Polanskey v. Monongahela Railroad Co.

• Decision Date: 14 April 1941
• Docket Number: 85
• Citation: 19 A.2d 377,342 Pa. 188
• Parties: Polanskey et al., Appellants, v. Monongahela Railroad Company et al
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

19 A.2d 377

342 Pa. 188

Polanskey et al., Appellants, v. Monongahela Railroad Company et al

No. 85

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

April 14, 1941

Argued March 28, 1941.

Appeal, No. 85, March T., 1941, from decree of C.P. Allegheny Co., April T., 1939, No. 2433, in Equity, in case of John Polanskey et al. v. Monongahela Railway Company et al. Decree affirmed.

Bill in equity. Before RIMER, P.J., specially presiding.

The opinion of the Supreme Court states the facts.

Final decree entered dismissing bill. Plaintiffs appealed.

Error assigned, among others, was final decree.

Decree affirmed, each party to bear its own costs on appeal.

J. Wray Connolly, with him James H. Gray and James D. Gray, for appellants.

E. E McMonigle, with him Richard K. Sharpless, Dalzell, McFall &amp Pringle and Sidney J. Watts, of Baker & Watts, for appellees were not heard.

Before SCHAFFER, C.J., MAXEY, DREW, LINN, STERN, PATTERSON and PARKER, JJ.

OPINION

MR. LINN, JUSTICE.

Plaintiffs, members of the Order of Railway Conductors of America, filed their bill against Monongahela Railway Company, engaged in interstate railroad operation in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. On defendant's petition, the Order of Railway Conductors of America and the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, both unincorporated associations, were made parties defendant.

An undated agreement, apparently made in 1927 by representatives of the two unincorporated associations, was attached to and made part of the bill. It was entitled: "Agreement Between the Chairmen of the General Grievance Committees Representing the Order of Railway Conductors and Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen in Regard to the Roster Standing of the Employes of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Who May Desire to Forfeit Their Present Seniority Forever and Become Employees of the Monongahela Railway With Seniority Date as of January 1st, 1927, on Account of the Monongahela Railway Company Absorbing a Portion of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Chartiers Southern Railway, These Properties Now Being Known as the Ten Mile Run and Nemacolin Branches of the Monongahela Railway Company."

Plaintiffs prayed that the defendant company be restrained from depriving them of seniority rights claimed under the agreement. The defendant company, inter alia, averred "that its only interest in the matter . . . has been to execute the Agreement which its Chartiers Southern Trainmen and it Monongahela Railway Trainmen, by their representatives, made for their mutual benefit and satisfaction; that said Agreement should have been construed and interpreted by the two groups just mentioned, or by their representatives, to their mutual satisfaction; that no matter which way defendant construed the Agreement provisions now in issue, either Monongahela Railway Trainmen or Chartiers Southern Trainmen or both would have objected, and that though defendant believes its construction of the controversial provisions of said Agreement to be the correct one, none the less the basic controversy in this equitable proceeding is not between defendant and its employees, but rather between the two aforesaid groups of defendant's employees."

The Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen and the Order of Railway Conductors of America filed answers, each stating its position, the Trainmen's organization asserting that the issue, if any, "lies between the Order of Railway Conductors of America and the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen"; the Conductors' association answered that it was not a necessary party to the suit and "there is no pending controversy as between plaintiffs and this defendant association." After hearing, the bill was dismissed.

The plaintiffs appealed. Briefs were filed on behalf of plaintiffs and the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, but no brief or argument was presented on behalf of the railway company or of the Order of Railway Conductors of America.

In 1927, the defendant Monongahela Railway, took over a portion of the line of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, whereupon plaintiffs, employed by that company, became defendant's employees. In adjusting conflicting seniority rights of plaintiffs and the other employees of defendant, the agreement, referred to above, was made by the Order of Railway Conductors and the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, providing, in the words of the bill, that "for the purpose of seniority of employees" the transferred branch "should be treated as an individual railroad unit and that the plaintiffs herein should have seniority over any other employees of the Monongahela Railroad Company, in so far as said Chartiers Southern Branch was concerned."

In 1930, the defendant...