Weaver, J., in DUNSHEE v. STANDARD OIL COMPANY
(1911) 152 Iowa Reports, 618.
As we understand appellants’ contention, it is that their conduct did not transgress the bounds of legitimate competition, and that so long as they kept within this limitation the question of the alleged malice or motive inspiring their acts is wholly immaterial. Cases involving the question thus suggested have frequently arisen, both in this country and in England, and there is much in harmony in the expressions of judicial opinion thereon. Many authorities may be found holding without apparent qualification or exception, that the law takes no account whatever of motives as constituting an element of civil wrong. In other words, if a man do a thing which is otherwise lawful, the fact that he does it maliciously and for the express purpose of injuring his neighbor affords the latter no remedy at law. Such is the net effect of Raycroft v. Tayntor, 68 Vt. 219, 35 Atl. 53, 33 L. R. A. 225, 54 Am. St. Rep. 882; Jenkins v. Fowler, 24 Pa. 308, and others of that class. If this be the correct view of the law, a man may excavate the earth near the boundary of his own land for the mere purpose of seeing the foundation of the house of his neighbor slide into the pit thus prepared for it; he may dig through his own soil to the subterranean sources of his neighbor’s spring or well and divert the water into a ditch, where it will serve no purpose of use or profit to himself or any one else; if a banker or merchant, he may punish the blacksmith who refuses to patronize him by temporarily establishing a shop on the next lot and hiring men to shoe horses without money and without price, until he has driven the offending smith to come to his terms or to go out of business; and if a farmer, dependent upon a subterranean supply of water for the irrigation of his soil or watering of his live stock, he may contrive to ruin his competing neighbor by wasting the surplus not reasonably required for his own use. The laws of competition in business are harsh enough at best; but if the rule here suggested were to be carried to its logical and seemingly unavoidable extreme there is no practical limit to the wrongs which may be justified upon the theory that “it is business.” Fortunately, we think, there has for many years been a distinct and growing tendency of the courts to look beneath the letter of the law and give some effect to its beneficent spirit, thereby preventing the perversion of the rules intended for the protection of human rights into engines of oppression and wrong. It is doubtless true that under many circumstances an act is legally right and defensible without regard to the motive which induces or characterizes it; but there is abundance of authority for saying that this is by no means the universal rule, and that an act which is legally right when done without malice may become legally wrong when done maliciously, wantonly, or without reasonable cause. In Panton v. Holland, 17 Johns. (N. Y.) 92, 8 Am. Dec. 369, it is stated as a general rule that, “In the exercise of a lawful right, a party may become liable to an action where it appears that the act was done maliciously.” See also, Greenleaf v. Francis, 18 Pick. (Mass.) 117; Chesley v. King, 74 Me. 164, 43 Am. Rep. 569; Flaherty v. Moran, 81 Mich. 52, 45 N. W. 381, 8 L. R. A. 183, 21 Am. St. Rep. 510; Sankey v. St. Marys, 8 Mont. 265, 21 Pac. 23; Harbison v. White, 46 Conn. 106; Stillwater v. Farmer, 89 Minn. 58, 93 N. W. 907, 60 L. R. A. 875, 99 Am. St. Rep. 541; Ohio Oil Company v. Indiana, 150 Ind. 698, 50 N. E. 1124; Barclay v. Abraham, 121 Iowa, 619, 96 N. W. 1080, 64 L. R. A. 255, 100 Am. St. Rep. 365. The same principle has been frequently applied in the decision of trade and labor controversies, though not without other instances in which it has been repudiated. See People v. Petheram, 64 Mich. 252, 31 N. W. 188; Walker v. Cronin, 107 Mass. 555; Van Horn v. Van Horn, 52 N. J. Law, 284, 20 Atl. 485, 10 L. R. A. 184; Hawarden v. Coal Co., 111 Wis. 545, 87 N. W. 472, 55 L. R. A. 828; Graham v. Railroad Co., 47 La. Ann. 214, 16 South. 806, 27 L. R. A. 416, 49 Am. St. Rep. 366; Tuttle v. Buck, 107 Minn. 145, 119 N. W. 946, 22 L. R. A. (N. S.) 599, 131 Am. St. Rep. 446; Plant v. Woods, 176 Mass. 492, 57 N. E. 1011, 51 L. R. A. 339, 79 Am. St. Rep. 330; Barr v. Council, 53 N. J. Eq. 101, 30 Atl. 881; Toledo, &c. Ry. Co. v. Penn. Co., (C. C.) 54 Fed. 730, 19 L. R. A. 387; Stevens v. Kelly, 78 Me. 445, 6 Atl. 868, 57 Am. Rep. 813; Purington v. Hinchcliffe, 219 Ill. 159, 76 N. E. 47, 2 L. R. A. (N. S.) 824, 109 Am. St. Rep. 322. In the Van Horn Case, supra, the court says: “While a trader may engage in the sharpest competition with those in like business by holding out extraordinary inducements, ... yet, when he oversteps that line and commits an act with the malicious intent of inflicting injury upon his rival’s business, his conduct is illegal, and if damage results from it the injured party is entitled to redress. Nor does it matter whether the wrong-doer effects his object by persuasion or by false representation. The court looks through the instrumentality or means used to the wrong perpetrated with the malicious intent and bases the right of action on that.” Quoting this language in Barr v. Council, supra, the same court adds: “The right of action depends, then, not so much upon the nature of the act, as upon the intent with which it is done, always assuming that injury has attended the doing of it.” In Parkinson v. Council, 154 Cal. 581, 98 Pac. 1027, 21 L. R. A. (N. S.) 550, the court, while reaching the opposite conclusion generally, concedes it to be the law that: “Any injury to a lawful business, whether the result of conspiracy or not, is prima facie actionable, but may be defended on the ground that it was merely a lawful effort of the defendants to promote their own welfare. To defeat this plea of justification, the plaintiff may offer evidence that the acts of the defendants were inspired by express malice, and were done for the purpose of injuring the plaintiff, and not to benefit themselves.”
Dealing with the perplexities arising in the effort to sustain, on the one hand, the widest practicable liberty of men to engage in any and every line of business, and, on the other, to protect the business of each from wrongful encroachment or interference by others, the New Hampshire court after reference to many of the decided cases, has lately said: “The more recent authorities reason that, as the right to deal or not to deal with others is inherent in the idea of Anglo-Saxon liberty, prima facie a man may demand an open market, and, since this is so, one who interferes with this open market must justify his acts, or respond in damages. Thus far these authorities are uniform, but when they proceed to the determination of what amounts to a justification they differ widely. The cause is not far to seek. The rule they apply is that of reasonable conduct; yet they decide each case as though it involved only a question of law. In reality, the issue is largely one of fact, and the result is what would be expected. Judges are men, and their decisions upon complex facts must vary as those of juries might on the same facts. Calling one determination an opinion and the other a verdict does not alter human nature, nor make that uniform and certain which from its nature must remain variable and uncertain. While these cases go too far in what they decide as questions of law, yet the test they constantly declare they are applying is the true one. The standard is reasonable conduct under all the circumstances of the case.” Huskie v. Griffin, 75 N. H. 345, 74 Atl. 595, 27 L. R. A. (N. S.) 966. See, also, Doremus v. Hennesy, 176 Ill. 608, 52 N. E. 924, 54 N. E. 524, 43 L. R. A. 797, 802, 68 Am. St. Rep. 203; Horan v. Burns, 72 N. H. 93, 54 Atl. 945, 62 L. R. A. 602, 101 Am. St. Rep. 670; Ertz v. Produce Exchange, 79 Minn. 140, 81 N. W. 737, 48 L. R. A. 90, 79 Am. St. Rep. 433. As suggested in the foregoing quotation, no definition or standard of reasonable cause can be stated which will insure absolute uniformity or even consistency in the decision of such cases, because the issue presented is in its essence one of fact, and the same facts and circumstances will not always appeal with like effect to the minds of all jurors or of all judges. It is for this reason that, save in those exceptional cases where the case of the plaintiff or the defendant is so clear and undisputable that all fair-minded persons are forced to the same conclusion, controversies of this nature, in a trial at law, are for the jury, and not for the court.
Coming to the case in hand, we may concede to the appellants the undoubted right to establish a retail oil business in Des Moines, to employ agents and drivers, and send them out over the same routes and make sales to the same people with whom the Crystal Oil Company was dealing; but in so doing it was bound to conduct such business with reasonable regard and consideration for the equal right of the Crystal Company to continue supplying oil to such of its customers as desired to remain with it. If, however, there was no real purpose or desire to establish a competing business, but, under the guise or pretence of competition, to accomplish a malicious purpose to ruin the Crystal Company or drive it out of business, intending themselves to retire therefrom when their end had been secured, then they can claim no immunity under the rules of law which recognize and protect competition between dealers in the same line of business seeking in good faith the patronage of the same people. And if, under such pretence of competition, defendants maliciously interfered with the business of the Crystal Oil Company, in the manner charged, and injury to the latter was thereby inflicted, a right of action exists for the recovery of damages. It may be conceded that authorities are not wanting to sustain the position that, even though the Standard Oil Company had no intention of becoming a retail dealer in oil in Des Moines, but entered the business of selling oil in this manner temporarily, for the sole purpose of driving the Crystal Company out, it is a matter into which the courts will not inquire; but we think such precedents are out of harmony with fundamental principles of justice, which, as we have said, underlie the law, as well as out of harmony with the later and better-considered cases. True the Standard Company, as a wholesale dealer, would violate no law in offering its product for sale at retail at half price in the territory supplied by the Crystal Company, but such fact, if proven, would have a distinct bearing upon the reasonableness of its methods employed in diverting trade from said company, as well as upon the charge that in interfering between the Crystal Company and its customers the Standard Company was actuated by malice or spirit of wanton assault upon the business of another, who had given it offence.[[586]]
KUZNIAK v. KOZMINSKI
Supreme Court, Michigan, December 17, 1895.
Reported in 107 Michigan Reports, 444.
Bill by John Kuzniak against Jacob Kozminski and Frances Kozminski to abate an alleged nuisance. From a decree for complainant, defendants appeal. Reversed.
Long, J. The parties to this cause own adjoining lots in the city of Grand Rapids. Defendants’ lot is on the southeasterly corner of Eleventh and Muskegon streets, and upon which is a large tenement house facing both streets. The complainant owns the lot immediately south and adjoining the defendants’, and upon which he has a dwelling house facing Muskegon street, and also a tenement house about 60 feet back from Muskegon street, and within 22 inches of the north line, being the line of defendants’ lot. At the time this tenement house was erected, defendants had upon their lot what was called a “chicken shed”; and, after complainant’s tenement house was erected, defendants moved this chicken shed upon a part of their lot directly opposite complainant’s tenement house, and within 24 inches of the lot line, and converted it into a coal and wood house for the use of their tenants, who occupied the dwelling on said lot. This bill was filed by complainant for the purpose of having this coal and wood house of defendants declared a nuisance, and to compel them to remove the same. The claim made by the bill is that the defendants removed the building to that place through spite and from a malicious motive, and not because it was needed for any useful purpose. Defendants answered the bill, denying that they were actuated by malice in putting the building there, and averred that it was so placed for the use of their tenants for wood and coal. The testimony was taken in open court, and the court found that the building was a nuisance, and a decree was entered directing the defendants to remove the building within 60 days from the date of the decree, and that, in default of such removal, the sheriff of the county remove the same, at the cost and expense of defendants. The complainant was awarded the costs of the suit. Defendants appeal.
It was held in Flaherty v. Moran, 81 Mich. 52, that a fence erected maliciously, and with no other purpose than to shut out the light and air from a neighbor’s window, was a nuisance, and the decree of the court below ordering its removal was affirmed; but that decision was placed on the ground that the fence served no useful purpose, and was erected solely from a malicious motive. In the present case the building erected by the defendants was for a useful purpose; and, while there may have been some malice displayed in putting it so near the complainant’s house as to shut off some of the light, that would not be a sufficient reason upon which to found a right in complainant to have the building removed. Defendants had a right to erect a building upon their own premises, and the decisions have been quite uniform to the effect that the motives of a party in doing a legal act cannot form the basis upon which to found a remedy. In Allen v. Kinyon, 41 Mich. 282, it was held that the motive is of no consequence when the party does not violate the rights of another. In Hawkins v. Sanders, 45 Mich. 491, it was held that there was no right of prospect which would prevent the erection of an awning on a neighboring lot. The case does not fall within the rule of Flaherty v. Moran, supra, and the court below was in error in directing the removal of the building. That decree must be reversed, and a decree entered here dismissing complainant’s bill, with costs of both courts to the defendants.
The other Justices concurred.[[587]]