unwarrantable requirements at his hands, as conditions precedent to being taken into service, claims damages from defendants, nor as one who, having been employed by the defendants under circumstances such as to have legally authorized the employer, at any moment and without cause assigned, to discharge him, claims...