Citation Numbers: 60 A.2d 176, 134 Conn. 623, 1948 Conn. LEXIS 162
Judges: Maltbie, Brown, Jennings, Ells, Dickenson
Filed Date: 6/3/1948
Status: Precedential
Modified Date: 11/3/2024
The plaintiff brought this action to secure an injunction against the defendants, unions and officers, agents and members of unions, to restrain certain conduct in connection with a strike of its employees. A temporary injunction was issued. When the case was tried upon its merits, *Page 625
judgment was rendered for the defendants, the temporary injunction was dissolved and a permanent one refused. The plaintiff filed an appeal. On its application the court, presided over by a judge other than the one who heard the case, made an order continuing the temporary injunction under the provisions of 5903 of the General Statutes. The defendants filed an appeal from that order; the plaintiff made a motion in this court to erase the appeal, but we denied the motion. H. O. Canfield Co. v. United Construction Workers,
Section 5903 provides: "When a temporary injunction shall have been granted and upon final hearing judgment shall have been rendered adverse to its continuance, either party may apply to the court rendering such judgment, representing that he is desirous of taking the case to the supreme court of errors, and praying that such temporary injunction may be continued until the final decision therein; and, unless such court shall be of opinion that great and irreparable injury will be done by the further continuance of such injunction, or that such application was made only for delay and not in good faith, the court shall continue such injunction until a final decision be rendered in the supreme court of errors." *Page 626 Chapter 309a contains numerous restrictions upon the issuance of injunctions in labor disputes, but for our purposes it is only necessary to refer to 1423e. This section states: "No court shall have jurisdiction to issue a temporary or permanent injunction" in any case involving or growing out of a labor dispute unless it shall be found that unlawful acts have been threatened and will be committed, that substantial and irreparable injury to the plaintiff or his property will follow, that as to each item of relief granted greater injury would be inflicted upon the plaintiff by the denial of relief than would be inflicted on the defendants by granting it, and that the plaintiff has no adequate remedy at law.
Section 5903 is based upon the possibility that the trial court acted erroneously in dissolving or modifying the temporary injunction in the trial on the merits. The purpose of the section is to preserve the status quo until the plaintiff's rights may ultimately be determined upon the appeal. Back of the statute necessarily lies the assumption that the determination at the trial is based upon circumstances essentially the same as existed when the temporary injunction was granted. The issuance of a permanent injunction is, however, to be decided upon the facts proven at the trial; Loew's Enterprises, Inc. v. International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees,
It might greatly impair the protection the General Assembly intended to accord labor in its disputes as to employment if the continuance of a temporary injunction after a judgment upon the merits for the defendant is to be granted as of course, unless, as provided in 5903, it appears that great and irreparable injury would be suffered or the application was made only for delay and not in good faith. Section 1421e provides that no court shall "issue any restraining order or temporary or permanent injunction" which prohibits certain conduct of employees; while 1423e speaks only of "a temporary or permanent injunction" in its prohibition against the issuance of such orders unless certain conditions are met, there can be no doubt that the latter section was intended to have as broad a scope as the former. Certainly the continuance of a temporary injunction upon an appeal from a final judgment dissolving it is a restraining order. We cannot escape the conclusion that the General Assembly intended by chapter 309a fully to specify the conditions which must be established as a basis for any court order restraining labor in its disputes as to employment, that the provisions of the chapter are, as to such disputes, "exclusive" in the sense that they cover the whole subject, and that those provisions are a substitute *Page 628
for the requirements in 5903 as to the issuance of an order continuing injunctions pending appeals in cases involving labor disputes. Hutchison v. Hartford,
Section 5903 provides that, when "upon final hearing judgment shall have been rendered" adverse to the continuance of the injunction, an application for its continuance may be made "to the court rendering such judgment." The word "court" is often used of the institution itself regardless of the particular judge who may be holding it; Miles v. Strong,
We have, then, this situation: In determining whether a temporary injunction shall be continued pending an appeal from a judgment for the defendants in a case involving a labor dispute, the limitations of chapter 309a are applicable; and the motion for a continuance under 5903 must be made to, *Page 629
heard and determined by the judge who tried the case. The result would be that, if 5903 is authority for any order of continuance in an action involving a labor dispute, the same judge who upon the trial had decided that the plaintiff had not proven facts justifying an injunction would, if the temporary injunction is to be continued, have to hold, shortly after the judgment had been rendered, that upon the basis of the same requirements of proof the plaintiff was entitled, pending the appeal, to the relief to the grant of which he had not established his right at the trial. We cannot assume that the General Assembly overlooked so apparent a situation. To hold that 5903 applies to injunctions issued under chapter 309a would produce so unreasonable a result that we cannot impute it to the legislature. Commonwealth v. Kimball, 41 Mass. (24 Pick.) 366, 370; United States v. Anderson,
There is error, the order continuing the temporary injunction is set aside and the case is remanded with direction to deny the application for its continuance.
In this opinion the other judges concurred