Haefele v. Davis, 1780

• Decision Date: 04 May 1960
• Docket Number: No. 1780,1780
• Citation: 160 A.2d 711,399 Pa. 504
• Parties: Martin F. HAEFELE, Edgar Hares, and Clarence Lord, Appellees, v. Thomas DAVIS, President, George Dennis, Recording Secretary, Officers of Local Unionof the United Steel Workers of America, Thomas J. Cann, District Representative, and Local Unionof the United Steel Workers of America, Appellants.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 711

160 A.2d 711

399 Pa. 504

Martin F. HAEFELE, Edgar Hares, and Clarence Lord, Appellees, v. Thomas DAVIS, President, George Dennis, Recording Secretary,

Officers of Local Union No. 1780 of the United Steel Workers

of America, Thomas J. Cann, District Representative, and

Local Union No. 1780 of the United Steel Workers of America,

Appellants.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

May 4, 1960.

Rehearing denied June 3, 1960.

James P. Costello, Jr., Hazleton, Sidney G. Handler, Harrisburg, Donn I. Cohen, York, for appellants.

Max Rosenn, Rosenn, Jenkins & Greenwald, Wilkes-Barre, for appellees.

Before BELL, MUSMANNO, BENJAMIN R. JONES, BOK and EAGEN, JJ.

EAGEN, Justice.

Indispensable to the setting of the instant appeal in its proper perspective (an approach necessitated by the questions raised) is a brief resume of the procedural adventures of an earlier case involving fundamentally the same substantive, undisputed facts; for, it is with a correct interpretation and application of the doctrines of res judicata and collateral estoppel that we are here primarily concerned.

Plaintiffs Haefele and Hares were suspended from their jobs with Vulcan Iron Works, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on June 27, 1949. Plaintiff Lord's suspension was under date of July 11, 1949. Alleging that the appellants' tortious interference with their seniority rights caused the loss of employment, plaintiffs filed a bill in equity seeking injunctive relief and damages on October 4, 1949. A hearing in the court of Luzerne County of June 6, 1950, resulted in the dismissal of the action and, on appeal to this Court, the order was reversed and the record remanded for additional, but limited, proceedings (368 Pa. 23, 81 A.2d 530). Accordingly, a further hearing was held on September 11, 1951, and the subsequent supplemental adjudication and final decree of March 19, 1952, granted injunctive relief and awarded monetary damages covering wage losses from the date of suspension up to the time of the original hearing, June 6, 1950. An Appeal to this Court from that order was dismissed on February 13, 1953 (373 Pa. 34, 95 A.2d 195).

On February 2, 1954, appellants filed in the lower court a petition for a rule to show cause why the final decree of March 19, 1952, should not be opened. The petition was dismissed and this Court on appeal affirmed (380 Pa. 94, 110 A.2d 233). On March 8, 1955, the award was paid in full and the judgment against the appellants satisfied of record. The present action in equity instituted in the form of a supplemental action seeks additional damages for wage losses suffered from June 6, 1950, (the date of the original hearing on the amended bill) up to April 7, 1952, (the date of plaintiffs' reinstatement to their employment). The lower court entered an adjudication granting the monetary damages asked for. This appeal followed.

Are the plaintiffs estopped from seeking recovery for this additional loss, the occurrence and amount of which are not seriously refuted?

An examination of the record of the first suit clearly indicates that the damages now sought had not arisen as of the date that cause was litigated; and, that the specific question, now in controversy, we not raised either in the pleadings or the evidence and was not decided or considered therein, either expressly or by implication. The bill claimed no damages for future loss caused by the continuing tortious conduct involved, and the court in its adjudication made no mention of them.

The present suit, therefore, is based upon tortious conduct continuing beyond the date of the original action and subsequent to the original hearing. The damages prayed for, if granted, would not constitute a double recovery, since they were neither sought nor granted or denied in the first suit. The determination that appellants' tortious conduct originally caused plaintiffs to lose their employment is res judicata and this question may not be inquired into again. Allen v. International Textbook Co., 1902, 201 Pa. 579, 51 A. 323. This would apply with equal force to the issue of damages suffered up to the date of the original trial, but not to damages suffered thereafter, which resulted from the continuing wrong and which were not previously adjudicated.

As pointed out by President Judge Rice in Wright v. Weber, 1901, 17 Pa.Super. 451, at page 457: 'A judgment is not evidence of any matter which comes collaterally in question, or which is incidentally cognizable or which is to be inferred by argument from it. The conclusive effect of a judicial decision cannot be extended by argument or implication to matters not actually heard and determined, nor to collateral questions which arise but do not become part of the case. The estoppel of a former adjudication will extend only so far as the subject-matter of the second suit is substantially the same as that of the first 'and may be binding on some points while leaving others open to controversy'. Schwan v. Kelly, 173 Pa. 65 .'

In that opinion, Judge Rice quoted from Head v. Meloney, 111 Pa. 99, 2 A. 195, as follows: "It is certainly true, as stated in Tams v. Lewis, 42 Pa. 410, that a former judgment is not conclusive of anything which was not directly decided by it, or was not material to the decision. Before such effect can be given to it in another suit, it should appear either from the record or aliunde, that it must have rested on the precise question which it is sought again to agitate. Whether this is so or not may appear from the record itself, or it may be shown by evidence not inconsistent with the record * * *." Judge Rice, in his own language, added: 'Whatever may be the general rule upon the subject, we can conceive of injunction cases where the omission of the plaintiff to claim, and of the court to award, damages would not conclude him.' See Piro v. Shipley, 1907, 33 Pa.Super. 278.

Again, Mr. Justice Sharswood in Coleman's Appeal, 1869, 62 Pa. 252, 272, in bringing this doctrine into focus, wrote: 'The principle is well stated by Mr. Justice Nelson in The Packet Company v. Sickles, 5 Wallace S.C. Rep. 592 : 'As we understand the rule in respect to the conclusiveness of the verdict and judgment in a former trial between the same parties, where the judgment is used in pleading as a technical estoppel * * *, it must appear, by the record of the prior suit, that the particular controversy sought to be concluded was necessarily tried and determined * * *.' (and) 'even where it appears from the extrinsic evidence that the matter was properly within the issue controverted in the former suit, if it be not shown that the verdict and judgment necessarily involved its consideration and determination, it will not be conclusive.''

Also, Mr. Chief Justice Thompson in Williams v. Row, 1869, 62 Pa. 118, 122, said: 'I do claim, that to be conclusive, the record must show the very matter claimed to have...