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· 11/8/1920

Niles-Bement-Pond Co. v. Iron Moulders Union Local No. 68

Citations

  • 254 U.S. 77
  • 41 S. Ct. 39
  • 65 L. Ed. 145
  • 1920 U.S. LEXIS 1241

Syllabus

<p>In a suit by a corporation, a citizen of one State, against another corporation, of another-State, and its former employees and their labor unions, wherein the plaintiff, praying no' relief, against the . defendant corporation, sought to enjoin the other defendants from molesting'the workmen employed by that corporation and' thereby delaying or preventing the performance of contracts with the Government for war supplies entered into by the plaintiff and by it turned over to the defendant corporation for manufacture and delivery, and wherein it appeared that the defendant corporation was subject to the control of the plaintiff through majority stock ownership and through the identity of some of their officers and directors,—</p> <p>Held: (1) That the plaintiff’s right, if any, Was a right to protect the contract between the defendant corporation and its workmen from the interference complained of; that the defendant corporation was an indispensable party to the controversy, and that, having no interest in conflict with the plaintiff’s, it must be aligned as a plaintiff in determining whether the District Court had jurisdiction through diverse citizenship (p. 80); (2) that certain allegations of the bill that the Government contracts had priority under the National Defense Act, and involved interstate, commerce, were insufficient to render the suit one arising under the laws of the United States. P. 82.</p> <p>258 Fed. Rep. 408, affirmed. ’</p>

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

  • Court must realign the parties so that no two parties with an “identity of interest” are opposed
  • “There is no prescribed formula for determining in every case whether a person or corporation is an indispensable party or not[.]”
  • “That there was not and could not be any sub stantial controversy, any ‘collision of interest/ between the petitioner and the Tool Company, is of course obvious from the potential control which the ownership of stock by the former gave it over the latter company.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Judges: Clarke, Pitney, McReynolds

Read full opinion on CourtListener

Sourced from CourtListener / Free Law Project (CC0).

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