Soft-Lite Lens Co. v. Ritholz

21 N.E.2d 835, 301 Ill. App. 100, 1939 Ill. App. LEXIS 596
CourtAppellate Court of Illinois
DecidedJune 21, 1939
DocketGen. No. 40,591
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 21 N.E.2d 835 (Soft-Lite Lens Co. v. Ritholz) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Court of Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Soft-Lite Lens Co. v. Ritholz, 21 N.E.2d 835, 301 Ill. App. 100, 1939 Ill. App. LEXIS 596 (Ill. Ct. App. 1939).

Opinion

Mr. Justice Hebel

delivered the opinion of the court.

This is a suit in chancery by the plaintiff, Soft-Lite Lens Company, Inc., a New York corporation, against the defendants, Ante Ritholz, Benjamin D. Ritholz, Morris I. Ritholz, Samuel J. Ritholz, Fannie Ritholz, Sylvia Ritholz and Sophia Ritholz, co-partners. The action is for alleged unfair competition. In its complaint the plaintiff alleges that the defendants unlawfully and unfairly compete with plaintiff’s business by selling and offering for sale and fraudulently substituting and palming off a product in imitation of plaintiff’s product with the intent of deceiving purchasers; that the plaintiff has suffered loss thereby and if said acts are permitted to continue they will result in unfair competition and irreparable loss to the plaintiff. The prayer of the plaintiff is for a permanent injunction and for damages in the sum of $25,000.

The pleadings consist of plaintiff’s complaint and the defendants ’ amended answer thereto. No point is made as to the sufficiency of the pleadings by the parties. The case was referred to a master in chancery, who rendered his report recommending that a decree be entered as prayed for in the complaint, and the court entered such decree, from which this appeal is taken.

The plaintiff and its predecessor have for many years been in the business of selling and distributing tinted eyeglass lenses made exclusively for the plaintiff by Bausch & Lonib Optical Company pursuant to a secret formula owned by the plaintiff. These lenses are sold under the name of “Soft-Lite” and the plaintiff is the owner of registered trade-marks embodying said name. The defendants, as copartners, operate a chain of retail optical stores in Chicago and in other places. It is claimed that the defendants on numerous occasions palmed off lenses other than.the plaintiff’s product when the plaintiff’s product was called for and as evidence thereof the plaintiff offered testimony covering four instances wherein persons, each with an oculist’s prescription for a pair of glasses, took their prescriptions to stores of the defendants and requested that said prescriptions be filled. Each of the prescriptions designated that it should be filled by using Soft-Lite lenses. By reason of plaintiff’.s advertising and the long usage of the name by the plaintiff and all those engaged in the optical business, “Soft-Lite” had become known and recognized as being the eyeglass lens manufactured by Bausch & Lomb Optical Company for the plaintiff and sold and distributed by it. The four prescriptions were filled and glasses therefor were delivered, but none of the lenses in the four pair of glasses were Soft-Lite lenses, the product of the plaintiff. In each instance the defendants had palmed off lenses in imitation of the plaintiff’s product without the knowledge or consent of the customer or the doctor whose prescription was filled, and thus perpetrated a fraud upon the purchaser of the glasses, the doctors who had issued the prescription and upon the plaintiff.

It is claimed that by reason of the fact that the ultimate consumer is unable to differentiate between the plaintiff’s product and other lenses of a similar appearance, the plaintiff, for the protection of the ultimate consumer, hás created a method of distributing its lenses through licensees. Any oculist, optometrist or optician doing his own dispensing is required to have a license in order to obtain lenses from the plaintiff. Those individuals who do not do their own dispensing need not have a license but their prescriptions must be filled by a dispenser having a license in order to assure the delivery of genuine Soft-Lite lenses. In addition to the above-described licensing system the plaintiff furnishes a printed protection certificate to dispensers who deliver the certificates with each pair of glasses as their assurance to the consumer that the lenses are genuine Soft-Lite lenses.

The master heard all of the testimony and observed each of the witnesses on the stand and, from his report, concluded that in all four instances lenses other than Soft-Lite had been provided without the knowledge or consent of the purchasers or of the doctors who had issued the prescriptions, and that in each of the four instances the defendants were guilty of palming off a product other than the plaintiff’s when the plaintiff’s product was called for. The chancellor sustained the master’s report in all respects, and a decree was entered, as we have already indicated.

The defendants contend that in an unfair competition case the burden is on the plaintiff to prove by a clear preponderance of the evidence: (1) That the defendants are in competition with plaintiff, and that defendants so conducted their business as to intentionally palm off on the public goods of the defendants as the goods of the plaintiff; (2) that such palming off has resulted in financial loss to the plaintiff unless an injunction is issued; (3) that in the conduct of its own business, plaintiff’s representations and business conduct is free from false representations and dishonest methods so as to justify relief from a court of equity; that it is free from the taint of ‘‘unclean hands” in bringing the suit; and (4) that the allegations of plaintiff’s bill are true.

In the discussion by the court of the merits of this appeal it is apparent that certain of the allegations made by the plaintiff in regard to trade marks were not urged in its litigation. This applies with equal force to the allegation in the complaint regarding the secret formula, which is not pressed by the plaintiff in its argument before this court. In a further allegation the plaintiff claimed $25,000 damages, but upon the trial stipulated that no monetary damages would be asked, so by the suggestions offered upon the facts, the issue has been reduced to the question of whether proof of the plaintiff has established that the defendants have palmed off a product other than the plaintiff’s when the plaintiff’s product has been called for. In discussing this question we have considered the case of Stevens-Davis Co. v. Mather & Co., 230 Ill. App. 45, cited by both parties to the litigation, and in order to apply the conclusion reached by the court in that case it is necessary that we have in mind what the court said upon the question that is pertinent in this appeal. In this case, which was one in which the plaintiff sought injunctive relief against alleged unfair competition, the court upon the question as to what was unfair competition, said:

“The question which now confronts us is, whether the ‘palming off’ doctrine has been erroneously considered to be a rule of decision, when in fact it was merely a term descriptive of a typical class of cases; and if it has been correctly regarded as a rule of decision, is it the rule that has been adopted by the Supreme Court of this State? The ‘palming off’ doctrine has been accepted by the courts in England and America, including the Supreme Court of the United States, with few exceptions, as the rule of law itself, and not as a descriptive term or classification of the most typical cases illustrative of the rule. It may be that it would have been better if the rule originally had been framed in more general terms, but the fact is that it was not. ‘ The legal doctrine of unfair competition is a development of the fundamental idea that it is against public policy that the goods of one person should be offered for sale or sold as those of another.

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Bluebook (online)
21 N.E.2d 835, 301 Ill. App. 100, 1939 Ill. App. LEXIS 596, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/soft-lite-lens-co-v-ritholz-illappct-1939.