Southern Ry. Co. v. Machinists' Local Union No. 14

Citations

• 111 F. 49
• 1901 U.S. App. LEXIS 4949

Syllabus

<p>1. Injunction—Labor Strikes—Grounds ob1 Equity Jurisdiction.</p> <p>The remedy in equity by injunction to restrain striking workmen from unlawfully interfering with the rights of nonunion workmen and their employers is an entirely independent one, arising out of the conditions of inadequacy of the other independent remedy by an action at law for damages, neither having any relation to the remedy by criminal prosecution, except that the criminal laws may be so effectively enforced that there will be no occasion to resort to them; and the inadequacy of the protection afforded under such laws, from whatever cause, affords the occasion and necessity for a resort to equity.</p> <p>2. Same.</p> <p>A labor union conducting a strike, which maintains pickets and guards around the works of the former employer for the avowed purpose of preventing nonunion workmen from working therein, cannot avoid responsibility for personal assaults on such workmen, and other unlawful acts committed in direct furtherance of such purpose, because such acts were not committed by its orders, and perhaps not by its members, nor because it passed a resolution, not made public, counseling that peaceable methods alone be used, where it did not in any public way protest against or disown such acts, or take any measures to assist in preventing or punishing them. In such case the action of the union in attempting to enforce its unauthorized edict that no others should work for the employer by a display of force and the menace of its pickets must be held, for the purpose of an application for an injunction, to have been the direct inciting cause of whatever acts were committed by its own members or others in violation of the personal liberty of other workmen and for its benefit.</p> <p>8. Same—Acts in Violation os' Personal Liberty.</p> <p>The members of a labor union, in obedience to orders from the central organization, went on a strike against their employer. The union established and maintained p