London Legal Letter.
497
LONDON LEGAL LETTER. SEPTEMBER, 1901. A RECENT decision of the House of Lords, which has not yet been re ported, is pertinent to the present condition of labor matters in the United States. Last year there was an almost paralyizing strike on the Taff Valley Railway in Wales. It arose through the dissatisfaction of some of the railway employees with their conditions of service, but the moment it had been en tered upon, one Bell, the general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Workers, wrote to the manager of the rail way that all negotiations with the railway employees should be conducted through him. The company made arrangements for the engagement of new men, and large num bers of them arrived in Cardiff to enter upon their service. They were watched and beset by pickets from the strikers and prevented from working. The secretary, Bell, who had assumed sole command of the strikers, issued a circular, which was traced into the hands of the new employees, which con tained this sentence: "Are you willing to be known as a black leg? If you accept employment on the Taff Vale that is what you will be known by." The company brought an action against Bell and one Holmes, the organizing secre tary of the Society of Amalgamated Railway Workers, and joined the society as a de fendant, and they applied to Mr. Justice Farwell, the vacation judge last summer, for an injunction to restrain these officials and the society itself and its officers from watch ing or besetting the company's railway stations for the purpose of persuading or otherwise preventing the workers from per forming their duties. Mr. Justice Farwell granted the injunction, but the society suc cessfully appealed to the Court of Appeals from his judgment, on the ground that although it was an incorporated body it was not incorporated as a business concern, but
only as a benevolent institution, and that if it was obliged to respond in pecuniary dam ages for any wrongs its officers might com mit, its funds would no longer be available for the widows and orphans of its members. The railway company appealed to the House of Lords, which, after patiently hearing the argument of counsel at great length, re versed the Court of Appeal and affirmed the judgment of Mr. Justice Farwell. The judg ment of the Lord Chancellor is a model of brevity, as well as clearness, and is worthy to be inserted in full in THE GREEN BAG as a model to judges in courts of last resort in America. It consists of only two sentences, which appears all the more remarkable when it is considered what weighty effect the de cision must have upon the labor organiza tions, and hence upon politics, not only in England but throughout the British Empire. It is as follows: "In this case I am content to adopt the judgment of Mr. Justice Fanvell, with which I entirely concur, and I cannot find any satisfactory answer to that judgment in the judgment of the Court of Appeal which over ruled it. If the legislature has created a thing which can own property, which can employ servants, which can inflict injury, it must be taken, I think, to have impliedly given the power to make it sueable in a court of law for injuries purposely done by its authority and procurement." The House of Lords have also decided another trade union case within the past few weeks. This is the case of Quinn v. Leathern, and it cameon appeal from Ireland. Leathern, who was the plaintiff in the court of first instance, was a butcher, who for upwards of twenty years had carried on his business in Belfast in a large way. having several as sistants, and, among others, one customer named Munce.towhom he supplied between ¿20 and £30 of meat weekly. In February,
