Wick China Co. v. Brown

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
Wick China Co. v. Brown, 164 Pa. 449 (Pa. 1894)
35 W.N.C. 330; 30 A. 261; 1894 Pa. LEXIS 1098
Dean, Fell, Green, McCollum, Mitchell, Sterbett, Sterrett, Williams

Wick China Co. v. Brown

Opinion of the Court

Opinion by

Mr. Chief Justice Sterbett,

The learned court was clearly right in granting the preliminary injunction, but we find nothing in the record to justify the decree dissolving the same. The answer, signed by twenty-one of the twenty-seven defendants, does not appear to have been sworn to by any of them. Whether this was intentional or a mere oversight we are unable to say. In justice to the defendants, however, it is proper to add that in affidavits, made by nearly all of them, they deny certain threats and acts of violence charged in the bill. But, without commenting on the merits of the case, at this stage of the proceeding, it is sufficient to say that the material averments of fact contained in the bill, sustained as they are by the injunction affidavits, require the restoration and continuance of the preliminary injunction ; and, if said averments are hereafter established by the proofs, the injunction should be made perpetual.

The decree of September 19,1898, dissolving the preliminary injunction, theretofore granted, is reversed and set aside, with costs of this appeal to be paid by the defendants; and it is now adjudged and decreed that said preliminary injunction be reinstated and continued, and it is ordered that the record be remitted for further proceedings secundum regulam.

Reference

Full Case Name
Wick China Co. v. W. K. Brown
Cited By
3 cases
Status
Published
Syllabus
Equity—Strike—Interference with workmen—Master and servant—Injunction—Dissolving injunction—Practice. A preliminary injunction will be awarded, and should not be dissolved before hearing, where it appears, from the bill and the injunction affidavits, that defendants, striking employees of plaintiff, refused to permit other persons to work for plaintiff, and that they endeavored to accomplish their purpose by threats, menaces, intimidation and opprobrious epithets addressed to plaintiff’s officers and workmen, and by gathering in crowds at plaintiff’s place of business, and at the boarding houses of' their workmen, and by following the workmen to and from their work,, stopping them on the highways, and holding them up to the ridicule andl contempt of bystanders.