356 Pa. 469 | Pa. | 1947
Opinion by
The question involved in this case is whether the court below has jurisdiction of the subject-matter of the suit, the question having been raised in limine by the defendants’ petition under the Act of March 5, 1925, P. L. 23, 12 PS 672 et seq. The court held that it has jurisdiction and from that decree the defendants appeal.
The plaintiff is the Upholsterers’ International Union of North America, an unincorporated association affiliated with the A. F. of L. The defendants are the United Furniture Workers of America, an unincorporated association affiliated with the C. I. O., certain of its officers and agents, the Barkeley Upholstering Corporation and the Don-Ess Upholstery Shop, Inc., and certain of the officers and employees of those companies. The plaintiff seeks by this suit in equity to enjoin the corporate defendants from breaching labor relations agreements, said by the bill of complaint to subsist between the corporations and the plaintiff, and to restrain certain other of the defendants from inducing the employer companies and their employees to breach the said agreements as well as from doing acts which would prevent the plaintiff and the employer corporations from carrying out the terms of the agreements.
According to the bill of complaint, formal agreements in writing were separately executed on October 15,1946, by each of the corporate defendants, viz., Barkeley Upholstering Corporation and Don-Ess Upholstery Shop, Inc., and by the plaintiff union purporting to act
The alleged wrongful acts committed by the defendant employers, whereof the bill complains, consist of an attempted or threatened breach of the above-mentioned labor relations agreements by each of said defendant companies which had notified the plaintiff union of the necessity of their breaching the said agreements and of signing and executing new labor relations agreements with the defendant union. The analogous acts committed by the defendant union, its officers and agents, as averred by the bill, consist of the invasion, intimidation and coercion of the plaintiff’s members in the defendant companies’ plants in an effort to effect their withdrawal from the plaintiff union and their subsequent affiliation with the defendant union and, further, the unlawful intimidation of the defendant corporations in an effort to induce them, by threats of strikes and “slow-downs”, to repudiate their contracts with the plaintiff and to recognize the defendant union as the sole lawful collective bargaining representative of their employees. The plaintiff also avers that the defendant union has, in fact, succeeded to an extent in its wrongful purposes by causing certain of the plaintiff’s members to transfer their allegiances to the defendant union and by causing them to remain away from work in violation of the plaintiff’s agreements with the defendant employers as well as in making it virtually impossible for the parties signatory to the labor relations agreements of October 14, 1946, to carry out their terms fully and in good faith.
The procedure prescribed by the Act of 1925 for testing jurisdiction “in the court of first instance” applies to questions of jurisdiction either of the defendant or of the subject-matter: Welser v. Ealer, 317 Pa. 182, 184, 176 A. 429. In the present instance, the question involved goes to the jurisdiction of the cause of action (whereon the suit was instituted) which “. . . relates ‘solely to the competency of the particular court to determine controversies of the general class to which the easel then presented for its consideration belongs’: Skelton v. Lower Merion Twp., 298 Pa. 471, 473. See
Accepting as true the averments of.the bill of complaint, as we necessarily must for the purposes of the present limited inquiry, we think it is clear that the court has jurisdiction of the cause of action pleaded in the complaint. Therein the plaintiff avers valid and subsisting contracts which the corporate defendants have breached and are threatening to breach and which other of the defendants, including the defendant union, have induced and continue to induce the corporate defendants to breach and third persons to violate. Without more, it is settled for this State that a court of equity has jurisdiction of such a complaint: Sun Ship Employees Association, Inc. v. Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America, Local No. 2, C. I. O., 351 Pa. 84, 40 A. 2d 413. The instant case is clearly one of a general class over which a court of equity has jurisdiction, i. e., wrongful breaches of valid and subsisting contracts whose value lies in the maintenance of the relationships which they establish and for whose breach money damages would not afford adequate compensation.
As the defendant union’s petition challenging the jurisdiction directly questions the validity of the pleaded contracts, whose validity for present purposes must be assumed, the matters so averred by the defendant union’s petition are of the extraneous character which we may not consider in determining in limine the question of the court’s jurisdiction: see Rutherford Water Co. v. Harrisburg, 297 Pa. 33, 36, 146 A. 113. The petition in the instant case having thus transgressed the permissible limits of challenging averments upon a test of jurisdiction under the Act of 1925, it is unnecessary for us to consider to what extent new or additional facts in support of the denial of jurisdiction may be brought upon the record by the petition, answer and depositions authorized by sections 1 and 2 of the Act of 1925 (12 PS 672, 673). Compare Squire v. Fridenberg, 126 Pa. Superior Ct. 508, 513, 191 A. 631, with
The decree of the court below is affirmed at the appellant’s costs.