Marshall Field & Co. v. Becklenberg

1 Ill. Cir. Ct. 59
CourtIllinois Circuit Court
DecidedJuly 6, 1905
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 1 Ill. Cir. Ct. 59 (Marshall Field & Co. v. Becklenberg) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Illinois Circuit Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Marshall Field & Co. v. Becklenberg, 1 Ill. Cir. Ct. 59 (Ill. Super. Ct. 1905).

Opinion

Holdom, J.:

t Complainant in this, and eleven other similar cases file-their several bills for a mandatory injunction against all the defendants to compel carriage and delivery of the goods and merchandise of the several complainants in the city of Chicago by the defendants on the ground that each and all of them are common carriers using wagons and horses as means of transportation in said city.

The controversies here arise out of industrial strife of which-this city seems to be the storm center.

In December, 1904, nineteen garment workers, employes of Montgomery Ward & Co., went out on a strike, and because the business of the firm continued without interruption and apparently its prosperity was unaffected by the disaffection of the nineteen whose demands remained unsatisfied, organized labor, on April 26th, 1905, interfered and championed the" cause of the striking garment workers and a sympathetic strike was declared by the Teamsters’ Union as the most effective means to the desired end, as Montgomery Ward & Co’s, business was such, that it could not continue or exist long without the use of wagons -and horses with teamsters to handle them. Thereupon all union drivers employed by houses delivering or receiving goods to or from Montgomery Ward & Co. or knowingly to the Teamsters’ Union transacting business with them, left their employment and went out on a strike, and a “boycott” was procláimed and maintained against all such houses-including Montgomery Ward & Co.

Complainants in this and the other eleven cases heard with-it, lost their union drivers because they continued to do business with the boycotted house of Montgomery Ward & Co... and as usual, force and violence on the part of the Teamsters’ Union and the union drivers have been freely resorted to in an .attempt to prevent other drivers taking the places so vacated voluntarily by the union men and also prevent their former employers from transacting their usual affairs of business; hence the spectacle is presented in our busy streets of policemen riding upon the wagons of these boycottd houses; the usual scenes of strife and bloodshed have followed and unhappily still continue.

It is charged that the defendants in these twelve cases are common carriers both at common law and by virtue of a city ordinance entitled “Public Carts, Express Wagons, Furniture Vans, Trucks, Drays,” etc.; and as such common carriers are bound to carry goods and merchandise without discrimination for the public generally and at an uniform charge. The defendants are engaged in what is colloquially known as the “express business” in the city of Chicago, and in the same way are called “expressmen,” terms locally having a well defined meaning.

Defendants concede in a limited way that they are eommon carriers. Whether they are such at common law or under the terms of the municipal ordinance supra is not very material, for if by the common law then they are in a tentative and restricted sense controlled and regulated within the limits of the city of Chicago by the ordinance.

Section 2342 of the ordinance is in terms declaratory of the duty of a common carrier at common law. It provides that:

“No pefson driving or in charge or control of any public •cart shall refuse to convey, within the city, the goods, wares, merchandise, or other article or thing of any person when applied to for that purpose; or having undertaken to convey •such goods, wares, merchandise, or other article or thing shall omit or neglect so to do, or shall ask, take, or demand from any person desiring to have conveyed, or having had conveyed to any place in the city, any such goods, wares or merchandise any greater rate than that herein established * * * ” (Tolman’s Revised Municipal Code of Chicago, 1905, see. 2342).

A refusal by defendants to carry or receive goods from complainants to or from any of the struck or boycotted houses was clearly violative of their duty under the provisions of the ordinance referred to.

Bouvier’s Law Dictionary, Rawle’s Revision, defines a common carrier as “one whose business, occupation or regular calling is to carry chattels for all persons who may choose to employ or remunerate him. ® * * The definition includes carriers by land and water. They are on the one hand stage coach and omnibus proprietors, railroad and street railway companies, truckmen, waggoners and teamsters, car men and porters and express companies, whether such persons undertake to carry goods from one portion of the same town to another, or through the whole extent of the country, or even from one state or kingdom to another. * * ® Carriers both by land and water when they undertake the general business of carrying every kind of goods, are bound to carry for all who offer, and if they refuse without just excuse they are liable to an action.”

Defendants’ duties and obligations are embraced within the foregoing definition in the territory over which they hold themselves out as doing business.

In Parmalee v. McNulty, 19 Ill. 556, and Parmalee v. Lowitz, 74 Ill. 116, carriers of baggage are held to be common carriers and subject to all the duties and obligations of common carriers.

In St. Louis, etc. R. R. v. Hill, 14 Ill. App. 579, Judge Baker, afterwards of the supreme court, tersely and forcibly states the common-law doctrine of common carriers thus, on page 581:

“The statement, one is a common carrier, ex.vi termini imports a duty to the public,' and a corresponding legal right in the public; a right common to all,” and continuing on page 582, declares: “Another duty imposed on him”—[the common carrier]—“is to make no unjust, injurious or arbitrary discriminations between individuals in his dealings with the public. The right to the transportation services of the common carrier, is a common right, belonging to everyone alike.”

Webster defines a common carrier as “one who undertakes for hire, to transport goods from one place to another.” And Anderson’s Law Dictionary: “One who undertakes for'hire or reward to transport the goods of such as choose to employ him, from place to place.” And Wood on Railways (2d ed.), vol. 3, p. 1876: “One who plies between certain termini, and openly professes to carry goods for hire for all such persons as may choose to employ him.” Hutchinson on Carriers (2d ed.), sec. 59; Swift v. Bonan, 103 Ill. App. 475.

Defendants answering the bill admit they carried the goods and merchandise of complainants, or some one of them, on occasions prior to the inauguration of the strike of April 26, last, and profess amity of feeling toward complainants, and expressly aver they have no fault to find with their dealings, except possibly a desire for more extended patronage prior to the strike and an embarrassment at their present demands.

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Related

Hastings Express Co. v. City of Chicago
135 Ill. App. 268 (Appellate Court of Illinois, 1907)

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Bluebook (online)
1 Ill. Cir. Ct. 59, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/marshall-field-co-v-becklenberg-illcirct-1905.