Southern Pac. Co. v. Earl

• Decision Date: 18 October 1897
• Docket Number: 325.
• Citation: 82 F. 690
• Parties: SOUTHERN PAC. CO. et al. v. EARL.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

82 F. 690

SOUTHERN PAC. CO. et al. v. EARL.

No. 325.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

October 18, 1897

Wheaton Kalloch & Kierce, E. S. Pillsbury, and Lewis L. Coburn, for appellants.

John ph. Miller, John L. Boone, and Guy C. Earl, for appellee.

Before GILBERT, Circuit Judge, and HAWLEY and DE HAVEN, District judges.

DE HAVEN, District Judge.

Appeal from an order granting a preliminary injunction. The suit was brought by Edwin T. Earl against the defendants for the purpose of restraining the infringement of reissued letters patent No. 11,324, granted to him April 18, 1893, for an invention entitled, 'Ventilator and Combined Ventilator and Refrigerator Car. ' The bill of complaint is verified, and alleges, among other things, a prior judgment of the circuit court for the Northern district of California in which the appellee herein was plaintiff, and Robert Graham, one of the appellants, was defendant, and that by such judgment it was determined that plaintiff's reissued letters patent were valid, and that the defendant, Robert Graham, had infringed upon the same, and that notwithstanding such judgment, the defendants in this action continued to use the same identical ventilating device which was thereby adjudged to be an infringement upon plaintiff's said letters patent. On the filing of this bill the circuit court made an order requiring the defendants to show cause why a preliminary injunction should not be granted. The defendants filed no answer to the bill, and the motion for the preliminary injunction was heard upon the bill of complaint, the judgment roll in the action at law referred to in the complaint, and an affidavit of the plaintiff, Edwin T. Earl, and a large number of opposing affidavits and exhibits or prior patents submitted on behalf of the defendants, whereby they sought to show the invalidity of the plaintiff's patent, and also that there had been no infringement thereof by the defendants.

1. The principles which govern courts in granting preliminary injunctions in this class of actions are the same upon which courts of equity constantly act in granting such injunctions in other cases of equitable cognizance. The order for such an injunction does not finally determine the rights of the parties to the action, and its only purpose and effect are to preserve the existing state of things until the case has been fully heard by the court, and the entry of a final decree therein. And it is equally well settled that the granting of a provisional injunction rests in the sound discretion of the trial court, and that it is not necessary that the court should, before granting it, be satisfied from the evidence before it that the plaintiff will certainly prevail upon the final hearing of the cause. On the contrary, to adopt the language of the court in Georgia v. Brailsford, 2 Dall. 402, 'a probable right, and a probable danger that such right would be defeated without the special interposition of the court,' is all that need be shown as the basis for such an order. See, also, Blount v Societe, etc., 3 C.C.A. 455, 53 F. 98, and cases therein cited.

Inasmuch as the granting of an injunction pendente lite is committed to the discretion of the trial court, it necessarily follows-- and so the authorities uniformly hold-- that upon an appeal from such an order the only question which the appellate court is called upon to determine is whether the court, in making such an order, abused it discretion. If there was before the court evidence having a reasonable tendency to make out a prima facie case for the plaintiff, the order granting the injunction will generally be affirmed, notwithstanding there may have been a material conflict in the evidence submitted to the court at the time of making its order; or, stating the same rule in different words, the decision of the judge who made the order will not be reversed unless it appears, after a consideration of all the evidence upon which his action was based, that his legal discretion to grant or withhold the order was improvidently exercised. Duplex Printing-Press Co. v. Campbell Printing-Press & Manuf'g Co., 16 C.C.A. 220, 69 F. 253; Bissell Carpet-Sweeper Co. v. Goshen Sweeper Co., 19 C.C.A. 25, 72 F. 550. We proceed, then, to consider whether the circuit court exceeded its legal discretion in making the order appealed from. The particular facts necessary to be shown in order to justify the issuance of an injunction pendente lite in this character of cases are stated with great clearness and accuracy in the case of Blount v. Societe, etc., 3 C.C.A. 455, 53 F. 98, above cited. In that case, which was, like this, an appeal from an order granting a provisional injunction in an action brought to restrain the alleged infringement upon letters patent, it was said:

'The prerequisites to the allowance and issuance of such an injunction are that the party applying for the same must generally present a clear title, or one free from reasonable doubt, and set forth acts done or threatened by the defendant which will seriously or irreparably injure his rights under such title, unless restrained. * * * In such suits the plaintiff's application for a provisional or pendente lite injunction should present a title to the patent sued on, the probable validity of such patent, and infringement thereof by the defendant.'

That the appellee has a clear title to the patent referred to...