62 F. 796 | U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Southern California | 1894
Time does not admit of an extended statement of the facts of the case or of the reasons for awarding the injunction applied for. The bill shows, among other things, that the complainant railway company is one link in a through line of road extending from National City, San Diego county, Cal., to the city of Chicago, in the state of Illinois, engaged in the transportation, among other things, of interstate commerce and the mails of the United States; its connecting roads being the Atlantic & Pacific and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé Bailroad Companies. That there is a valid existing contract between the complainant company and its connecting companies and the Pullman Palace Car Company by which all regular passenger trains running over the said through line of road, including that of the complainant, carrying the mail and passengers, shall carry Pullman cars. That the defendants are in the employ of the complainant company, and were employed by it to, among other things, handle and operate its trains so engaged in carrying the United States mail and passengers and freight between National City, Cal., and Chicago, Dll, and to and from intermediate points, and from the time of their employment up to the time of the commission of the acts complained of by the complainant were duly accustomed to handle and operate such trains, including Pullman cars. That subsequently the defendants, although remaining in the employment of the complainant company, refused, and still refuse, to handle or operate any train of cars of the complainant company to which a Pullman car is attached; and because of the discharge by the receivers in pos
It is manifest that for this state of affairs the law — neither civil nor criminal — affords an adequate remedy. But the proud boast of equity is, “Ubi jus, ibi remedium." It is the maxim which, forms the root of all equitable decisions. Why should not men who remain in the employment of another perform the duties they contract and engage to perform? It is certainly just and right that they should do so, or else quit the employment. And whore the direct result of such refusal works irreparable damage to the employer, and at the same time interferes with the transmission of the mail and with commerce between the states, equity, I think, will compel them to perform the duties pertaining to the employment; so long as they continue in it. If 1 unlawfully obstruct by a dam a stream of flowing water, equity, at the suit of the party injured, will compel me by injunction, mandatory in character, to remove the dam, and, prohibitory in character, from further interfering with the flow of the stream; and if I unlawfully erect a wall shutting out; the light from another, equity wall compel me to tear it, down, and to refrain from further interference with the other's rights. It is time that such cases are not precisely like the present one, yet the principle upon which the court proceeds in such cases is not substantially different. And if if he said that there is no exact precedent for the awarding of an injunction in the present case, I respond, in the language of the court in the case of Toledo, etc., Ry. Co. v. Pennsylvania Co., 54 Fed. 751:
■‘Every just order or rule known to equity courts was born of some emergency. to meet some new conditions, and was therefore, in its time, without precedent. If based on sound principles, and beneficent results follow their enforcement, affording necessary relief to the one party without imposing*798 illegal burdens on the other, new remedies and unprecedented orders are not unwelcome aids to the chancellor to meet the constant and varying demands for equitable relief.” ‘
Moreover, the rights of the public in a case of this sort should be considered. “Railroads,” said the supreme court in the case of Joy v. St. Louis, 138 U. S. 50, 11 Sup. Ct. 243, “are common carriers, and owe duties to the public. The rights of the public in respect to these great highways of communication should be fostered by the courts; and it is one of the most useful functions of a court of equity that its methods of procedure are capable of being made such as to accommodate themselves to the development of the interests of the public, in the progress of trade and traffic, by new methods of intercourse and transportation.”
For the reasons thus hastily and briefly stated, I shall award an injunction requiring the defendants to perform ail of their regular and accustomed duties so long as they remain in the employment of the complainant company, which injunction, it may be as well to state, will be strictly and rigidly enforced.