96 Ky. 224 | Ky. Ct. App. | 1894
delivered the opinion op the court.
The petition of plaintiff, filed in the Kenton Circuit Court, reads as follows : “ The plaintiff Clem. Schulten says, that at the time of the doing of the wrongs and injuries hereinafter set forth, and for many years thereafter, the defendant, the Bavarian Brewing Company, was a corporation duly organized under the general statute laws of Kentucky, and the defendant, The John Hauck Brewing Company, was a corporation duly organized under the statute laws of Ohio, both for the sole purpose of brewing and selling malt liquors, and were members of a certain unlawful combination, consisting of all the brewers of the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, and Covington and Newport, Kentucky, and the vicinity; all the members whereof were and are in conspiracy with each other, and other persons, to the plaintiff unknown, to prevent the obtaining of any malt liquor by any retail dealer therein, who might be in debt or alleged to be in debt to any member of said combination, and thereby to injure and destroy his business, and un lawfully- compel him to pay such debt or alleged debt, without judicial ascertainment or due process of law. And plaintiff says that at the same time he was a retail vendor of malt liquors in the city of Covington, Kentucky, duly licensed as such and
Admitting on demurrer the allegations of the petition to be true, do they constitute a cause of action against the defendants? The petition is threefold in its nature, in that by intendment at least, there are three causes of action stated: Slander, libel and criminal conspiracy. The slanderous, libelous words of the alleged false statement are not set out, and, therefore, the petition states no cause of action for slander or libel. To have constituted a criminal conspiracy on the part of defendants, it is necessary that the petition should have stated facts, showing a combination or confederation on their part to do an unlawful act, by reason of which a civil right of the plaintiff was infringed, and an injury to his person, property, reputation or business sustained. (Carew v. Rutherford, 106 Mass., 1; Bohn Manufacturing Co. v. Hollis, &c., 54 Minn., 223; Cooley on Torts, pages 278, 279, 280.)
The alleged unlawful act of defendants, is, that they and others, to the plaintiff unknown, combined together to coerce plaintiff into paying to' defendant, The Bavarian Brewing Company, the sum of one hundred and eighty-four dollars and fifty cents, then falsely alleged to be owing by him to it.
This allegation, by inference, denies that plaintiff owed defendant said sum, and assumes, therefore, that defendants were trying to cheat or defraud him out of it by refusing to sell him beer. It is pléading
The judgment of the lower court is affirmed.