Great Southern Fire-Proof Hotel Co. v. McClain

3 Ohio N.P. 247

This text of 3 Ohio N.P. 247 (Great Southern Fire-Proof Hotel Co. v. McClain) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Common Pleas of Ohio, Franklin County, Civil Division primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Great Southern Fire-Proof Hotel Co. v. McClain, 3 Ohio N.P. 247 (Ohio Super. Ct. 1896).

Opinion

PUGH, J.

Both parties have moved the Court to award them preliminary injunctions. -Each, wants the other restrained from interfering with its or his possession of the Great Southern Hotel building, and from doing anything towards constructing it. Each had obtained restraining orders to that effect, which, being awarded without notice, were to run only till these motions-could be heard and decided.

In granting such injunctions as are prayed for, the questions made in the case as to the rights of the parties are not necessarily determined; if they are granted, they conclude no rights; the object is to preserve the property in controversy in statu quo, and to keep the parties in statu quo, till the questions about their rights can be determined. In awarding such injunctions, the Court or judge often does so without expressing, and often, too. without having the means of forming, any opinion as to the rights of the parties. Those rights are rarely ever determined before the final hearing of the case.

But this is one of the rare cases. A peck of affidavits and depositions were taken and filed. All of the questions made, save one, possibly, have been about as effectually put in evidence as they could be on final hearing. But the opinions which may be expressed on some of these questions by me are not to be understood as embarrassing or concluding the Court which may finally hear the case.

[248]*248Upon such motions as these, if it is perceived that there is no real question to be decided, there will no interference. But, if there is a substantial question to be passed upon, a temporary injunction may be issued to preserve the property and restrain the belligerency of the parties, until the controverted questions can be regularly disposed of.

The action of the Court or Judge is swayed, in part by the fact that the injury to one sidel arising from the refusal of the injunction is certain, while the damage to the other, if it is issued, is, if any, inconsiderable.

All the equities will be considered, and the injury which would be done to the defendant by granting it, will be compared with the injury which would result to the plaintiff' from withholding it. Lynch v. Union Institution, 159 Mass., 306. Camberland Tel. Co. v. U. S. Electric Co. 42 Fed. Rep., 273.

Where such motions are considered, two questions are determined : 1. Not that the petitioner has actually a right, but that he has a fair question to raise as to the existence of such a right. 2. Whether ad interim interference, by injunction, upon a balance of convenience or inconvenience to one party and the other is, or is not, expedient. Bearing these rules in mind these motions and their supports, will be discussed as briefly as possible, and in doing this the order of the motions as they are made in time, will be inverted, that of the defendant being considered and disposed of first.

His motion, viewed from his own standpoint; is virtually a motion to have the plaintiff restraied, for the time being, from breaking the building contract which was concluded between them. Specific enforcement of a contract is substantially a mandate. An injunction restraining a specific wrong is, in effect, negative enforcement of that contract.

“The jurisdiction of equity-to grant such an injunction is substantially coincident with its jurisdiction to compel specific performance. ” 3 Pomeroy’s Eq. Juris. Sec. 1341.

When a contract contains negative stipu lations or covenants, that certain acts shall not be done, or when a contract’s affirmative provisions imply such negative stipulations or covenants, a court of equity will restrain its breach by injunction ; because it is one which will be “affirmatively specifically enforced.” Negative covenants in leases, such as covenants not to erect buildings of a certain class, or not to carry on a particular trade, are illustrations. English courts of equity will enjoin the violation of some contracts, though they cannot bo specifically enfored. But, with very few exceptions, American courts of equity have declined to adopt this doctrine. 3 Pomeroy’s Equity Juris. Sec. 1341(n.1.)

Our Supreme Court has declined to adopt the English doctrine, and is in harmony with a majority of the American courts, a proposition which is illustrated by the cases of Stemau. The Gas Company, 48 Ohio St. 324, and Port Clinton R. R. Co., Clev. and Tol. R. R. Co. 13 Ohio St., 544.

McClain’s side of this case, as he has. presented it, locates it in that category of cases. The building contract is one which cannot be “affirmatively specifically enforced” in equity. A contract must be-mutual, or equity will not enforce it. Bourget v. Moniver, 58 Mich. 563; Glass v. Rowe, 103 Mo. 513.

By “mutual” is meant a contract which-each party has a right to enforce against the other.

If the remedy, said our Supreme Court, is not mutual, only one party being bound by the contract, specific performance will’not. be granted. Hutchison vs. McNutt, 1 Ohio, 14.

How could a court of equity require McClain to specifically execute the contract?' It seems to me there is only one possible-answer to this question.

The language of the opinion in an analogous case (Port Clinton R. R. Co. v. Cleveland & Toledo R. R. Co., 13 Ohio St., page 556) is just as appropriate here as there. “Even if the contract were sufficiently specific, so that the party, when ordered to operate the railroad, would know the manner and mode in which the order was to be obeyed, still the question of obedience to the order must necessarily be left open. And the question of obedience to such an order might come up for solution, not once * * * but in instances innumerable, and for an indefinite time. Instead of the final order being: the end of litigation, it would be its-fruitful and continuous source, and that, too, of litigation not in the regular course of judicial proceedings, but irregularly, on a summary application. ” So here, in this case, the matter could not be disposed of by a decree capable of being enforced at once. The performance of the contract would involve “skill, personal labor and cultivated judgment.” The decree would have to order McClain to perform a continuous duty running through several months. The question-of obedience to it would be left open, and' it would come up for solution more than once, from time to time, for an indefinite period.

In Ross v. The Union Pacific Ry. Co., 1 Wolworth 43, Justice Miller declared “th to establish the general doctrine that contracts for building may be specifically enforced in equity, would be to invite into litigation, very many matters- which are now generally settled by the parties on a basis-much more beneficial to the parties; and that, it would require the constant supervision of the court, through its officers, in the conduct of affairs it is very poorly adapted to administer. The result of drawing to itself' such a jurisdiction would certainly be far less remedial than the ordinary action for damages. ’ ’

There being no power to compel McClain to specifically execute the contract, it is not, for this reason, one which a Court of Equity' [249]*249•could specifically enforce either by an affirm•ative decree, or negatively by an injunction, restraining its breach by the plaintiff.

Contracts to build or to repair will not, as a general rule, be enforced in equity. Fry on Specific Performance, American Edition, Section 76, and cases cited. Rayner v. Stone, 2, 128, 130 (n.) Paxton v. Newton, 2 S. M. G., 437.

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Related

Lynch v. Union Institution for Savings
34 N.E. 364 (Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, 1893)
Poet Clinton Railroad v. Cleveland & Toledo Railroad
13 Ohio St. 544 (Ohio Supreme Court, 1862)
Bourget v. Monroe
25 N.W. 514 (Michigan Supreme Court, 1885)
Glass v. Rowe
103 Mo. 513 (Supreme Court of Missouri, 1890)

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3 Ohio N.P. 247, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/great-southern-fire-proof-hotel-co-v-mcclain-ohctcomplfrankl-1896.