Lyon & Healy v. Piano, Organ & Musical Instrument Workers' Int'l Union
| Decision Date | 24 October 1919 |
| Docket Number | No. 12451.,12451. |
| Citation | 289 Ill. 176,124 N.E. 443 |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
| Parties | LYON & HEALY v. PIANO, ORGAN & MUSICAL INSTRUMENT WORKERS' INTERNATIONAL UNION et al. |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from Circuit Court, Cook County; Frederick A. Smith, Judge.
Suit for injunction by Lyon & Healy against the Piano, Organ, and Musical Instrument Workers' International Union and others. From a judgment finding defendants guilty of contempt for violation of injunction, they appeal. Affirmed.
Fred C. G. Schmidt, of Chicago, and W. B. Rubin, of Milwaukee, Wis. (A. W. Richter, of Milwaukee, Wis., of counsel), for appellants.
Dudley Taylor, of Chicago, for appellee.
On November 5, 1917, Lyon & Healy, a corporation engaged in manufacturing and dealing in musical instruments and musical merchandise in the city of Chicago, filed its bill in the circuit court of Cook county, and a temporary injunction was issued, enjoining the defendants from, among other things, in any manner interfering with, hindering, obstructing, or stopping the business of the complaint; from picketing or maintaining any pickets at or near the complainant's premises, or along the routes followed by the complainant's employés in going to and from their homes and the complainant's place of business; from watching or spying upon the complainant's place of business, its employés, or those who approach or leave its place of business, or seek to enter its employment or to do business with it; from assaulting or intimidating, by threats or otherwise, its employés, or any person who may become or seek to become its employé; from congregating about or near its place of business, or any place where its employés are lodged or board, for the purpose of compelling, inducing, or soliciting its employés to leave its service or to refuse to work for it, or for the purpose of preventing or attempting to prevent any person from freely entering into its service; from interfering with or attempting to hinder it from carrying on its business in the usual and ordinary way; from following its employés to their homes or other places or from calling upon them for the purpose or with the effect of inducing them to leave its employment or for the purpose or with the effect of molesting or intimidating them or their families; from organizing or maintaining any boycott against it or its employés; from calling or procuring or attempting to procure strikes against it by unions other than the Piano, Organ, and Musical Instrument Workers' International Union of America, or by members of other unions, in furtherance of the conspiracy alleged in the bill upon which the injunction was based; and from doing anything to subject its employés, or any of them, to hatred, criticism, censure, scorn, disgrace, or annoyance because of their employment by it.
The defendants to the bill were the Piano, Organ, and Musical Instrument Workers' International Union of America, Charles Dold, its president, and a number of other persons, including all the appellants, except George Atkins, and he, as well as all the other appellants, was served with the writ, and had notice of the injunction on November 7, 1917. With the bill were filed a number of affidavits, from which it appeared that a strike occurred at the plant of Lyon & Healy on October 4, 1917; that the strikers instituted picketing, intercepting, and following the employés of Lyon & Healy with demands that they quit their employment, assaulted them, called them offensive names, and pursued a course of conduct toward them calculated to intimidate them and prevent them from continuing in their employment, maintaining a system of pickets, with headquarters in a saloon across from the plant, constantly watched the plant and those going to and from it and patrolled in front of or near it; that picketing incidental to strikes in Chicago has a well-known reputation for such practices and methods as watching, following, intercepting, and threatening employés and applicants for employment, calling them names, jeering, insulting, and assaulting them, and subjecting them to hostile annoyances, and that such practices were well understood by the employés of Lyon & Healy, so that they feared pickets and picketing, and the mere presence of such pickets near its factory intimidated its employés and those seeking employment from it; that the picketing and interference were continuous, and the defendants had conspired and combined to injure the complainant by such means.
The defendants answered the bill on December 13, 1917, but continued to maintain their pickets, to patrol the front of the factory and to maintain a watch upon it. A bomb was exploded at night at Lyon & Healy's store, another at its garage, others at the homes of five of its employés, an employé was knocked down, kicked, and severely injured within two blocks of the factory, and several employés were taunted with the appellation of ‘scab.’ On December 15, 1917, Lyon & Healy filed its petition, charging six of the individual defendants, including Charles Dold, the president of the union, with violating the injunction, and asking for a rule on them to show cause why they should not be punished for contempt of court. The respondents answered the petition, and denied that they had violated the injunction, or had any knowledge of the assault and explosions set out in the petition, and alleged that the pickets were stationed for the sole purpose of informing appellee that there was a strike against it. The court found the respondents guilty of contempt for violating the injunction. Dold was sentenced to imprisonment in the county jail for 30 days and to pay a fine of $500, and the other defendants were fined $300 each. All of the respondents have appealed.
The only question to be considered is whether the circuit court had jurisdiction to grant the injunction. Counsel for appellants do not contend that they did not picket the appellee's plant, or did not violate the injunction, but only that there is no evidence that they were guilty of any threats, intimidations, or acts of violence, or have attempted to create or enforce a boycott, and therefore it is argued that they have not violated any prohibition of the injunction which the court had power to grant.
The injunction prohibited the picketing or the maintaining of any picket or pickets at or near the appellee's premises, and the appellants' contention is that picketing is the exercise of a legal right, which can only be enjoined when something else beside the act of picketing itself is done. Their counsel state that:
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