Opinion oe the court by
Reversing.
Appellant, John T. Underhill, is a plumber engaged in business in Covington, Ky., taking contracts in plumbing, and has in his employ journeymen plumbers. He has followed the occupation for a number of years, and has built up a large and lucrative business.in Covington and adjoining cities, which is of great pecuniary value to him. He had on hand a number of important contracts in plumbing, including the contract for the plumbing in the new courthouse in Covington. The appellees, with the exception of Horgan, had been employed by Underhill in his plumbing business, working for wages. The appellees were members of a union organized for the protection of labor. A difference arose betwjeen Underhill and his workmen, who were members of the union, in reference to its relations with employers, and they then quit his employment. About this time a general strike occurred among those employed by master plumbers in Covington. In order to carry out his contracts when his employes left him, Underhill employed nonunion men to work in place of the union men who had quit. The appellees .thereupon undertook to prevent the nonunion men from working by following them from place to place about the city, assembling about Underhill’s shop, denouncing and threatening Underhill and his workmen. This continued for several weeks, and Underhill filed suit asking an injunction
The proof shows a determined effort by conspiracy on the part of the defendants to break up and destroy the plaintiff’s business by force and violence unless he acceded to the demands of the union to which they belonged. At the conclusion of the evidence the court sustained a demurrer to the petition, and overruled the motion to grant the injunction. The plaintiff declining to plead further, the action was dismissed.
When a man has, by years of toil and fair dealing with his customers, built up a valuable business and good will, he is as much entitled to protection by the law in this species of property as in the home that shelters him, or the coat that protects him from the winter’s cold. The right of the plaintiff to carry on his business and to carry out the contracts which he had made was a valuable property right, ,and no less intrinsically property than if the same amount jof money had been invested in a stock of merchandise or a city lot. If the defendants had conspired together by force and violence to bum up the merchandise, or to carry off the surface of the lot, upon elementary principles, the •chancellor would protect the plaintiff from the destruction of his property. The acts of the defendant as truly destroyed the plaintiff’s property when they broke up his business by force and intimidation as they would have done in the case of visible property by burning it or carrying it off. Among the inalienable rights which by the first section of the State ■Constitution are. guarantied as inherent in all men is “the right of acquiring and protecting property.” The right to acquire and protect property is as sacred in the case of intangible property as tangible, and an injunction may be granted
The learned circuit judge refused to interfere on the ground that the acts committed by the defendants are criminal in nature, and punishable by the police department; that, if he had jurisdiction to enjoin the commission of the acts, it necessarily followed that he had jurisdiction to enforce a penalty for a violation of his order; and that this would amount, in substance, to holding that he could try and convict the defendants for a criminal act without the intervention of a jury. We can not concur in this reasoning. If •the defendants were undermining the plaintiff’s house, or about to slide it with his family in it out into the Ohio river, an injunction would not be refused on the idea that, if they thus drowned any of the people in the house, they might be .punished for murder, or, if they destroyed the house only, they might be indicted under the statute for the willful destruction of private property. The reason is plain: the punishment of the defendants for murder or for the destructon of the house, while it would vindicate the majesty of the law, would not help the piaintiff in any way. To relegate him to the processes of the criminal law is to allow his property to be destroyed, and to give him no remedy therefor but the satisfaction of seeing the wrongdoers punished. The inherent and inalienable right of acquiring and protecting property which is guarantied by the Constitution means nothing if it means only this. If a man must stand by and see his property destroyed, and has no remedy but the slow process of the criminal law, which only punishes the offender, but restores nothing to him, then the constitutional guaranty of the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property under the law is a meaningless generality. If, in this case, the defendants are fined in the police court, this will not restore to the
The question before us has often arisen, and the decisions uniformly, so far as we can find, uphold the power of the chancellor to interfere by injunction in cases of this character.
In Vegelahn v. Guntner, 167 Mass., 92, 44 N. E., 1077, 35 L. R. A., 722, 57 Am. St. Rep., 443-a case very much lite this — the court, in answer to the objections made here, said: “Nor does the fact the defendants’, acts might subject them to an indictment prevent a court of equity from issuing an injunction. It is true that ordinarily a court of equity will decline to issue an injunction to restrain the commission of a crime; but a continuing injury to property or business may be enjoined, although it may' also be punishable as a nuisance or other crime.” So, in Barr v. Essex Trades Council, 53 N. J. Eq., 101, 30 Atl. 881, which was also a ■case very like this, the court, upholding the jurisdiction of the chancellor, said the cases were all against the defendant’s contention. In Beck v. Teamsters’ Protective Union, 118 Mich., 518, 77 N. W., 21, 42 L. R. A., 407, 74 Am. S. Rep., 421, which was also a similar case, the Supreme Court of Michigan said, “While some writers have doubted the remedy by injunction, it is now settled beyond dispute.” To. the same effect, see O’Neal v. Behanna, 182 Pa., 237, 37 Atl., 843, 38 L. R. A., 382, 61 Am. St. Rep., 702; Flaccus v. Smith, 199 Pa., 128, 48 Atl., 894, 54 L. R. A., 640, 85 Am. St. Rep., 779; Shoe Company v. Saxey, 131 Mo., 212,
The judgment appealed from is reversed, and the cause is remanded, with directions to overrule the demurrer to the petition and grant the temporary injunction as herein indicated.