116 Mo. App. 545 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1906
(after stating the facts). —
“It.is a familiar principle iñ equity that the plaintiff must come into court with clean hands. Under the circumstances disclosed by the papers in this case, if the defendants were guilty of any violation of law, the plaintiffs were certainly equally implicated, and under this condition of affairs it is difficult to see how they would have a right to the intervention of a court of equity. In dealing with questions of this nature the court should be studious to see that the rights of all parties are protected; and that the forms of law should not be permitted to be used on behalf of one party against another, When the party seeking the intervention of the court has been endeavoring to secure his ends by means similar to those which he seeks to enjoin on the part of his antagonist.”
Prom the principles enunciated, it appears that whatever may have been the rights of the defendants in error to the relief prayed for at the time of the filing of the bill and at the time of the trial of the interrogatories by jury at the June term, 1903, it was the duty of the court to be guided on the final hearing by the principles of equity as they were invoked by the changed conditions appearing from the uncontradicted evidence then ad: duced, and to have entered its decree in accordance with the facts then developed and the equitable principles applicable thereto.
It is palpable that the defendants in error, by their unwarranted intrusion in cutting the wire and disconnecting the plaintiffs in error from the main telephone line during the pendency of the suit and thus assuming to themselves without warrant, authority to acquire by force of arms the relief which they had prayed the court by their bill to' grant, placed themselves as much beyond the pale of conscionable conduct as had plaintiffs in error by their acts complained of in the bill. Indeed, it is true that plaintiffs in error were the first wrongdoers, but the doctrine that a prior wrong on the part of one will justify a subsequent wrong on the part of the other certainly can have no countenance in a court of equity
For the reasons given, the judgment is reversed, the-, injunction dissolved and the bill dismissed.