Quinton's Mkt., Inc. v. Patterson

• Decision Date: 06 June 1939
• Citation: 303 Mass. 315,21 N.E.2d 546
• Parties: QUINTON'S MARKET, Inc., v. PATTERSON et al.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

303 Mass. 315

21 N.E.2d 546

QUINTON'S MARKET, Inc.,

v.PATTERSON et al.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Middlesex.

June 6, 1939.

Action by Quinton's Market, Inc., against James Patterson and others to enjoin defendants from picketing plaintiff's store and for damages. From a final decree for plaintiff, defendants appeal.

Judgment in accordance with opinion.Appeal from Superior Court, Middlesex County; Morton, Judge.

H. Wise, of Boston, for appellants.

J. J. Sullivan, of Boston, for appellee.

QUA, Justice.

The plaintiff, a retail dealer in meats and groceries at Davis Square in Somerville, has obtained in the Superior Court against the officers and members of Meat Cutters, Provision Managers and Food Store Employees Union, Local No. 592, hereinafter called the union, a decree enjoining the picketing of the plaintiff's store and for damages.

A brief statement of certain decisive findings of the master will suffice for the purposes of this opinion. The union was greatly interested in having meat markets and grocery stores close for a half holiday on Wednesdays throughout the year. It and several other labor unions had a written contract with the First National Stores, Inc. That company, in general, closed its stores Wednesday afternoons, but kept open its store near Davis Square, under a provision in the contract that it might do so when its competitors ‘in any area’ remained open. The plaintiff and several others were competitors of the First National Stores, Inc. in the vicinity of Davis Square. The plaintiff remained open on Wednesday afternoons. Members of the union asked the plaintiff's manager to close the plaintiff's store on those afternoons. He promised to sign an agreement to that effect if all the plaintiff's competitors would sign first. Shortly thereafter certain of the named defendants, together with persons whose names do not appear in the bill, began picketing the plaintiff's store. The number of pickets increased until there were twenty. They moved in a circle around the eight-foot sidewalk, stepped into the vestibule of the store, spoke to every person who wanted to enter the store, called out that the store was unfair to its help and to organized labor, and after about three hours were dispersed by the police for obstructing the sidewalk. ‘There was no violence or rioting, no breach of the peace and no one was arrested.’ ‘Most of the customers went in. Some turned away and did not go in.’ Damage to the extent of $100 was caused to the plaintiff's business.

None of the plaintiff's employees was a member of the union. There was no dispute of any kind between the plaintiff and its employees. They were content to work Wednesday afternoons, and the plaintiff was content to have them do so.

It has long been settled by a series of decisions in this Commonwealth that at common law such a combination as is here shown, designed to injure a plaintiff's business and having that effect, is unlawful and actionable unless justified as being in itself the exercise by the defendants of an equal conflicting or competing right of their own. The cases are collected in Yankee Network, Inc., v. Gibbs, Mass., 3 N.E.2d 228. It is also settled that in order to justify the infliction of intentional injury and to escape the liability which follows from the ordinarily tortious quality of such an act, the right of their own which the defendants claim to exercise must bear a direct, and not a merely remote or secondary, relation to their own lawful advantage. Plant v. Woods, 176 Mass. 492, 502, 57 N.E. 1011,51 L.R.A. 339, 79 Am.St.Rep. 330;Berry v. Donovan, 188 Mass. 353, 359, 74 N.E. 603, 5 L.R.A.,N.S., 899, 108 Am.St.Rep. 499,3 Ann.Cas. 738.

In developing and applying the principle last above stated it has been held successively that the benefits to be derived by the defendants from a secondary boycott, from a sympathetic strike, or from a combination for the purpose of securing a closed shop, merely strengthening the union for future contests, preventing the use of non-union material, or maintaining a scale of wages in general as distinguished from the wages of the participants themselves do not justify the intentional infliction of injury upon the plaintiff. Pickett v. Walsh, 192 Mass. 572, 587, 78 N.E. 753, 6 L.R.A.,N.S., 1067, 116 Am.St.Rep. 272,7 Ann.Cas. 638;Reynolds v. Davis, 198 Mass. 294, 300, 84 N.E. 457, 17 L.R.A.,N.S., 162; Folsom v. Lewis, 208 Mass. 336, 94 N.E. 316, 35 L.R.A.,N.S., 787; Burnham v. Dowd, 217 Mass. 351, 356, 104 N.E. 841, 51 L.R.A.,N.S., 778; New England Cement Gun Co. v. McGivern, 218 Mass. 198, 105 N.E. 885, L.R.A.1916C, 986;Harvey v. Chapman, 226 Mass. 191, 115 N.E. 304, L.R.A.1917E, 389;A. T. Stearns Lumber Co. v. Howlett, 260 Mass. 45, 65, 70, 157 N.E. 82, 52 A.L.R. 1125;New England Wood Heel Co. v. Nolan, 268 Mass. 191, 198, 167 N.E. 323, 66 A.L.R. 1079; Armstrong Cork & Insulation Co. v. Walsh, 276 Mass. 263, 272, 177 N.E. 2. So in the very recent case of Simon v. Schwachman, Mass., 18 N.E.2d 1, 4, we held, citing many cases, that under the common law of this Commonwealth ‘the right to strike and maintain pickets against an employer is deemed the right of his employees only.’ In addition to the cases cited in Simon v. Schwachman, supra, the following very recent cases in other jurisdictions tend in the same direction: Hotel, Restaurant & Soda Fountain Employees Local Union No. 181 v. Miller, 272 Ky. 466, 114 S.W.2d 501;Keith Theatre, Inc., v. Vachon, 134 Me. 392, 187 A. 692;Feller v. Local 144, International Ladies Garment Workers Union, 121 N.J.Eq. 452, 191 A. 111;Moreland Theatres Corp. v. Portland Moving Picture Machine Operators' Protective Union, Local No. 159, 140 Or. 35, 12 P.2d 333;Culinary Workers' Union No. 331 v. Fuller, Tex.Civ.App., 105 S.W.2d 295;Safeway Stores, Inc., v. Retail Clerks' Union, Local No. 148, 184 Wash. 322, 51 P.2d 372. There are also cases tending in the opposite direction. See, for example, Exchange Bakery & Restaurant, Inc., v. Rifkin, 245 N.Y. 260, 157 N.E. 130.

It is clear from what has been said that under the law as it has existed over a long period of time, unless it is changed by valid statute, the indirect benefit to the union of making it easier to maintain the Wednesday half holiday in competing stores where its members were employed did not justify the intentional inflicting of harm upon the plaintiff, who employed no members of the union, and whose employees were satisfied with the conditions under which the worked.

The law as to justification has not been changed in the defendants' favor by the various amendments introduced by St.1935, c. 407. That statute is entitled ‘An Act relative to injunction and contempt procedure in labor disputes.’ It defines the term ‘labor dispute,’ states under what circumstances a case shall be held ‘to involve or to grow out of a labor dispute’ and who shall be held to be ‘a person participating or interested in a labor dispute,’ all ‘For the purposes' of certain specified sections of the statutes, all of which sections (except possibly G.L. [Ter.Ed.] c. 149, § 20B, relate wholly to jurisdiction, preliminary conditions, and procedure in reference to injunctions and contempts, and none of which purports to change the law as to what constitutes a lawful combination. This aspect of the case is fully covered by the decision in Simon v. Schwachman, Mass., 18 N.E.2d 1.

The law as to what constitutes a lawful combination has not been changed in the defendants' favor by the addition to G.L. (Ter.Ed.) c. 149, § 24 (the ‘peaceful persuasion act’) of the clause beginning ‘nor for attending, in the course of a lawful trade dispute * * *.’ St.1933, c. 272. No...