Pennsylvania R. R. System and Allied Lines Federation No 90 v. Pennsylvania R. Co.

• Decision Date: 05 February 1924
• Docket Number: 2875.
• Citation: 296 F. 220
• Parties: PENNSYLVANIA R.R. SYSTEM AND ALLIED LINES FEDERATION NO. 90 et al. v. PENNSYLVANIA R. CO. et al.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Pennsylvania

296 F. 220

PENNSYLVANIA R.R. SYSTEM AND ALLIED LINES FEDERATION NO. 90 et al. v. PENNSYLVANIA R. CO. et al.

No. 2875.

United States District Court, E.D. Pennsylvania.

February 5, 1924

Sur Motion to Dismiss Bill under Rule 29 on Questions of Law Raised by answer.

Sur Motion to Dismiss on Bill, Answer, and Proofs.

Sur Trial Hearing on Bill, Answer, and Proofs.

Donald R. Richberg, of Chicago, Ill., Morris Hillquit, of New York City, and David Wallerstein, of Philadelphia, Pa., for plaintiffs.

John Hampton Barnes, of Philadelphia, Pa., for defendants.

DICKINSON District Judge.

The above rather formidable array of subheadings is due to the three ways in which the defendants are pressing their defense to this bill. Rule 29 gives defendants the same right to present the questions of law raised by way of answer which could be raised by a motion to dismiss. The defendants have availed themselves of this right. When at the trial the plaintiffs rested their case, the defendants claimed their further right to move the dismissal of the bill, in the nature of a motion for a nonsuit, on the trial of an action at law, to which trials of suits in equity have now a likeness. Further, at the conclusion of the trial, the defendants asked for a decree dismissing the bill on the finding of a want of equity. Such a decree includes all the grounds of all the motions and disposes of the whole case. There is in consequence no need to determine any other question than that of the decree which should be entered on trial. There were, however, trial questions raised on the admissibility of evidence which was received under equity rule 46. These may now be first ruled.

There are two essential elements which must be present to give a plaintiff the right to maintain a bill, as they are essential to the validity of a cause of action at law. These are injuria et damnum. The plaintiffs offered evidence of the damage claimed to have been sustained. The defendants objected on the ground that, as the plaintiffs had not shown a legal injury, evidence of damage was wholly irrelevant. The evidence, however, was admissible, as tentatively ruled on the trial, for the reason that, as a plaintiff must show a damage, he is permitted to do so, even although it is ultimately found he has sustained no legal injury. Moreover rule 46 would require such evidence to be admitted to answer to all the purposes of the rule. Further, the admission, if the evidence of damage is of no effect, is innocuous to the defendant, and, if effective, is proper.

The objections are accordingly overruled, and an exception allowed to defendants.

The grounds advanced by defendants to support a decree of dismissal are many, some of which may be disposed of without discussion, leaving the main ground to be treated more at large. One ground is that these plaintiffs have no right to maintain this bill as a representative or class bill. The dismissal of the bill on this ground is refused. The same, or a substantially like, ground was urged in the case of Fenstemacher v. Railroad Co. (D.C.) 296 F. 210, and found to be untenable. To that ruling we adhere, with exception allowed to defendants.

Another ground is that the plaintiffs have an adequate remedy at law. The motion, so far as concerns this ground, is likewise denied, with the allowance of a further exception to defendants. The reasons for the ruling are too obvious to require statement.

Two of the other grounds may be compressed into the one, that no equities in the plaintiffs, growing out of a conspiracy charge, are disclosed by the averments of the bill or shown by the proofs. This question, so far as concerns this court has been ruled against the plaintiffs in the case of Brotherhood of Clerks, etc., v. Railroad Co. (D.C.) 296 F. 218, except with respect to one point, hereinafter discussed, which was not before raised.

The remaining grounds are reiterations, in different modes of statement, of the averment of a want of equity in the complaint and the evidence by which it is supported. This is what we have called the main question. Before entering upon the discussion of it, we wish to make acknowledgment of the helpful aid given us by witnesses and counsel. The former displayed intelligence, accompanied with frankness and candor, and counsel, as was to be expected from their high standing at the bar, argued the questions discussed with not merely clarity, but an intellectual honesty which induced them to accept the logic of the facts presented, whatever the consequences.

The fact situation presented is that which was before us in the Brotherhood of Clerks Case, supra, although in the instant case other questions are raised than those raised by the conspiracy theory to which the Brotherhood Case was in effect confined. The cause behind each case is the same. It is that cause which gives this case (as it did the other) importance, and gives an excuse, as does the wealth of argument with which we have been favored, if it does not call, for a discussion of its merits, which would otherwise be of undue length.

The facts, in the sense of the evidentiary facts, are few; but, as is almost always the case, the ultimate fact finding to be made and the considerations leading up to it provoke a discussion which is almost unending, because it can be presented in so many phases. This situation reminds us of the magic bottle in the Arabian Night's tale. The bottle itself was very small, but when it was uncorked the genie released was of dimensions which covered the earth and filled the sky. There is a great temptation, which we might perhaps profitably indulge, to make a number of general observations, the bearing of which, although more or less remote, is nevertheless near enough to save the comments from being purely academic. We, however, confine ourselves to one or more, the bearing of which is direct.

Strife between employed and employer is a species of warfare which, like all other wars, often drags neutrals into woes and calamaties greater than those suffered by the belligerents. Congress has, because of this, gone as far as it was felt to be wise to go to aid in the peaceful adjustment of such disputes. These disputes, when they exist, are usually over wages or working conditions. A fair wage, like the fair or so-called market price of anything, is commonly treated by economists as the commercial price resultant of the operation of the law of supply and demand. What is meant by this is that this is the main, and in the end the controlling, force at work. Psychological effect, however, practically enters into it very largely, and the artificial restraints of legal enactments, custom, general practices, or public opinion importantly figure in the result. One, if not the chief, value of market price is that it is the expression of the general judgment or general opinion of what, under all the conditions present, is a fair price. This is expressed in monetary terms, and presupposes a stable unit measure of value, which supplies the terms employed. When this standard unit of measurement changes (as it does when the business of the country is run upon a 40-cent dollar), the prices of many things-- indeed, most things-- in which people deal commercially, reflect at once the change, because prices in those things quickly and almost automatically respond to the changed measure. Rates of wages, salaries, and all measurements, expressed in terms of money, which are fixed by law, by custom, or by agreement, largely influenced by long-established practices, do not thus quickly respond to the change, but are readjusted only upon persuasion.

When the conditions of the situation are such as that the readjustment can be carried into the price of the product, or can be, as the expression goes, 'passed on to the consumer,' negotiations for wage adjustments are smoothly and amicably conducted. Illustrations may easily be imagined and as readily found in actual practice. Room for suspicion sometimes exists that the 'dispute' in such cases is more of a pretense than a reality. When, however, the increased cost of production cannot be thus reflected in the product price, efforts at wage adjustment become a real strife, because one party gives up or keeps what the other party gets or does not get. If the people who pay the price of the product kept in mind this necessary relation between what they pay and the cost of production, the public opinion, to which appeal is made, would be a that much better informed one. This is peculiarly true of carriers and of all public utilities, as the relation of rates of wages to rates of charge for public service is a direct one.

Labor and capital are both alike, although independently, organized. Whatever else may be said about labor organization, there is no denial of its existence. One reason for its existence is the acknowledged necessity for it. Its most prejudiced opponents list this necessity first in the consideration of the labor problem, and its most zealous advocates name the same fact first among the arguments in its favor. Any one may well believe in the necessity for both labor and capital to be highly organized. Third parties, however, who are not directly concerned, but who suffer when there is strife between them, do not see the necessity to organize them into independent and hostile camps, when their interests are common and they are mutually dependent.

The difference in the attitude of employers toward organized labor divides them into classes. There is a class, or rather the nucleus of a class, the members of which see no need for those whose interests are common to be organized into these independent and hostile camps. The organizers and managers of all ventures, into which the labor...