These resolutions found their way into the hands of the advertisers in the “Times.”
The various trades unions, affiliated in the council, represent, as is claimed by them, a purchasing power amounting to over $400,000 in each and every week. Owing to the issue and distribution of the aforesaid circular and resolutions, the individual members of the union, and their friends and sympathizers, withheld their patronage from the “Newark Times.” The circulation of the paper was thereby considerably reduced.
The issue and distribution of said circular and resolutions caused certain persons, who had theretofore advertised in the “Times,” to cease advertising in that paper.
Green, V. C.
[After stating the testimony of Mr. Beckmeyer, secretary of the Essex Trades Council, as to the signification of the word “boycott,” as used in the circular and publications.]
From which it is to be gathered that the use of the word “boycott” in the publications, as applied to the “Times,” would be regarded by the members of the various unions to mean only that they should refrain from trading or dealing with the complainant, and with those who oppose the organizations in their actions and doings with reference to the complainant.
I do not see that this changes the character of the injury, but even if it does, so far as the members of the organizations are concerned, the difficulty is that these communications were addressed to the public and indiscriminately circulated. They were not intended only for members of the order by whom a technical signification would be given to the word “boycott,” but to the general public who would read them and give the word its accepted meaning.
[After quoting various definitions of “boycott”] Mr. Justice Taft, in Toledo Co. v. Penn. Co., 54 Fed. Rep. 746, says: “As usually understood a boycott is a combination of many to cause a loss to one person by coercing others against their will, to withdraw from him their beneficial business intercourse, through threats that, unless those others do so, the many will cause similar loss to them.”
But the defendants insist, and counsel vigorously urge, that this particular boycott is not open to such adverse criticism, because “there was no violence, intimidation, coercion or threats used, and that everything was done in a peaceful and orderly manner.” How far is this claim borne out by the facts? It is true, there was no public disturbance, no physical injury, no direct threats of personal violence or of actual attack on or destruction of tangible property as a means of intimidation or coercion. Force and violence, however, while they may enter largely into the question in a criminal prosecution, are not necessary factors in the right to a civil remedy. But even in criminal law, I do not understand that intimidation, even when a statutory ingredient of crime, necessarily presupposes personal injury or the fear thereof. The clear weight of authority undoubtedly is that a man may be intimidated into doing, or refraining from doing, by fear of loss of business, property or reputation, as well as by dread of loss of life, or injury to health or limb; and the extent of this fear need not be abject, but only such as to overcome his judgment, or induce him not to do, or to do, that which otherwise he would have done or have left undone.