77 N.Y.S. 1049 | N.Y. Sup. Ct. | 1902
The defendant, a contractor and builder, entered into an agreement with the plaintiff, a labor union, to employ none but its. members in certain lines of work. The defendant admits the making of such contract, and also its violation on his part, but pleads in extenuation that another union, embracing a greater variety of trades, and 'allied with a union of still other trades and crafts, acting in opposition and hostility to the plaintiff, demanded of him that he dispense with the services of the members of the plaintiff under penalty of a strike on all of his building operations. He thereupon explained the situation to the plaintiff’s agents and suspended its members from the prosecution of the work on the single building upon which he had any occasion for the employment of stone cleaning and pointing workmen, replacing them by workmen from the rival union aforesaid. Still later he discharged the latter workmen and reinstated those of the plaintiff, and a short time afterward he discontinued work on the building altogether, the order for repairs having been countermanded by reason of the delays and annoyances. The plaintiff’s attorney cites no cases whatever where an injunction has been granted against an employer for the enforcement of a negative covenant not to employ others than the plaintiff, but. relies upon a variety of authorities from which he seeks to establish an argument by analogy, being principally cases in which a defendant has been restrained from violating his agreement not to engage in similar business within a specified area, or not to disclose trade secrets and the like. In the absence of any authorities directly in point, however, I think the cases most nearly applicable are those in which injunctions have been granted or refused against employees where the question has involved services exclusively, without any added element of trade
Motion denied, with ten dollars costs.'