195 U.S. 194 | SCOTUS | 1904
Lead Opinion
delivered the opinion of the court.
These are three writs of error to the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, brought to set aside convictions and sentences of the plaintiffs in error, the defendants below, upon informations filed by the District Attorney. 113 Wisconsin, 419. The ground <?f the writs is that the proceedings violated the rights of the plaintiffs in error under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. The informations were brought under the Wisconsin statutes of 1898, § 4466a, which impose imprisonment or fine on “any two or more persons who shall combine ... for the purpose of wilfully or maliciously injuring another in his reputation, trade, business or profession by any méans whatever,” etc. The plaintiffs in error were severally charged with. unlawfully combining to
The defendant Hoyt demurred to this information, setting up1 the Fourteenth Amendment. Aikens and Huegin filed pleas which admitted the combination and intent of injuring The Journal Company and the resulting damage but alleged that the combination was entered into in trade competition and that the parties had the right to make it under the Fourteenth Amendment. The State demurred to the pleas.. The demurrer of Hoyt was overruled; those of the State were sustained. The defendants were sentenced and the judgment of the .trial court was affirmed by the Supreme Court of the State on the authority of an earlier decision between the same parties, reported in 110 Wisconsin, 189.
The statute, it will be observed, punishes combining fon the purpose of willfully or maliciously injuring another in his business. If it should be construed, literally, the word “willfully” would embrace all injuries intended to follow from the parties’ acts, although they were intended only as the necessary means
The informations alleged a combination for the purpose of willfully and maliciously injuring others, and therefore brought the case within the latter branch of the statute, if there are two and if “or” in the. act is not taken to mean “and.” It is true that the plan is set forth, and some argument was spent on whether that plan might or might not be an instrument of ultimate gain. But while that question may have been open when the state court was discussing the evidence warranting a commitment, in 110. Wisconsin, 189, none such is open here. . The .malevolent purpose is alleged, it is admitted by the demurrer, it is not sufficiently denied by the pleas, whatever we may conjecture would have been done if counsel had had* this
"We come then to the question whether there is any constitutional objection to so much of the act as applies to this case. It has been thought by other courts as. well as the Supreme. Court of Wisconsin that such a combination followed by damage would be actionable even at common law. It has been considered that, prima facie, the intentional infliction of temporal damage is a cause of action, which, as a matter of substantive law, whatever may be the form of pleading, requires a justification if the defendant is to escape. Mogul Steamship Co. v. McGregor, 23 Q. B. D. 598, 613; S. C., [1892] A. C. 25. If this, is the correct mode of approach it is obvious that justifications may vary in extent according to the principle of policy upon which they are founded, and that while some, for instance, at common law, those affecting the use of land, are_ absolute, Bradford v. Pickens, [1895] A. C. 587, others may depend upon the end for which the act is done. Moran v. Dunphy, 177 Massáchusetts, 485, 487; Plant v. Woods, 176 Massachusetts, 492; Squires v. Wason Manuf. Co., 182 Massachusetts, 137, 140, 141. See cases cited in 62 L. R. A. 673. It is no sufficient answer to this line of thought that motives are*, not actionable and that the standards of the law are external. / That is true in determining whát a man is bound to foresee, but hot necessarily in determining the extent to which he can justify" harm which he has foreseen.' Quinn v. Leathem, [1901] A. C. 495, 524.
Whether, at common law, combinations would make conduct actionable which would be lawful m a single person it is unnecessary to consider. Quinn v. Leathem, [1901] A. C. 495. We are aware too that a prevailing opinion in England makes motives immaterial, although it is probable that in Allen v. Flood, [1898] A. C. 1, 94, the jury were'"instructed, as-in Temperton v. Russell, [1893] 1 Q. B. 715, 719, in such a way that their finding of malice meant no móje than that the defendant had acted with foresight of the harm which he would, inflict,
But if all these general considerations be admitted, it is urged nevertheless that the means intended to be used by this particular combination were simply the abstinence from making contracts, that a man’s right so to abstain cannot be infringed on the ground of motives, and further, that it carries with it the right to communicate that intent to abstain to others and to' abstain in common with them. It is said that if the statute extends to such a case it must be unconstitutional. The fallacy of this argument lies in the assumption that the statute stands no better than if directed against the pure nonfeasance of singly omitting to contract. The statute is directed against a series of acts, and acts of several, the acts of combining, with intent to do other acts. “The very plot is an act in itself.” Mulcahy v. The Queen, L. R. 3 H. L. 306, 317. But an. act, which in itself is merely a voluntary muscular contraction, derives all its character from the consequences which will follow it under the circumstances in which it wae done. When the acts consist of making a combination calculated to cause temporal damage, the power to punish such
It was urged farther that to make a right depend upon motives is to make it depend upon the whim of a jury and to deny the right. But it must be assumed that the constitutional tribunal does its duty and finds facts only because they are proved. The power of the legislature to make the fact of malice material we think sufficiently appears from what we already have said.
Finally it is argued that the Supreme Court of Wisconsin would hold that the statute extends to acts of which the motives were mixed and which were done partly from disinterested malevolence and partly from a hope of gain. If so, it is said, the statute would be open to all the objections at which we have hinted in dealing with the word “willfully.” The Supreme Court did use some language which looked that way, but we consider it to have decided that the statute would be confined to qombinations with intent to do wrongful harm. 110 Wisconsin, 193, 260. Thus limited, on whatever ground, the statute would punish only combinations of a kind for which no justificatiqn could be offered and those which were taken out of the justification by the motive with which they were made.*.We see no sufficient reason to believe that the court will go farther or construe the act in such a way as to raise questions which we need not go into here. Therefore it is unnecessary to consider whether, on a rnore literal construction, the portion dealing with malicious intent could be separated from that which deals with the purpose of merely willful injury, and saved, even if the latter were held to go too
Judgment affirmed.
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting.
Not being able to concur in the conclusion of the court that the opinion of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin has affixed to the statute of that State a,much narrower meaning than the text of the statute imports, and thinking, on the contrary, that not only such text but the construction of the statute adopted by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin operates to deprive the citizen of a lawful right to contract protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, I dissent.
