Jersey City Printing Co. v. Cassidy

• Decision Date: 13 October 1902
• Citation: 53 A. 230,63 N.J.E. 759
• Parties: JERSEY CITY PRINTING CO. v. CASSIDY et al.
• Court: New Jersey Court of Chancery

53 A. 230

63 N.J.E. 759

JERSEY CITY PRINTING CO.

v. CASSIDY et al.

Court of Chancery of New Jersey.

Oct. 13, 1902.

Bill for an injunction by the Jersey City Printing Company against James Cassidy and others. Motion, on order to show cause, for an injunction to restrain defendants, former employés of complainant, and now on strike, from unlawful interference with complainant's business, the employment of workmen, etc. Heard on bill, answer, and affidavits. The restraining order made upon the filing of the bill continued until final hearing.

Upon filing the bill, an order was made restraining the defendants "from in any manner knowingly and intentionally causing or attempting to cause, by threats, offers of money, payment of money, offering to pay or the payment of transportation expenses, inducements or persuasions to, any employé of the complainant under contract to render service to it to break such contract by quitting such service; from any and all personal molestation of persons willing to be employed by complainant, with intent to coerce such persons to refrain from entering such employment; from addressing persons willing to be employed by complainant against their will, and thereby causing them personal annoyance, with a view to persuade them to refrain from such employment; from loitering or picketing in the streets near the premises of complainant, Nos. 68 and 70 York street and No. 37 Montgomery street, Jersey City, with intent to procure the personal molestation and annoyance of persons employed or willing to be employed by complainant, and with a view to cause persons so employed to quit their employment, or persons willing to be employed by complainant to refrain from such employment; from entering the premises of complainant, Nos. 68 and 70 York street, Jersey City, against its will, with intent to interfere with its business; from violence, threats of violence, insults, indecent talk, abusive epithets practiced upon any persons without their consent with Intent to coerce them to refrain from entering the employment of complainant, or to leave its employment."

George G. Tennant, for complainant.

John J. Fallon, for defendants.

STEVENSON, V. C. (orally). The bill is filed to restrain a body of workmen who are on a strike and other persons associated with them from doing certain things which are alleged to be injurious to the complainant, their former employer. The things that they are restrained from doing are specified in the restraining order. That order was not made hastily. It was formulated with care on the part of the court, and I do not understand that counsel for the defendants criticises its terms on the ground that they are too broad. The defense is that the persons who are enjoined have not been doing, and are not threatening now to do, any of those things that are interdicted. That is the sum and substance of the defense which has been presented by a great many affidavits, and with very great force.

The order does not interfere with the right of the workman to cease his employment for any reasons that he sees fit it does not undertake to say that workmen may not refuse to be employed if certain other classes of workmen are retained in employment. It leaves the workman absolutely free to abstain from work,—for good reasons, for bad reasons, for no reasons. His absolute freedom to work, or not to work, is not in any way impaired. The restraining order is based upon the theory that the right of the workman to cease his employment, to refuse to be employed, and to do that in conjunction with his fellow workmen, is just as absolute as is the right of the employer to refuse further to employ 1 man, or 10 men, or 20 men who have theretofore been in his employment. From an examination of the cases and a very careful consideration of the subject, I am unable to discover any right in the courts, as the law now stands, to interfere with this absolute freedom, on the part of the employer, to employ whom he will, and to cease to employ whom he will, and the corresponding freedom on the part of the workman, for any reason or no reason, to say that he will no longer be employed, and the further right of the workmen of their own free will to combine, and meet as one party—as a unit—the employer, who, on the other side of the transaction, appears as a unit before them. Any discussion of the motives, purposes, or intentions of the employer in exercising his absolute right to employ or not to employ as he sees fit, or of the free combination of employés in exercising the corresponding absolute right to be employed or not as they see fit, seems to me to be in the air.

Thus there is a wide field in which employés may combine and exercise the arbitrary right of "dictating" to their common employer "how he shall conduct his business." The exact correlative of this right of the employé exists in an equal degree in the employer. He may arbitrarily "dictate" to 5,000 men in his employ in regard to matters in respect of which their conduct ought, according to correct social and ethical principles, to be left entirely free. But if the dictation is backed up solely by the announcement that if it is not submitted to the dictating party will refrain from employing, or refrain from being employed, as the case may be, no legal or equitable right belonging to the party dictated to which I am able to discern is thereby invaded. Some of the expressions which I have used, and which are commonly used in relation to this subject seem to me to be misleading. Union workmen who Inform their employer that they will strike if he refuses to discharge all nonunion workmen in his employ are acting within their absolute right, and in fact are merely dictating the terms upon which they will be employed. All such terms necessarily relate both to "how the employer shall conduct his business," and how tine employés shall conduct their business. The doctrine of the old cases, of which we have in New Jersey an interesting example in State v. Donaldson, 32 N. J. Law, 151, 90 Am. Dec. 649, which placed the employed when acting in combination with his fellow workmen, at a tremendous disadvantage as compared with his employer, I think may be regarded as entirely exploded. The authority of the deliverances of the supreme court In State v. Donaldson was largely, if not entirely, abolished by statute in 1883.

The principles which I have endeavored to state are all recognized in the restraining order in this case, and are so plainly recognized that the intelligent and industrious counsel for the defendants is unable to point out any respect wherein the terms of the order should be modified. The things which the restraining order interdicts are things which, for the purposes of this argument, it is practically conceded the defendants have no right to do. In this situation of the case, it would seem to be unnecessary to further consider the legal propriety of the restraining order, much less to take it up clause by clause. I have, however, pointed out what conduct on the part of the defendants is excluded from the operation of this order, and I think that it is fair to all the parties to this suit who are concerned in the maintenance of the restraining order to explain, at least in a general way, what conduct is included within its prohibition. This can be most conveniently done by making plain the most important principles embodied in the order,—principles which practically have been developed by the courts of this country and England during the last 5 or 10 years. The injunction in strike and boycott cases is of very recent use. Already a wide difference of opinion has been developed among judges in regard to the liability of a combination of workmen to actions at law for damages and suits in equity for an injunction. It is only very recently, I think, that one of the most important rights which now are vindicated by the injunction in a strike case has been differentiated; in many cases it has been apparently half recognized, or indirectly enforced. That the Interest of an employer or an employs in a contract for services is property is conceded. Where defendants in combination or individually undertake to interfere with and disrupt existing contract relations between the employer and the employé, it is plain that a property right is directly invaded. The effect is the same whether the means employed to cause the workman to break his...