Opinion
10-09-1902
GEORGE JONAS GLASS CO. v. GLASS BOTTLE BLOWERS' ASS'N OF UNITED STATES & CANADA et al.
George Hampton and J. Hampton Flthian, for petitioner. John W. Westcott and Louis H. Miller, for defendants.
Suit by the George Jonas Glass Company against the Glass Bottle Blowers' Association of the United States & Canada and others. Heard on petition for order to commit for contempt. Rule dismissed.
George Hampton and J. Hampton Flthian, for petitioner.
John W. Westcott and Louis H. Miller, for defendants.
GREY, V. C. (orally). The very uncertain and insufficient evidence offered by the complainant will not justify an order to hold for contempt of the ad interim stay heretofore allowed. Two incidents are narrated in the petition of the complainant for the order to hold for contempt, and they are made the subject-matter of the order to show cause which is presently on hearing. The Hager incident involves the acts of the defendants named in the order to show cause towards a man named Hager, who is employed by the complainant as a clerk. This man went in the evening, apparently after his business for the day was concluded, to Vineland. He was coming back on his bicycle to Minatola, where he resided. It does not appear that he was going or coming on any business in any way connected with the complainant, the George Jonas Company. He was on the bicycle path, on the way back. Mr. Hager says he was seized by the coat tail by a man named Hawthorne, one of the persons charged with breach of the stay order. He says be was held back until another man named McDowell stood in front of him, and, taking hold of the handle bars of his bicycle, stopped his further progress; that while he was held back by other men he was asked, in a jeering way, "Why don't you go ahead?" that they then attacked him with blows; that he abandoned his bicycle and ran into a field, and finally escaped with more or less injury to him, not of a severe character, but clearly an intrusion upon his right to travel the road unmolested. Nothing in the testimony as to this incident shows that Mr. Hager was attacked because of his relations to the George Jonas Company factory, or because he was in the performance of any duty in connection with the George Jonas Company factory, or in the exercise of any rights in which the George Jonas Company had any interest. The proof is clear that Mr. Hager had previously had a personal quarrel with some of these men,—in Mr. Jonas' store, to be sure; but the fact that the previous quarrel happened in Jonas' store had nothing to do with the interference with his traveling the road. The proof is that Hager had pushed one or more of these men around in the store, and that they afterwards found him at a place where they might advantageously revenge themselves, and they attacked him for this reason. The complainant's own evidence indicates that the transaction was a purely personal encounter. Nothing shows that the George Jonas Company was in any way interested in Mr. Hager's progress on the bicycle path that evening, or that the attack upon him was in any way referable to a desire to interfere with its business. Mr. Hager may be entitled to assert his legal rights for the attack made upon him, but this is not the forum where matters of this kind can be redressed. The incident, as proved, does not show that it was an interference with Mr. Jonas' rights, as protected by the order of this court. The only other alleged breach of the stay is the incident of the boys on the railroad train. The proof is that men had gone, at Mr. Jonas' instance, to employ boys in Philadelphia to come down and work at the Minatola works. They did get some dozen or more boys, and were in the railroad train, going to Minatola. In the complainant's petition that the defendants may be held in contempt, the allegation is that Howard Somers and Walter Adams, the defendants here charged, "took hold of these boys and pulled them away," and by threats of intimidation prevented them from going to the complainant's glass works. Here is a direct charge that the defendants committed a breach of the restraint; that with violence and Intimidating threat they interfered with the conduct of the complainant company's business. The evidence submitted shows that various persons, not specifically named, got on the train at different places,—Somers and Adams being of the party,—and began talking to theboys and telling them they ought not to go to Minatola, and that finally they induced the boys to come away from the men who were bringing them to Minatola, and they all went over to a building occupied by the defendants, so that none of them ever came to the glass factory of the petitioner. There is no proof of force, threats, or of intimidation. Taking the intimations of the complainant's testimony, they claim that the statements made to the boys to the effect that Mr. Jonas would keep the boys inside of the fence and would not permit them to come out were lies, but there is no expression in the restraint which prohibits the making of false statements. There is nowhere in the proofs submitted any indication that the will of the boys was overcome, in the sense that they, being willing and desirous of going to Minatola, were in any way compelled against their wishes to go to the glass blowers' camp. The complainant's witnesses testify that the fact that there was a pending strike at Minatola was not disclosed to the boys until the train on which they were traveling had nearly reached Minatola. It is not at all improbable that, that fact having come to the knowledge of the boys as a surprise, the persuasions of the men that they ought not to take employment where there was a strike may have led the boys to change their minds and to go over to the strikers' camp. Whatever may have been the statements made to them, or the arguments adduced, there is no proof at all that they were in any way threatened, pulled away, or interfered with, as alleged in the complainant's petition. There is no showing of attempted intimidation either by violence or threats. The complainant company has, of course, a right to carry on its business free from violent or threatening interference in its conduct, as has been frequently declared in this state. If, however, those who might become employés freely choose to go elsewhere than to the complainant's works, the complainant has no right to stop them, nor to present, as breaches of a restraint against intimidation, acts which its own witnesses prove were free from that fault. There is no showing that there was in the cases here presented any breach of the restraint in this cause.
I do not want to be misunderstood. There are people interested in these transactions who have evidently come here under the impression that a decision in this matter adverse to Mr. Jonas is in some degree a modification of the restraint heretofore issued. This is not the case. This court will at any time entertain another motion to punish for contempt if circumstances shall justify it. The only reason such punishment is not in this case administered is because the proofs offered are insufficient to sustain the motion. The order of restraint will be enforced against anybody who may be shown to disobey its commands.
The rule is dismissed, with costs.