stitutional amendment. Until a change is made, to call a contempt proceeding a criminal prosecution, in the sense that a jury trial is necessary, is to darken counsel by misuse of well-understood terms. The foregoing sufficiently disposes of a contention that the defendants were denied due process of law because they were tried by, the court and not by a jury.'. . . It is said the injunction was invalid, as an attempt to enjoin a crime. If so, the injunction order was not void, and the defendants are precluded from attacking it in this proceeding. In order that the defendants may not feel a rule of procedure has prevented full consideration of their case, it may be said their argument is cast in the same fallacious form as the argument relating to trial by jury. The purpose of the injunction was not to enjoin crime, and bore no other relation to administration of the criminal law. The purpose was to prevent the irreparable injury which the petition for injunction alleged would occur, and which the court found would occur, unless the defendants were restrained from executing their designs. It might be the defendants would incur sentences to the penitentiary or to jail, but the imposition of those penalties would not fulfill the obligation of the state of Kansas to protect its people from the calamitous consequences of the defendants' wrongdoing, and for which there was no redress. The court found that all the perils to the public welfare which accompanied the coal strike of the winter of 1919-20 would again be incurred. That strike caused industry to stop, caused commerce to be demoralized, caused food supplies to be reduced and cut off, caused schools to close, caused suffering in homes, and if the defendants had been permitted to have their way, would have caused the sick to languish and die in unwarmed hospital beds in the dead of winter. If those consequences were produced in a single village by blocking the highway over which necessaries of life were brought in, anybody would say blocking the highway was a public nuisance, and a court of equity could open the road. Multiplicity and magnitude of threatened disaster do not detract from authority of a court of equity over the few determined individuals who propose to wreak the disaster. Ability of the defendants to paralyze the normal activities of a whole commonwealth did not free them from amenability to injunction. The district court was warranted in interfering on principles identical with those applied in abatement of public nuisances, and the court was not shorn of 1 The court quoted Eilenbecker . Plymouth Cty., 134 U. S. 31. The Kansas anti-injunction statute, similar to the Arizona statute involved in Truax v. Corrigan, supra, was held inapplicable to a suit by the state. Even if applicable, the question was within the jurisdiction of the court, and though decided wrongly, did not render the injunction void. Disobedience was consequently contempt. The U. S. Supreme Court, 258 U. S. at 189. seems to have thought this passage dealt with the much broader question of equitable jurisdiction apart from this anti-injunction statute. power because the defendants, if they persisted, would incidentally be guilty of crime. The general finding on which the injunction was allowed included. a finding that the state would be prejudiced in the use of property which it held in the capacity of owner. Conviction and incarceration of the defendants would not get coal for the various institutions, educational, charitable, and correctional, which the state maintains in its own buildings, upon its own land. The authorities. are in substantial accord that this special interest authorized the state to apply for, and authorized the district court to grant, the injunction; but this court holds that, aside from this indisputable ground, and without aid of the statute expressly authorizing actions. of injunction in the name of the state to suppress public nuisances (Gen. Stat. 1915, § 7163, as amended by Laws of 1917, ch. 247, § 1), the district court was possessed of power to grant the injuncItion.1 The judgment of the district court is affirmed.2 1 The court quoted and discussed S. v. Vaughan, 81 Ark. 117; P. v. Condon, 102 Ill. App. 449; Stead v. Fortner, 255 Ill. 468; Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U. S. 623; Re Debs, 158 U. S. 564. 2 Writ of error dismissed, for want of a federal question. Howat . Kansas, 258 U. S. 181, 186 (1922). In Wolff Packing Co. v. Court of Industrial Relations, 262 U. S. 522 (1923), the Kansas statute was held invalid, at least in its application to employers who were not clothed with a public interest. In Dorchy v. Kansas, 44 Sup. Ct. Rep. 323 (1924), the severability of the invalid portion was held to be a question for the state court; 37 Harv. L. Rev. 1129. See "Right of state or United States to maintain suit to enjoin strike or acts in furtherance thereof," 25 A. L. R. 1245; "Injunction against strikes at suit of the state," 7 Corn. L. Q. 61, approving the case at bar. Accord, P. v. United Mine Workers, 70 Colo. 269 (1921). Criminal Syndicalism: Cal. Laws, 1919, c. 188, defines criminal syndicalism as," Any doctrine or precept advocating, teaching or aiding and abetting the commission of crime, sabotage (which word is hereby defined as meaning wilful and malicious physical damage or injury to physical property), or unlawful acts of force and violence or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing a change in industrial ownership or control, or effecting any political change.” Imprisonment from one to fourteen years may be inflicted upon any person who advocates, teaches, or aids and abets criminal syndicalism; who wilfully attempts to justify it; who publishes or circulates any written or printed matter advocating or advising it; who organizes, assists in organizing, or knowingly becomes a member of any group organized to advocate it (without necessarily urging this doctrine himself); or who commits any act advocated by this doctrine with intent to effect a change in industrial ownership or any political change. On July 16, 1923, the Attorney-General of California obtained from the Superior Court of Sacramento County, Busick, J., an ex parte restraining order against the Industrial Workers of the World and a large number of specified members, as follows: "It is further ordered, that the defendants. . . . and each of them, their and each of their servants, agents, solicitors, attorneys, and all others acting in aid or assistance of the defendants, or each of them, do absolutely desist and refrain from further conspiring with each other to carry out, and from carrying out, or attempting to carry out, their conspiracy to injure, destroy and damage property in the State of California and to take over and assume possession of the industries and properties in said State as well as the government thereof; and from knowingly circulating, selling, distributing and displaying books, pamphlets, papers or other written or printed matter advocating, teaching or suggesting criminal syndicalism, sabotage or the destruction of property for the purpose of taking over the industries and properties of all employers, or otherwise, and from advocating, by word of mouth or writing the necessity, propriety and expediency of criminal syndicalism or sabotage, direct action, wilful damage or injury to physical property and bodily injury to person or persons, and from justifying or attempting to justify, criminal syndicalism, the commission or attempt to commit crime, sabotage, violence or unlawful methods of terrorism with the intent to approve, advocate or further the doctrine of criminal syndicalism, as said terms Criminal Syndicalism' and 'Sabotage' are defined in [the Criminal Syndicalism Act of California], and from organizing or aiding or assisting to organize or extend or increase any society, assemblage or association of persons which teaches, advocates, aids and abets criminal syndicalism or the duty, necessity or propriety of committing crime, sabotage, violence or any unlawful method of terrorism as a means of accomplishing a change in industrial ownership or control, or effecting any political change, and from doing any acts to carry out the doctrines, theories and acts of criminal syndicalism and from in any manner whatsoever conspiring or confederating together for the carrying out of said purposes, or either thereof, until the further order of this court." After hearing, a temporary injunction was granted. See Z. Chafee Jr., "California Justice," New Republic, Sept. 19, 1923, p. 97. A petition to restrain "depredations against property, inimical to the general welfare," by the Industrial Workers of the World was previously held not to be demurrable in S. ex rel. Hopkins, Atty. Gen. v. I. W. W., 113 Kan. 347 (1923). For other injunctions against the I. W. W., see 34 Harv. L. Rev. 405n.; S. ex rel. Lindsey v. Grady, 114 Wash. 692 (1921). The New Hampshire Sedition Act, Laws, 1919, c. 155, contains an injunction provision. Other interesting cases of public nuisances are: Atty. Gen. v. Heatley, [1897] 1 Ch. 560 (C. A.). Castle v. St. Augustine's Links, 38 T. L. R. (1922); 34 Jurid. Rev. 273; A was ordered to remove a building -butt didn't so coos chrown ing -jail, commodich he sues hobeas Cockus. wild: The ct prequity hoo poule to Grow hime in jail until he does what he is ordered and they need not abote it themselves as becouse original plaintiffs can get a aste of arcistance of sequadratio CHAPTER VI is brigary why he bonth THE ENFORCEMENT OF SPECIFIC RELIEF in jail. COMMONWEALTH ex rel. LIEBERUM v. LEWIS. SUPREME COURT, PENNSYLVANIA, 1916. [253 Pennsylvania State Reports, 175.] HABEAS CORPUS, original jurisdiction. FRAZER, J. A bill in equity was filed in 1912 by various persons against Christian Lieberum, the relator, asking for an injunction. to restrain him from continuing to obstruct a certain right of way by maintaining thereon a building which he erected a number of years previous to the instituting of the proceedings. A decree was entered against Lieberum ordering him to remove the building on or before a certain time, and to replace the way in suitable condition for travel. This decree was affirmed on appeal to the Superior Court, in Schmidt v. Lieberum, 54 Pa. Superior Ct. 500. The relator refused to comply, whereupon an attachment was issued, and an order made adjudging him guilty of contempt of court, for which he was committed to the county jail until such time as he should purge himself of the contempt. . . . A petition was presented to this court, and a writ issued to the warden of the jail requiring him to produce the relator before us, and, on October 29, 1915, a decree was entered directing his release from confinement on giving bail to await the further order of the court. . . Relator further contends . . . that the refusal to obey the order of the court is not a criminal contempt, but is in the nature of an execution process for the enforcement of a civil right, and, since the performance of the act was not to be done in the presence of the court, it was one which could be punished by fine only under the Act of June 16, 1836, P. L. 784, Section 24, which provides that "the punishment of imprisonment for contempt as aforesaid shall extend only to such contempts as shall be committed in open court and all other contempts shall be punished by fine only." It was said by this court in Scott v. The Jailor, 1 Grant (Pa.) 237 (page 238): "The acts of assembly conferring chancery powers, carry with them, as a necessary incident to the jurisdiction, the authority to enforce decrees by the ordinary process of attachment, sequestration, &c., unless that authority be excluded by legislative enactment. The Act of June 16, 1836, regulating the power of the several courts of the Commonwealth to 'issue attachments, and inflict summary punishment for contempt of court,' has no relation to attachments to enforce decrees in equity, where the object is not to inflict punishment,' but to compel performance of such decrees." . . . The power to enforce their decrees is necessarily incident to the jurisdiction of courts. Without such power, a decree would in many cases be useless. "All courts have this power, and must necessarily have it; otherwise they could not protect themselves from insult, or enforce obedience to their process. Without it, they would be utterly powerless": Williamson's Case, 26 Pa. 9, 18. In Commonwealth, ex rel., Tyler v. Small, 26 Pa. 31, it was said (page 42): "The imprisonment of the party who is in contempt is one of the ordinary steps in all proceedings of this kind, and is usually ordered as a matter of course, until he submits; and as one of the means of enforcing the decree in favor of the plaintiff." The contention that the power to imprisonment for contempt does not exist because there is another possible remedy, is equally without merit. There can be no doubt of the general power of a court of equity to give a complete remedy when its jurisdiction has once attached to the subject-matter of the suit. In such case the mere existence of a remedy at law is not sufficient to prevent equity from giving complete relief. Thus, in Winton's App., 97 Pa. 385, it was said (page 394): "The position of the plaintiff is this: Having obtained a decree in his favor by which the deed was declared a mortgage, upon the offer to pay promptly and in cash the amount due thereon, he now declines to pay the money, and denies the power of the court to compel him to do so. He seems to be under the impression that the cause has reached a point where the court has lost its power; that the proceedings are at a deadlock, and that the only remedy left the defendant is to go into a court of law with his scire facias upon the mortgage, a writ of ejectment or action of covenant. In the meantime the land, which is chiefly valuable for its coal, is being constantly depreciated by the working of its mines. The plaintiff has mistaken the powers of a court of equity. It is not so helpless as he imagines. When once it has a case within its grasp it has all the authority necessary to a full disposition of all the questions arising therein. In doing so it has not occasion to call to its aid the assistance of a court of law. Its remedies are plastic, and may be moulded to meet the exigencies of the case. The plaintiff having invoked this jurisdiction and obtained the relief he sought, cannot now turn the defendant over to a court of law to obtain the redress to which he is entitled upon the plaintiff's own showing. The tribunal to which the latter has appealed will hold him and his property within its grasp until he does that equity which he solemnly promised to perform." The mere existence of a right to a writ of assistance, or any other remedy, does not take away the power of the court to enforce its decrees by attachment and imprisonment until the offender consents to comply with the order. |