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244 U. S. PITNEY, MCKENNA, and VAN DEVANTER, JJ., dissenting.

multiplicity of suits-that resort may be had to equity; and when this does appear, the right to an injunction arises because that is the only appropriate relief. Osborn v. United States Bank, 9 Wheat. 738, 838-845; Pennoyer v. McConnaughy, 140 U. S. 1, 12, 18; Fargo v. Hart, 193 U. S. 490, 503.

So, tax laws rarely, if ever, contain express authorization of an injunction to restrain illegal taxes. And a suit in equity will not lie on the mere ground that a tax is illegal. But if, in addition, enforcement of the tax would lead to a multiplicity of suits, or produce irreparable injury, or if the property taxed is real estate and the tax throws a cloud upon the title, equity will interfere by injunction. Dows v. City of Chicago, 11 Wall. 108, 112; Hannewinkle v. Georgetown, 15 Wall. 547; Union Pacific Ry. Co. v. Cheyenne, 113 U. S. 516, 525; Pacific Express Co. v. Seibert, 142 U. S. 339, 348; Ogden City v. Armstrong, 168 U. S. 224, 237; Ohio Tax Cases, 232 U. S. 576, 587.

The fact that the threatened invasion of plaintiffs' rights will amount at the same time to an offense against the criminal laws is no bar to relief by injunction at the instance of a private party. In re Debs, 158 U. S. 564, 593.

I find nothing in the letter or policy of the Sherman Act to exclude the application of the ordinary principles of equity, recognized in the constitutional grant of jurisdiction. Applying them to the facts of the present case, appellants are entitled to an injunction to restrain the threatened, continuing, and irreparable injury and damage that otherwise will result from defendants' violation of the act.

The special duty imposed upon the Attorney General and the district attorneys is not inconsistent with this view. The field to be covered by such public prosecutions, and the objects sought thereby, are quite different from the scope and effect of an injunction granted to a private party threatened with special and irreparable injury to

PITNEY, MCKENNA, and Van DevANTER, JJ., dissenting. 244 U. S.

his property rights through a violation of the act. The proceeding by the district attorney is a kind of equitable quo warranto, calculated to bring the entire combination to an end, whether it be in the form of a corporation or otherwise. But there may be and are cases of direct and irreparable injury to private parties resulting from violations of the act, not capable of being redressed through actions at law under §7; and justice to the parties aggrieved requires that the act be construed, if the language admits of such a construction (and I think it does), so as to allow an injunction to prevent irreparable injury to a private party, otherwise remediless, without going to the extent of dissolving the combination altogether, which in some cases might not be a matter of public interest or importance. Unless so construed, the act must operate in many instances to deprive parties of a right of injunction that they would have had without it. So far at least as boycotting combinations are concerned-and this case is of that character-the act creates no new offense and gives no new right of action. Temperton v. Russell, 1893, 1 Q. B. Div. 715; Quinn v. Leathem, 1901, A. C. 495; Barr v. Essex Trades Council, 53 N. J. Eq. 101, 112-121; Jonas Glass Co. v. Glass Bottle Blowers' Assn., 77 N. J. Eq. 219, 225.

I find no controlling decision in this court. Minnesota v. Northern Securities Co., 194 U. S. 48, 71, is not an authority against the right of complainants to an injunction to prevent special and irreparable damage to their property rights through a violation of the Sherman Act; the effect of that decision being merely to deny relief by injunction to individuals not directly and specially injured. There the State of Minnesota sued in one of its own courts under certain statutes of its own, as well as under the Sherman Act, and the case was removed to the United States Circuit Court as being one arising under the Constitution and laws of the United States. The purpose of

244 U.S. PITNEY, MCKENNA, and VAN DEVANTER, JJ., dissenting.

the suit was to annul an agreement and suppress a combination alleged to exist between the defendant railroad corporations; and the only threatened injury because of which an injunction was prayed was that the State, being the owner of large tracts of land whose value depended upon free and open competition over the lines of railway involved in the combination, and being the owner of certain public institutions whose supplies must of necessity be shipped over the same railways, it was alleged that the successful maintenance of these institutions as well as the performance by the State of its governmental functions depended largely upon the value of real and personal property situate within the State and the general prosperity and business success of its citizens, and that these in turn depended upon maintaining free and unrestricted competition between the railway lines involved. The court, by Mr. Justice Harlan, said (p. 70) that the threatened injury was at most only remote and indirect, and such as would come alike, although in different degrees, to every individual owner of property in a State by reason of the suppression of free competition between interstate carriers, and was "not such a direct, actual injury as that provided for in the seventh section of the statute"; and that upon the view contended for, "every individual owner of property in a State may, upon like general grounds, by an original suit, irrespective of any direct or special injury to him [italics mine], invoke the original jurisdiction of a Circuit Court of the United States, to restrain and prevent violations of the Anti-trust Act of Congress." It was said further (p. 71): "Taking all the sections of that act together, we think that its intention was to limit direct proceedings in equity to prevent and restrain such violations of the Anti-trust Act as cause injury to the general public, or to all alike, merely from the suppression of competition in trade and commerce among the several States and with foreign nations, to those instituted

PITNEY, MCKENNA, and VAN DEVANTER, JJ., dissenting. 244 U. S.

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in the n me of the United States. Possibly the thought of Congress was that by such a limitation upon suits in equity of a general nature to restrain violations of the act, irrespective of any direct injury sustained by particular persons or corporations, interstate and international trade and commerce and those carrying on such trade and commerce, as well as the general business of the country, would not be needlessly disturbed by suits brought, on all sides and in every direction, to accomplish improper or speculative purposes." [Italics mine.] The reasoning manifestly proceeds upon the assumption that individuals sustaining direct and irreparable injury through a continuing violation of the act would be entitled to an injunction.

Wilder Mfg. Co. v. Corn Products Refining Co., 236 U. S. 165, 174, 175, is not in point. There plaintiff in error, which had purchased, received, and consumed goods from defendant in error, defended a suit for the price upon the ground that defendant in error was an illegal combination in violation of the Sherman Act, and therefore could not sue to recover for goods sold with direct reference to and in execution of agreements that had for their object and effect the accomplishment of the illegal purposes of the combination. The court held that an individual could not defend a suit brought against him on his otherwise legal contract by asserting that the corporation or combination suing had no legal existence because of its violations of the act, the statute having cast upon the Attorney General of the United States the responsibility of enforcing its provisions in that regard.

The question whether private parties threatened with injury through violations of the Sherman Act might (prior to the Clayton Act of October 15, 1914, c. 323, § 16, 38 Stat. 730, 737) have relief by injunction is one upon which the lower federal courts are not in accord. In the present case, the District Court, in dismissing the bill upon the

244 U. S. PITNEY, MCKENNA, and VAN DEVANTER, JJ., dissenting.

ground that relief by injunction might be had only at the instance of the United States (212 Fed. Rep. 259, 266), merely cited and relied upon National Fireproofing Co. v. Mason Builders' Association, 169 Fed. Rep. 259, 263. That case was decided upon the authority of Greer v. Stoller, 77 Fed. Rep. 1, 3, and Southern Indiana Exp. Co. v. United States Exp. Co., 88 Fed. Rep. 659, 663. Reference was made also to Bement v. National Harrow Co., 186 U. S. 70, 87, 88, where the point was assumed arguendo; Post v. Railroad, 103 Tennessee, 184, 228, where it was ruled on the authority of 86 Fed. Rep. 407 and 88 Fed. Rep. 659, 663; and the following cases in the federal courts: Blindell v. Hagan (C. C.), 54 Fed. Rep. 40, 41; Hagan v. Blindell (C. C. A.), 56 Fed. Rep. 696; Pidcock v. Harrington (C. C.), 64 Fed. Rep. 821; Gulf &c. R. Co. v. Miami Steamship Co. (C. C. A.), 86 Fed. Rep. 407, 420; Block v. Standard Distilling &c. Co. (C. C.), 95 Fed. Rep. 978; and Metcalf v. American School-Furniture Co. (C. C.), 108 Fed. Rep. 909. An examination of these cases (including Greer v. Stoller and Southern Indiana Exp. Co. v. United States Exp. Co., supra) discloses that Blindell v. Hagan, 54 Fed. Rep. 40, 41, is the source from which all the others derive the only authority they have for the doctrine that under the Sherman Act the remedy by injunction was available to the Government only. But one or two of the cases contain any reasoning upon the question, and that is meager and unsatisfactory.

Moreover, so far as these cases have held that private parties could have no injunction for a violation of the Sherman Act (some of them have not so held), the real ground of decision in Blindell v. Hagan was misunderstood. In that case the jurisdiction of the federal court was invoked upon the ground of the alienage of complainants, defendants being citizens of the State of Louisiana, and also upon the ground that defendants were engaged in a combination in restraint of trade between New Orleans

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