The case was then carried to the Irish Court of Appeal. In accordance with the opinions there delivered by Lord Ashbourne, Chancellor, Porter, M. R., Walker, L. J., and Holmes, L. J., the decision below, as to the verdict and judgment for £200, was affirmed with costs; the judgment for the plaintiff being amended by omitting the part as to the recovery of £50 damages which was separately assessed on account of the “black list.”
Holmes, L. J., said: “The ‘black list’ was only an overt act of the conspiracy, and the sum awarded for it is included in the £200.”
One of the defendants, Quinn, appealed to the House of Lords.
Lord Chancellor Halsbury, Lords Macnaghten, Shand, Brampton, Robertson, and Lindley delivered opinions in favor of dismissing the appeal.
Earl of Halsbury, L. C.
[As to the effect of the decision in Allen v. Flood.]
Now the hypothesis of fact upon which Allen v. Flood was decided by a majority in this House was that the defendant there neither uttered nor carried into effect any threat at all: he simply warned the plaintiff’s employers of what the men themselves, without his persuasion or influence, had determined to do, and it was certainly proved that no resolution of the trade union had been arrived at at all, and that the trade union official had no authority himself to call out the men, which in that case was argued to be the threat which coerced the employers to discharge the plaintiff. It was further an element in the decision that there was no case of conspiracy or even combination. What was alleged to be done was only the independent and single action of the defendant, actuated in what he did by the desire to express his own views in favor of his fellow-members. It is true that I personally did not believe that was the true view of the facts, but, as I have said, we must look at the hypothesis of fact upon which the case was decided by the majority of those who took part in the decision.
Lord Macnaghten.