Home/D. Connecticut/Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co. v. Setlow

Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co. v. Setlow

58 F.2d 324, 1932 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1173
CourtDistrict Court, D. Connecticut
DecidedApril 22, 1932
DocketNo. 2010
StatusPublished

This text of 58 F.2d 324 (Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co. v. Setlow) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Connecticut primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co. v. Setlow, 58 F.2d 324, 1932 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1173 (D. Conn. 1932).

Opinion

THOMAS, District Judge.

This is the usual bill in equity charging the defendant with infringement of letters patent No. 1,520,936, granted to James II. Dennedy on December 30, 1924, on an application filed December 10, 1921. The invention is alleged by the patentee to be for a new improvement in artificial refrigerating systems.

The Central Hanover Bank & Trust Company and Frederic J. Fuller are the joint and several owners of the legal title, while Servel, Incorporated, is the owner of the equitable title to the patent in suit. The' defendant, Leo Setlow, doing business in New Haven in this district, under the name and style of Ideal Plumbing & Heating Company, is engaged in the sale, in a small way, of “Norge” refrigerators manufactured by the Norge Corporation of Detroit, Mich..

Claims 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13 are in suit. Claim 5 is typical. It reads:

“5. The combination in an artificial refrigerating system of a refrigerant circuit including a low pressure side and a high: pressure side, a compressor, means for maintaining a constant volume of liquid refrigerant in the low pressure side, comprising ai float valve actuated by fluctuation in the level of liquid refrigerant in one of said\ sides, means responsive to pressure variations in the low pressure side due to temperature change thereof for controlling said compressor, and a body to be cooled, absorption of heat in varying amount by the low pressure side being substantially confined to-heat from said body.”

Before taking up the questions of validity and infringement, we will first dispose of a question of procedure raised by the defendant’s objection to certain evidence and testimony offered on behalf of the plaintiffs in rebuttal of defendant’s testimony. On their direct case the plaintiffs introduced in evidence the patent in suit, gave proof of infringement by the defendant, and then [325]*325rested. After the expert testimony and other evidence was presented in behalf of the defendant in support of the allegations of the answer as to validity and infringement, and the defendant had rested, the plaintiffs then offered testimony to rebut all the evidence offered by the defendant. Defendant objected to the plaintiffs’ rebuttal, but the objection was overruled and an exception to the ruling was noted. There is nothing wrong with this practice. A plaintiff has a right to either set forth his whole case or only a prima facie case. A plaintiff may, if he chooses, offer the patent in suit in evidence and stand upon the usual presumptions that flow from the grant of the patent and produce and offer in evidence the alleged infringing device and rest, as was done in the ease at bar. If the defendant, as here, then introduces expert testimony, the prior art, and publications for the purpose of limiting the alleged invention, it is proper then for the plaintiff to rebut the prima facie fpree of the expert testimony, the pri- or art, and publications. The expert testimony produced ’ on rebuttal by the plaintiffs and the testimony in rebuttal of defendant’s showing is proper, and the defendant’s claim that such testimony should have been introduced on direct cannot prevail. See American Linoleum Mfg. Co. v. Nairn Linoleum Co. (C. C.) 44 F. 755; Seymour v. Osborne, 11 Wall. 516, 20 L. Ed. 33; Hardinge Conical Mill Co. v. Abbe Engineering Co. (C. C. A.) 195 F. 936; Jost v. Borden Stove Co. (D. C.) 262 F. 163; American Bank Protection Co. v. City Nat. Bank (C. C.) 181 F. 375; Hutter v. De Q. Bottle Stopper Co. (C. C.) 119 F. 190; Blackledge v. J. M. Shock Absorber Co. (D. C.) 213 F. 478.

The subject-matter of the patent in suit is a refrigerating system of the compression type having a high pressure side and a low pressure side. The invention relates, as the patentee asserts, “to artificial refrigerating systems in which a refrigerant body such as sulphur dioxide, methyl chloride or similar chemical is compressed and liquified and then cooled and allowed to expand in a coil within a storage compartment, brine tank or the like, and the particular feature of this invention is in the provision of means to control the temperature of the storage compartment or body to be cooled through variation in pressure of the expansion side of the system.”

The refrigerating cycle employed in the construction described in the patent in suit was old and well known many years prior to the date of the application which resulted in the patent in suit. - This cycle employs a compressor in which a gas is compressed, a condenser in which the high pressure gas is liquified, • an expansion valve through which the high pressure liquid refrigerant passes from the high pressure side to the evaporator coils on the low pressure side of the system and a line leading from the evaporator coils, the suction line, back to the compressor. The compressor, when operated, draws or sucks the gas through the line from the evaporator. It was also old and well known many years prior to the application which resulted in the patent in suit to employ a thermostat in the system to maintain the temperature in the box, storage compartment, or body to be cooled between certain high and low limits. The function of the thermostat is to open and close the electric circuit of the motor which drives the compressor.

In the device described and claimed in the patent in suit, the inventor substitutes for the thermostat above mentioned a controlling means for the box temperatures, which means is responsive to variations of pressure within the evaporator coil. This controlling means is based upon the well-known pressure-temperature law, according to which, in any closed chamber or confined space (as in the evaporator coil of a refrigerating system) containing a body of liquid refrigerant subject to the pressure of just the refrigerant vapor, there is a definite relationship between the boiling temperatures of that body of refrigerant liquid and the pressure of the refrigerant vapor above the liquid. This control means is connected into and is responsive to the pressure of the low pressure side and controls the starting and stopping of the compressor, so that the pressure and hence the temperature of the low pressure side is maintained within predetermined limits with the result that the temperature of the refrigerator box is also maintained within predetermined limits. The patentee employs a valve between the high and low pressure sides of the system, corresponding to the expansion valve to which reference was made supra, in order to control the quantity of liquid in the evaporator, and more particularly to maintain a constant quantity of refrigerant in the expansion side of the system.

The invention is diagrammatieally illustrated in the drawings of the patent in suit and comprises an evaporator or coil 5 with[326]*326in a box 2, or the compartment to be refrigerated: '

This coil contains a refrigerant liquid, such as sulphur dioxide, which boils or changes [327]*327from liquid to vapor. Wlien the pressure of the liquid in the eoil is reduced, the liquid boils or vaporizes and absorbs heat. The liquid within the evaporator 5 is first chilled, due to evaporation, and because of the decrease of temperature of the liquid, heat from the compartment 2 will flow through the metal wall of the evaporator. This removal of heat from the compartment chills the interior of the box. Refrigeration is thus produced. The discharge end of the evaporator 5 is connected by the suction pipe 4 to the inlet of the compressor.

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Bluebook (online)
58 F.2d 324, 1932 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1173, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/central-hanover-bank-trust-co-v-setlow-ctd-1932.