In this case, we were of opinion at the hearing, that the contract was one for personal service, though not one which established strictly for all purposes the relation of master and servant between the plaintiff and Pearson. We were of opinion that there was evidence to justify a finding that Pearson had been induced by the defendants to break his contract of service, that he had broken it, and had thereby, in fact, caused some injury to the plaintiff. We were of opinion that the act of the defendants was done with knowledge of the contract between the plaintiff and Pearson, was done in order to obtain an advantage for one of the defendants at the expense of the plaintiff, was done from a wrong motive, and would therefore justify a finding that it was done in that sense maliciously. There remained nevertheless the question, whether there was any evidence to be left to the jury against the defendants Hall and Fletcher, it being objected that Pearson was not a servant of the plaintiff. The case was accurately within the authority of the case of Lumley v. Gye. If that case was rightly decided, the objection in this case failed. The only question then which we took time to consider was whether the decision of the majority of the judges in that case should be supported in a Court of Error. That case was so elaborately discussed by the learned judges who took part in it, that little more can be said about it, than whether, after careful consideration, one agrees rather with the judgments of the majority, or with the most careful, learned, and able judgment of Mr. Justice Coleridge. The decision of the majority will be seen, on a careful consideration of their judgments, to have been founded upon two chains of reasoning. First, that wherever a man does an act which in law and in fact is a wrongful act, and such an act as may, as a natural and probable consequence of it, produce injury to another, and which in the particular case does produce such an injury, an action on the case will lie. This is the proposition to be deduced from the case of Ashby v. White, 1 Sm. L. C. (8th ed.), p. 264. If these conditions are satisfied, the action does not the less lie because the natural and probable consequence of the act complained of is an act done by a third person: or because such act so done by the third person is a breach of duty or contract by him or an act illegal on his part, or an act otherwise imposing an actionable liability on him. It has been said that the law implies that the act of the third party, being one which he has free will and power to do or not to do, is his own wilful act, and therefore is not the natural or probable result of the defendants’ act. In many cases that may be so, but if the law is so to imply in every case, it will be an implication contrary to manifest truth and fact. It has been said that if the act of the third person is a breach of duty or contract by him, or is an act which it is illegal for him to do, the law will not recognize that it is a natural or probable consequence of the defendant’s act. Again, if that were so held in all cases, the law would in some refuse to recognize what is manifestly true in fact. If the judgment of Lord Ellenborough in Vicars v. Wilcocks, 8 East, 1, requires this doctrine for its support, it is in our opinion wrong.
We are of opinion that the propositions deduced above from Ashby v. White, 1 Sm. L. C. (8th ed.), p. 264, are correct. If they be applied to such a case as Lumley v. Gye, the question is whether all the conditions are by such a case fulfilled. The first is that the act of the defendants which is complained of must be an act wrongful in law and in fact. Merely to persuade a person to break his contract, may not be wrongful in law or fact as in the second case put by Coleridge, J., supra. But if the persuasion be used for the indirect purpose of injuring the plaintiff, or of benefiting the defendant at the expense of the plaintiff, it is a malicious act which is in law and in fact a wrong act, and therefore a wrongful act, and therefore an actionable act if injury ensues from it. We think that it cannot be doubted that a malicious act, such as is above described, is a wrongful act in law and in fact. The act complained of in such a case as Lumley v. Gye, and which is complained of in the present case, is therefore, because malicious, wrongful. That act is a persuasion by the defendant of a third person to break a contract existing between such third person and the plaintiff. It cannot be maintained that it is not a natural and probable consequence of that act of persuasion that the third person will break his contract. It is not only the natural and probable consequence, but by the terms of the proposition which involves the success of the persuasion, it is the actual consequence. Unless there be some technical doctrine to oblige one to say so, it seems impossible to say correctly, in point of fact, that the breach of contract is too remote a consequence of the act of the defendants. The technical objections alluded to above have been suggested as the consequences of the judgment in Vicars v. Wilcocks, 8 East, 1. But that judgment when so used or relied on seems to us to be disapproved in the opinions given in the House of Lords in Lynch v. Knight, 9 H. L. C. 577, and seems to us when so used to be unreasonable. In the case of Lumley v. Gye, and in the present case, the third condition is fulfilled, namely, that the act of the defendant caused an injury to the plaintiff, unless again it can be said correctly that the injury is too remote from the cause. But that raises again the same question as has been just dismissed. It is not too remote if the injury is the natural and probable consequence of the alleged cause. That is stated in all the opinions in Lynch v. Knight, 9 H. L. C. 577. The injury is in such a case in law as well as in fact a natural and probable consequence of the cause, because it is in fact the consequence of the cause, and there is no technical rule against the truth being recognized. It follows that in Lumley v. Gye, and in the present case, all the conditions necessary to maintain an action on the case are fulfilled.
Another chain of reasoning was relied on by the majority in Lumley v. Gye, and powerfully combated by Coleridge, J. It was said that the contract in question was within the principle of the Statute of Laborers, that is to say, that the same evil was produced by the same means, and that as the statute made such means when employed in the case of master and servant, strictly so called, wrongful, the common law ought to treat similar means employed with regard to parties standing in a similar relation as also wrongful. If, in order to support Lumley v. Gye, it had been necessary to adopt this proposition we should have much doubted, to say the least. The reasoning of Coleridge, J., upon the second head of his judgment seems to us to be as nearly as possible, if not quite, conclusive. But we think it is not necessary to base the support of the case upon this latter proposition. We think the case is better supported upon the first and larger doctrine. And we are therefore of opinion that the judgment of the Queen’s Bench Division was correct, and that the principal appeal must be dismissed.
Appeal dismissed.[[576]]
GLAMORGAN COAL CO., LIMITED v. SOUTH WALES MINERS’ FEDERATION
In the Court of Appeal, August 11, 1903.
Reported in [1903] 2 King’s Bench, 545.
SOUTH WALES MINERS’ FEDERATION v. GLAMORGAN COAL CO., LIMITED
In the House of Lords, April 14, 1905.
Reported in [1905] Appeal Cases, 239.
Appeal by the plaintiffs from the decision of Bigham, J., [1903] 1 K. B. 118.[[577]]
The action was brought by the Glamorgan Coal Company, Limited, and seventy-three other plaintiffs, owners of collieries in South Wales, against the South Wales Miners’ Federation, its trustees, its officers, and a number of members of its executive council, claiming damages for wrongfully and maliciously procuring and inducing workmen employed in the plaintiffs’ collieries to break their contracts of service with the plaintiffs. In the alternative the plaintiffs sued the defendants for wrongfully, unlawfully, and maliciously conspiring together to do the acts complained of. The plaintiffs claimed both damages and an injunction.
The defence consisted of denials of the material allegations in the statement of claim, and of a plea that the acts complained of were done, if at all, with reasonable justification and excuse. The trial of the action was commenced with a special jury; but ultimately the jury was discharged, and all questions of law and fact, as well as the ascertainment of damages, if any, were by consent left to the determination of the learned judge.
The following facts (inter alia) were stated, in substance, by Bigham, J., in his written opinion:—
The plaintiffs are seventy-four limited liability companies associated together for the protection of their own interests under the style of the Monmouthshire and South Wales Coal Owners’ Association. They work upwards of 200 collieries in the South Wales district, and in these collieries they employ about 100,000 men.