3. Did the defendants Davey, Dornan, and Shaw, or any of them, publish the “black lists” with intent to injure the plaintiff in his business; and, if so, did the publication so injure him? Answer. Yes.
FitzGibbon, L. J., in summing up, told the jury that pecuniary loss, directly caused by the conduct of the defendants, must be proved in order to establish a cause of action; and he advised them to require to be satisfied that such loss to a substantial amount had been proved by the plaintiff. He declined to tell them that, if actual and substantial pecuniary loss was proved to have been directly caused to the plaintiff by the wrongful acts of the defendants, they were bound to limit the amount of damages to the precise sum so proved. He told them that, if the plaintiff gave the proof of actual and substantial loss necessary to maintain the action, they were at liberty in assessing damages to take all the circumstances of the case, including the conduct of the defendants, reasonably into account. The Lord Justice did not tell the jury that the liability of the defendants depended on any question of law. He told them that the questions left to them were questions of fact to be determined on the evidence; but that they included questions as to the intent of the defendants, and, in particular, their intent to injure the plaintiff in his trade as distinguished from the intent of legitimately advancing their own interests. The Lord Justice did not tell the jury that the defendants could be directly asked what their own intention was, but he did tell them that their intention was to be inferred from their acts and conduct as proved, and that, in acting upon the evidence given by the plaintiff, they were at liberty to have regard to the fact that the defendants, who might have given the best evidence on the subject, had not been produced to explain, qualify, or contradict any of the evidence given for the plaintiff as to their own acts. Upon the meaning of the words “wrongfully and maliciously” in the questions, the Lord Justice told the jury that they had to consider whether the intent and actions of the defendants went beyond the limits which would not be actionable, namely, securing or advancing their own interests, or those of their trade, by reasonable means, including lawful combination, or whether their acts, as proved, were intended and calculated to injure the plaintiff in his trade, through a combination and with a common purpose, to prevent the free action of his customers and servants in dealing with him, with the effect of actually injuring him, as distinguished from acts legitimately done to secure or advance their own interests. Finally, he told the jury that acts done with the object of increasing the profits or raising the wages of any combination of persons such as the society to which the defendants belonged, whether employers or employed, by reasonable and legitimate means, were perfectly lawful and were not actionable so long as no wrongful act was maliciously—that is intentionally—done to injure a third party. To constitute such a wrongful act for the purposes of this case, the Lord Justice told the jury that they must be satisfied that there had been a conspiracy, a common intention, and a combination, on the part of the defendants to injure the plaintiff in his business; and that acts must be proved to have been done by the defendants in furtherance of that intention which had inflicted actual money loss upon the plaintiff in his trade; and that whether the acts of the defendants were or were not in that sense actionable, was the question which the jury had to try upon the evidence.
The jury found for the plaintiff with £250 damages, of which £50 was separately assessed for damages on the cause of action relating to the “black list,” and £200 for damages on the other causes of action and judgment was thereupon entered for the plaintiff for £250 damages and costs.
The defendants now moved to set aside the verdict and judgment so had, and that judgment should be entered for them on the ground of misdirection; or for a new trial, on the ground that the damages were excessive, and that the jury were allowed to take the “black lists” into account.
William O’Brien, J....
The right infringed is the right to live by labor.
Physical hindrances, or prevention of labor by physical means, it was conceded, would be the invasion of a right, and that would certainly be the case whether the restraint was applied to the employer or to the workman.
If temporal loss were not coercion, it could be used to the degree of a person being starved. The proposition on which the judgment of the majority (in Allen v. Flood) was founded in this respect is opposed to the whole analogy of the law that makes duress of property, or menace of temporal loss, as effectual as physical violence to avoid all kinds of acts.