Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/195/194/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 13:56:57+00:00

Document:
Malicious mischief is a familiar and proper subject for legislative repression as are also combinations for the purpose of inflicting it, and liberty to combine to inflict such mischief, even upon such intangibles as business or reputation, is not among the rights which the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to protect.
trade, business or profession, is not in conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment so far as the section applies to such a combination made from solely malevolent motives.
The facts, which involved the constitutionality of § 4466a of the statutes of Wisconsin, 1898, are stated in the opinion of the Court.
"any two or more persons who shall combine . . . for the purpose of willfully or maliciously injuring another in his reputation, trade, business, or profession, by any means whatever,"
with the intent of willfully and maliciously injuring The Journal Company, a corporation, and certain persons named, stockholders and officers of the company, in their trade and business. It was alleged that the company was publisher of a newspaper in Milwaukee, and had notified an increase of about twenty-five percent in its charges for advertising, and that thereupon the plaintiffs in error, who were managers of other newspapers in the same place, in pursuance of their combination, and with the intent of willfully, maliciously, and unlawfully injuring The Journal Company and the others named, agreed as follows: if any person should agree to pay the increased rate to The Journal Company, then he should not be permitted to advertise in any of the other three newspapers except at a corresponding increase of rate; but if he should refuse to pay the Journal Company the increased rate, then he should be allowed to advertise in any of the other three papers at the rate previously charged. It was alleged that this conspiracy was carried out, and that much damage to the business of The Journal Company ensued.
The defendant Hoyt demurred to this information, setting up the Fourteenth Amendment. Aikens and Huegin filed pleas which admitted the combination and intent of injuring The Journal Company, and the resulting damage, but alleged that the combination was entered into in trade competition, and that the parties had the right to make it under the Fourteenth Amendment. The state demurred to the pleas. The demurrer of Hoyt was overruled; those of the state were sustained. The defendants were sentenced, and the judgment of the trial court was affirmed by the supreme court of the state on the authority of an earlier decision between the same parties, reported in 110 Wis. 189.
to ulterior gain for the parties themselves. Taken in that way, the word would hit making a new partnership if it was intended thereby to hurt someone's else business by competition. We shall not consider whether that branch of the statute, so construed, could be sustained, and express no opinion about it. The Supreme Court of Wisconsin has intimated that a narrower interpretation will be adopted, and in the present case we have to deal only with the other branch, depending on the word "maliciously," as we shall explain in a moment. The last-quoted word we must take as intended to add something to the word "willfully," and we can do so only by taking it in its true sense. We interpret "maliciously injuring" to import doing a harm malevolently, for the sake of the harm as an end in itself, and not merely as a means to some further end legitimately desired. Otherwise the phrase would be tautologous, since a willful injury is malicious in the sense familiar to declarations and indictments, where, indeed, the word means no more than foreseen, or even less than that. A death is caused of malice aforethought if, under the circumstances known to the actor, the probability of its ensuing from the act done is great and manifest according to common experience. Commonwealth v. Pierce, 138 Mass. 165, 178; 1 East, P.C. 262. See also Mogul Steamship Co. v. McGregor, 23 Q.B.D. 598, 613.
decision before them. A purely malevolent act may be done even in trade competition.
We come, then, to the question whether there is any constitutional objection to so much of the act as applies to this case. It has been thought by other courts as well as the Supreme Court of Wisconsin that such a combination, followed by damage, would be actionable even at common law. It has been considered that, prima facie, the intentional infliction of temporal damages is a cause of action, which, as a matter of substantive law, whatever may be the form of pleading, requires a justification if the defendant is to escape. Mogul Steamship Co. v. McGregor, 23 Q.B.D. 598, 613, , A.C. 25. If this is the correct mode of approach, it is obvious that justifications may vary in extent, according to the principle of policy upon which they are founded, and that, while some -- for instance, at common law, those affecting the use of land -- are absolute, Bradford v. Pickles , A.C. 587, others may depend upon the end for which the act is done. Moran v. Dunphy, 177 Mass. 485, 487; Plant v. Woods, 176 Mass. 492; Squires v. Wason Mfg. Co., 182 Mass. 137, 140-141. See cases cited in 62 L.R.A. 673. It is no sufficient answer to this line of thought that motives are not actionable, and that the standards of the law are external. That is true in determining what a man is bound to foresee, but not necessarily in determining the extent to which he can justify harm which he has foreseen. Quinn v. Leathem , A.C. 495, 524.
as a means to an end. Quinn v. Leathem , A.C. 495, 514. However these things may be, we have said enough to show that there is no anomaly in a statute at least which punishes a combination such as is charged here. It has been held that even the free use of land by a single owner for purely malevolent purposes may be restrained constitutionally, although the only immediate injury is to a neighboring landowner. Rideout v. Knox, 148 Mass. 368. Whether this decision was right or not, when it comes to the freedom of the individual, malicious mischief is a familiar and proper subject for legislative repression. Commonwealth v. Walden, 3 Cush. 558. Still more are combinations for the purpose of inflicting it. It would be impossible to hold that the liberty to combine to inflict such mischief, even upon such intangibles as business or reputation, was among the rights which the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to preserve. The statute was assumed to be constitutional in Arthur v. Oakes, 63 F. 310, 325-326.
acts, when done maliciously, cannot be denied because they are to be followed and worked out by conduct which might have been lawful if not preceded by the acts. No conduct has such an absolute privilege as to justify all possible schemes of which it may be a part. The most innocent and constitutionally protected of acts or omissions may be made a step in a criminal plot, and if it is a step in a plot, neither its innocence nor the Constitution is sufficient to prevent the punishment of the plot by law.
far. Probably the two phrases will be read together and the statute made unquestionable as a whole.
Not being able to concur in the conclusion of the Court that the opinion of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin has affixed to the statute of that state a much narrower meaning than the text of the statute imports, and thinking, on the contrary, that not only such text, but the construction of the statute adopted by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, operates to deprive the citizen of a lawful right to contract, protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, I dissent.

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