Potomac Elec. Pow. Co. v. Washington Chap. of Cong. of Rac. Eq.

• Decision Date: 08 November 1962
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 3238-62.
• Citation: 210 F. Supp. 418
• Parties: POTOMAC ELECTRIC POWER COMPANY, Plaintiff, v. WASHINGTON CHAPTER OF the CONGRESS OF RACIAL EQUALITY, and Julius W. Hobson, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Columbia

210 F. Supp. 418

POTOMAC ELECTRIC POWER COMPANY, Plaintiff, v. WASHINGTON CHAPTER OF the CONGRESS OF RACIAL EQUALITY, and Julius W. Hobson, Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 3238-62.

United States District Court D. Columbia.

November 8, 1962.

Richard J. Scupi, Washington, D. C., for defendants, for the motion.

Thomas A. Flannery and Stephen A. Trimble, Washington, D. C., for plaintiff, opposed.

HOLTZOFF, District Judge.

The questions presented in this case relate to the power of equity to restrain serious interference with business operations and continuous damage to property, as well as some aspects of the Norris-LaGuardia Act. This suit is brought by Potomac Electric Power Company as plaintiff against the Washington Chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality and Julius W. Hobson, its Chairman or President, for an injunction restraining them from distributing stamps or pasters with a request that these stamps be affixed to returned stubs of bills sent by the plaintiff to its customers. The matter is before the Court at this time on a motion by the defendants to dismiss the amended complaint. While the motion purports to be made on the alleged ground of lack of jurisdiction, it may be more accurately described as a motion to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. A temporary restraining order was granted ex parte at the institution of the action. Subsequently, after a hearing at which oral testimony was taken a preliminary injunction was issued.

The following cause of action is set forth in the amended complaint. The plaintiff is a public utility engaged in the business of distributing electric light and power in the District of Columbia and its environs. Its monthly bills to customers are typewritten on cards. A part of the bill is a stub with a number of small apertures, located in different positions for the purposes of accounting procedure. Customers are requested to return the stubs when making payments. The stubs are then inserted into computing or calculating machines. They mechanically or electronically perform the necessary accounting operation in order to maintain the records of the company. About 15,000 stubs a day are processed in this manner.

The defendants are engaged in a campaign to secure employment for negroes. They communicated with the plaintiff's manager and requested that qualified members of the colored race be employed as linemen and meter readers. Subsequently, the defendants announced that they would start a program to achieve this end and would distribute to the plaintiff's customers several hundred thousand stamps or pasters bearing the words, "We believe in merit hiring." The recipients of these stamps were to be requested to affix them to the stubs of the plaintiff's bills when the stubs were returned to the plaintiff in connection with payments.

These stamps or pasters if affixed to the stubs are likely to obscure or distort the date or one of the amounts printed on the stub, or one of the holes or apertures punched in it. If this happens, it would be impossible to feed the stubs into the calculating machines. The result would be confusion and havoc in the plaintiff's billing and accounting operations. Obviously, the activity of which the plaintiff complains would achieve no useful object, but would merely result in mischief and in vexing and harassing the plaintiff, with a likelihood of serious obstruction and disruption of its business. It is a form of sabotage. The plaintiff asks for a permanent injunction restraining the distribution of the stamps with the request that they be affixed to the stubs of plaintiff's bills.

It is well established that equity may enjoin continuing trespasses, repeated or irreparable injuries to property, or a course of illegitimate interferference with business activities, if a remedy by an action for damages is not adequate. This is one of the traditional functions of equity. Watson v. Sutherland, 5 Wall. 74, 18 L.Ed. 580; Donovan v. Pennsylvania Company, 199 U.S. 279, 304, 26 S.Ct. 91, 50 L.Ed. 192; Archer v. Greenville Sand and Gravel Co., 233 U.S. 60, 65, 34 S.Ct. 567, 58 L.Ed. 850; F. Burkart Mfg. Co. v. Case, (C.A.8) 39 F.2d 5; Swan Island Club v. Ansell (C.A.4) 51 F.2d 337, 339; United States v. Colvard (C.A.4) 89 F.2d 312, 314. Obviously, an award of damages would not be an adequate remedy in this instance.

The applicable principles are ably summarized in 4 Pomeroy's Equity Jurisprudence, Section 1357, as follows:

"If a trespass to property is a single act, and is temporary in its nature and effects, so that the legal remedy of an action at law for damages is adequate, equity will not interfere. The principle determining the jurisdiction embraces two classes of cases, and may be correctly formulated as follows: 1. If the trespass, although a single act, is or would be destructive, if the injury is or would be irreparable, — that is, if the injury done or threatened is of such a nature that, when accomplished, the property cannot be restored to its original condition, or cannot be replaced, by means of compensation in money, — then the wrong will be prevented or stopped by injunction. 2. If the trespass is continuous in its nature, if repeated acts of wrong are done or threatened, although each of these acts, taken by itself, may not be destructive, and the legal remedy may therefore be adequate for each single act if it stood alone, then also the entire wrong will be prevented or stopped by injunction, on the ground of avoiding a repetition of similar actions * * *. In both cases the ultimate criterion is the inadequacy of the legal remedy. The legal remedy is not adequate simply because a recovery of pecuniary damages is possible. It is only adequate when the injured party can, by one action at law, recover damages which constitute a complete and certain relief for the whole wrong, — a relief virtually as efficient as that given by a court of equity." (Emphasis original.)

It is urged by counsel for the defendants, however, that this case presents a labor dispute and that, therefore, injunctive relief is barred by the Norris-LaGuardia Act, which regulates the granting of injunctions in labor disputes. Obviously, in this instance there is no labor dispute in the ordinary sense of that term: there is no dissension between...