48 F.2d 1018 | D.C. Cir. | 1931
An appeal from an order denying appellant’s motion for a preliminary injunction and granting the motion of appellees to dismiss the bill of complaint.
The bill alleges that the plaintiff (now the appellant) is the owner of a large number of automatic vending machines constructed especially for the automatic vending of
Defendant Leo A. Rover filed an answer to the bill, and defendant Edwin B. Hesse filed a motion to dismiss the bill; and, upon a consideration of the pleadings, the court refused to grant a temporary injunction and dismissed the bill, whereupon this appeal was taken.
We do not disagree with the ruling of the lower court. The machines in question are not mere vending machines whereby a predetermined commodity is sold and delivered to a customer at a fixed price; they are something more than that. For, in addition to the vended merchandise, they offer to the customer a chance for an additional advantage, that is, a chance without further charge to play the machine for entertainment and amusement. This may seem to be an unimportant consideration, but such machines are patronized mostly by children, and it is not consistent with sound publie policy to encourage in, immature minds a love of even such a limited adventure in chance.
A court of equity in such case may well decline to exercise its extraordinary powers to assist such an enterprise, and may properly leave it to the law courts to determine, in event of an arrest, whether the use of such machines under the circumstances of the ease is a violation of the criminal statutes.
-The remedy by injunction is summary, peculiar, and extraordinary, and the granting of it rests in the sound discretion of the court governed by the nature of the case. 14 R. C. L. 307, § 5.
“Except in cases where a statute gives an absolute right to an injunction, an injunction, whether temporary or permanent, cannot as a general rule be sought as a matter of right, but its granting or refusal rests in the sound discretion of the court under the circumstances and the facts of the particular case, unless perhaps in cases where facts on which the injunction is asked present questions of law only.” 32 C. J. 29 § 11.
In this view of the case we affirm the decree of the lower court.