Case Name: The People, Resp'ts, v. Joseph Barondess, App'lt
Court: New York Supreme Court, General Term
Jurisdiction: New York
Decision Date: 1891-11-30
Citations: 41 N.Y. St. Rep. 659
Docket Number: 
Parties: The People, Resp’ts, v. Joseph Barondess, App’lt
Judges: 
Reporter: New York State Reporter
Volume: 41
Pages: 659–672

Head Matter:
The People, Resp’ts, v. Joseph Barondess, App’lt
(Supreme Court, General Term, First Department,
Filed November 30, 1891.)
1. Extortion—Threat to prevent strikers prom returning to work.
The obtaining of money from another, with his consent, induced by a threat that his workmen who had been on strike would not return to work unless the money was paid, is not extortion within the meaning of the Penal Code.
2. Same.
Such a threat is not a threat to do an unlawful injury to property.
(Daniels, J., dissents.)
Appeal from a judgment of the court of oyer and terminer of the county of Mew York, convicting the defendant of the crime of extortion. For the facts, see dissenting opinion.
Howe & Hummel, for app'lt; Barlow S. Weeks, for resp’ts.

Opinion:
Barrett, J.
The main question in this case is whether the-obtaining of money from another, with his consent, induced by a. threat to injure the business of the individual threatened, by persuading his employees to absent themselves from work, is " extortion," as that offense is defined in the Penal Code, § 552, 553, subd. 1. I held, in the cases of The People v. Wilzig, Holdorf and Dannhauser, 4 N. Y. Crim., 403, that it was extortion to-procure money by fear induced by the threat to continue a so-called " boycott," in which the elements of violence, intimidation and direct injury to tangible personal property were prominent and marked features. It was also ruled in those cases that the threat to do an unlawful injury to the property of another, which is one of the statutory conditions of this offense, might be predicated of an intimidating attitude on the part of those engaged in the overt act without actual violence or direct threat by word of mouth. Actual violence was there proved, also actual injury to the complainant's furniture, goods and fixtures; and the-question whether the threat to continue the "boycott" in the-manner in which it had been conducted amounted to a threat h> continue the physical injury to the complainant's furniture, goods; and fixtures was left to the jury.
In the case at bar the elements of violence, intimidation and; physical injury to tangible property are entirely wanting. The threats made were not threats oí violence, nor was the attitude of the defendant or of his associates an attitude of physical intimidation. The utmost that can be claimed by the prosecution is that the defendant, as a leader, exercised sufficient influence over the complainants' employees to keep them from resuming their employment until he was paid the sum finally agreed upon. He utilized that influence and held it over the complainants to accomplish his purpose. The employees, whom he professed to lepresent, were equally free from violence or from an attitude of intimidation. Thus the threat, as already stated,'was merely that the men would not work until the defendant was paid. Was that a threat to do an unlawful injury to the complainants' property? The answer, in my judgment, must be in the negative. It certainly was not a threat to do injury to the material or to the other property contained in the 'complainants' place of business. It was, therefore, simply a threat to injure their business or estate; in other words, to reduce his gains or to prevent their making gains. There can be no doubt that any injury to one's business is an "injury to property" for the purposes of a civil action. Indeed, the Code of Civil Procedure, § 3343, subd. 10, defines an " injury to property " as an actionable act whereby the estate of another is lessened. But this definition is expressly limited to the construction of the Civil Code in which it is embodied, while it is conspicuously absent from the list of definitions given in the Penal Code. Penal Code, § 718. It must be supposed that the legislature thus intended to eliminate mere actionable acts, whereby the estate of another is lessened, from the domain of criminal offenses, and to limit indictable wrongs to injuries done to personal property, as such property is defined in the Penal Code. Thus a threat unlawfully to injure "goods, chattels and effects," or to deface or destroy " money, evidences of rights in action or written instruments " of a particular description, would be a threat to do an unlawful injury to property, and would suffice to make out a case of extortion. This view is in harmony with the general purpose and intent of criminal jurisprudence which deals mainly with what is materially evidenced. The opposite view would leave the question of guilt or innocence to be decided, not by the act of the accused alone, operating upon some tangible thing, but by evidence aliunde with respect to an intangible condition of affairs.
If, for instance, property here means "business," then what was the threat, and how was it to work an injury to the complainants' business ? It was, as we have seen, a threat to keep people from working for the complainants. Not all people, but the former employees of the complainants. Why should that necessarily work an injury to their business? Only by showing the urgent present need of workmen, the inability to secure competent persons to fill the places of the former employees, the actual condition of the material required to be manufactured, the extent of existing orders for manufactured goods and a variety of other considerations going to make up the present status of the business. Now, if the complainants could supply the places of the former employees with better workmen, at less wages, then the threat would be to benefit the business; not to injure it. But even if the tendency of the act threatened might be to injure the business, how would that help the matter ? The statute does not deal with tendencies or probabilities, much less possibilities. The threat must be to do an unlawful injury to property; not to do something which may affect it injuriously, but which must injure it.
If the prosecution is right, the statute would operate upon " good-will " as well as upon reduced profits; in fact, upon property invisible and non-objective, the very existence of which would have to be brought to light by independent evidence. This could not have been the intention of the statute. The corpus delicti is, first, the obtaining of the money or property, and, second, the threat to injure some specific thing by a direct physical attack upon the object of the threat. Property and person are placed in the same category, and the property contemplated is something that can be inj ured in the same way as "the person" can be injured.
This injury, whether to person or property, must surely be direct. The prosecution, par example, cannot sny that, although there was no threat to molest the complainant physically, or even to touch his person, yet the menace, if executed, might have affected his nerves and thus injured his person. Consideration of the law as it existed prior to the Penal Code adds force to this construction. At common law, extortion signified any oppression by color of right; but, technically, it was defined to be the taking of money by an officer by reason of his office, where none at all was due, or not so much due, or when it was not yet due. Wharton's Criminal Law, 3d ed., 833 ; 1 Hawk P. C., ch.68, § 1; The People v. Whaley, 6 Cowen, 663.
These rules as to the taking of unlawful fees were codified in the Revised Statutes. 2 R. S., Edmond's ed., 669, 670, § 5, 6 and 7; id., 778, 779, _§ 17. And we also find there a provision making a verbal or written threat to accuse another of any offense, with intent to extort property or money, a misdemeanor. 2 R. S., Edm. ed., 712, § 2. The obtaining of money by force or fear •does not, therefore, seem to have been extortion either at common law or under the Revised Statutes. It was robbery at common Jaw to extort money under the threat of charging one with an unnatural crime. Rex v. Jones, 1 Leach, 139;. Rex v. Donnally, id., 193 ; Rex v. Cannon, R. & R., 146.
And this view was taken of the provision of the Revised Statutes defining robbery in the second degree, in The People v. McDaniels, 1 Park. Cr., 198, notwithstanding the specific legislation to which I have referred, making the threat of such an .accusation, with intent to extort money, a misdemeanor. Under the Revised Statutes the sending of a letter threatening to accuse any person of any crime or to do any injury to the person or property of any one, with a view or intent to extort any, etc., was declared to be an attempt to rob. And the fact that this offense was placed in the same class as that of robbery was emphasized in The People v. Griffin, 2 Barb., 427.
It will thus be seen that the offense now under consideration, thoughclassed for the first time in the Penal Code as extortion, 3'cally completes the legislation against robbery, attempts at robbery and cognate offenses. Section 552 of the Penal Code is in the alternative, ti-eating extoi'tion by force and fear as one thing and extortion by official action as another. These two methods of extortion are separately defined in subsequent 'sections, but it is apparent from the language of the section providing the penalty for extortion by force or fear (§ 554) that the latter is but a supplement, under the name of extortion, to robbery in the first, second and third degrees. This section (554) provides for such punishment only when the money or other property has been extorted by force or fear " under circumstances not amounting to robbery in other words, when the money or other property has been obtained " with the consent " of the complainant and not " against his will." For really the main distinction between robbery in' some degree and this form of extortion lies just there. Robbery is the unlawful taking against the will by means of force or violence or fear of injury, immediate or future, to one's peraon or property, Penal Code, § 224, while extortion is the obtaining with consent by similar means. Thus unless robbery could be predicated of the taking against the complainants' will of the money here obtained with their consent (that is, in case such money had really been take3x against their will), it is difficult to see how extortion can be sustained in a case where it was taken with his consent It certainly would be a novel indictment for robbery which charged the taking of property against the will of the complainant by means of fear of injury to his property, e. g., his business, resulting from threats on the part of the robber or highwayman that he would use his influence with the complainant's landlord not to extend his lease, or with the manufacturers not to sell him goods, or with the banks not to discount his paper.
Thei'e is another difficulty in the p3'esent case, and that is that the injury threatened must in itself be "unlawful." Row, the-abstention from work on the part, of the operatives was not unlawful. It is not claimed that they broke any contract of service- or hiring, knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that the-probable consequence of so doing would be to endanger human life or to cause grievous bodily injury or to expose valuable property to destruction or serious injury. Penal Code, § 673. It is not, in fact, pretended that these operatives were working for the complainants under any special contract at all. On the other-hand, they were not guilty of " conspiracy," for the reason that orderly and peaceable co-opei'ation for the purpose of obtaining-an advance in the rate of wages - is expressly excepted from the conspiracy sections. Penal Code, § 170.
This exception was further emphasized by an amendment to §• 675 of the Penal Code, which went into effect on the first of September in the present year and which reads as follows: "But. nothing in this Code contained shall be so construed as to prevent, any person from demanding an increase of wages or from assembling and using all lawful means to induce employers to pay such. wages to all persons employed by them as shall be a just and fair -compensation for services rendered."
Thus the law is unmistakable that so long as there is neither violence nor an attitude of intimidation nor interference with others, employees are free to work or to refrain from working, as they please; free individually and free in combination. The attitude of the complainants' employees, at the time the threat in question was made, was not, therefore, unlawful. It would seem to follow that a threat to induce a continuance of their lawful attitude could not of itself be unlawful, at least in the sense of -criminal. Whether a civil action would lie for damages sustained by the defendant's acts is another question, one with which we •have nothing now to do. It is sufficient -for the determination of -this case that the defendant's threat to use his influence to keep men from working for the complainants, however wrong morally, was not criminal. It was not a threat to do the complainants an -unlawful injury, but to continue a condition of things which, even if injurious, was undoubtedly lawful. The act threatened, that is, the act of advising, persuading or exhorting the men not to resume work, was not in itself indictable, and was no more unlawful than :the act of the men in abstaining from work. The statutory crime •does not consist of a threat to do an improper or unjust act, nor •even of a threat to injure another's business by lawful means, but to do an unlawful injury to the property of another. Whatever injury was being done to the complaintants' business at the time •of the threat in question was not an unlawful injury. And it follows that the defendant cannot be said to have threatened to do an unlawful injury to such business.
For these reasons the judgment and conviction should be reversed and a new trial ordered.
Ingraham, J.
The defendant was indicted for extorting from the firm of Popkin & Marks one hundred dollars by means of a -threat " that he would do unlawful injury to their property; that is to say, to injure and destroy the said business of them, the said Popkin & Marks, and prevent and hinder them from carrying on ±he same."
The crime of extortion is defined by § 552 of the Code to be the obtaining of property from another with his consent, induced by a wrongful use of force or fear or under color of official right, •and the defendant claimed on the trial, and now claims before us, that he is not guilty of extortion as defined by this act, and that •conceding the testimony offered on behalf of the People to be .true, the crime was not proven.
By § 553 of the Penal Code it is provided that "fear, such as will constitute extortion, may be induced by a threat to do an unlawful injury to the person or property of the individual threatened, or to any relative of his or to any member of his family," .and to support this judgment it must appear that the defendant •extorted from the firm of Popkin & Marks the one hundred dollars mentioned in the indictment by the wrongful use of fear induced hj a threat to do an unlawful injury to the property of such firm.
From an analysis of § 553 it appears that the threat to induce fear as defined by the section must contain two elements: First,, the threat must be to do what is unlawful; and, second, the injury must be an injury to the property or person of the individual threatened, or to a relative of his or to a member of his family, and unless it appears that what the person accused threatened to do was unlawful, and, if performed, would do an injury to the person or property of the person threatened, the party making the threat is not guilty of the crime.
In construing this section of the Code we should give a reasonable construction to the language used, not a forced and unnatural construction extending the meaning of the words so as to include threats which a person of ordinary intelligence would not understand to be within the fair meaning of the language.
Popkin & Marks were cloak manufacturers in the city of Hew York. Their employees had left work in consequence of a dispute between themselves and the firm as to wages, and on the 9th of February an agreement was arrived at between the firm and their employees whereby the employees agreed to return to work on the following morning.
On that morning, however, they did not return to work, but the defendant came to the office of the firm accompanied by several of the firm's employees and at that time he demanded the sum of $500, saying to Mr. Popkin : "You have got to pay me $500 to have your people back again to work." Upon the refusal of Popkin to pay any sum, he reduced his demand to $300, saying: "If you do not give me $300 you cannot have your people back again to work; I will take $300 as long as I am here, and as-quick as I am going to leave this place it will cost you $500."
That demand was refused and defendant left his place. In a few minutes Zipkin, one of his companions, returned and after-some consultation with Marks, one of the members of the firm, Marks said he would pay the defendant $100. Zipkin left and in a short time returned with defendant, who then said : " I will take $100; I am doing that as a favor to Zipkin and instead of $300, if you want your people back I will take $100."
A check was then drawn by the film to the order of the defendant and given to him, upon which he drew from the bank account of the firm the sum of $100, and this is the only evidence of any threat made by defendant to Popkin & Marks or to any one.
It seems to me clear, that there was no threat to do an unlawful injury to property. The defendant did not expressly threaten Popkin & Marks that he would do anything himself; there was. no statement that he would prevent the men from working; what, he said was that they would not return to work. It was certainly not unlawful for these workmen to refuse to work for Popkin & Marks,nor was it unlawful for defendant to advise them not to work. There was no threat, therefore, to do an unlawful act. Defendant did not of his own accord go to the place of business of Popkin & Marks, but was sent for by them, and his statement that the men would not return to work, even if that could be construed into a threat that he would prevent them from returning to work, was not a threat to do an unlawful injury to the property of Popkin & Marks, because of the fact that unless the men did return Popkin & Marks could not advantageously continue their business.
If one of Popkin & Marks' employees, had refused to work for them, such a refusal, although it might have seriously affected their business, might have caused them serious loss, would not have been an unlawful inj ury to their business, because such an employee had the legal right to work for Popkin k Marks or not as he pleased, and if it was not unlawful for an employee to refuse to work it was not unlawful for a third party to advise or induce him to refuse to work, so that a threat of such third party that he would prevent such employee from working would not be .a threat to do an unlawful injury to the employer's business.
Many illustrations might be given of instances where the exercise of "a legal right by one person would cause an injury to the property of another, and where there is no penalty or liability because of the exercise of such right.
The owner of a dwelling house could devote it to business purposes and thereby injure the value of adjoining property. Tet such use would not be an unlawful injury to the adjoining property, and a threat by the owner to make such use of his property would not be a threat to do an "unlawful injury" to property. It might be said to be a threat to do a " lawful injury " to the adjoining house, but such a threat is not sufficient to sustain a conviction for extortion, and it seems to me equally clear that a threat to induce the owner thereof to so use his house is not a threat to unlawfully injure property, because if it is not unlawful for the owner to use it for a particular use, it is not unlawful for a person to procure the owner to so use it.
Nor do I think "that such a threat can be said to be a threat to do an injury to property.
There is no evidence that the defendant had any knowledge that Popkin k Marks had any unmanufactured goods on hand at the time of the occasion in controversy, or that he knew, or had reason to know, that the refusal of the men to return to work would cause injury to any of their property.
Popkin k Marks had a right to employ such men as they chose and their employes had a right to work for whom they chose, and the mere supposition that the refusal of this particular body of men to work for Popkin k Marks would in some way embarrass them in manufacturing goods for their fall trade, is all that there is to sustain the charge that this was a threat to injure property.
But ir seems to me clear that the evident intent of the statute is that the threat should be to injure a specific piece of property.
There must be the existence of a res and a threat to injure it.
The section in question is part of chapter 5 of title 15 of the Penal Oode. The title treats of crimes against property, and includes arson, burglary and housebreaking, forgery and counter ieiting, larceny, embezzlement and extortion. The word property,, as defined by § 718 of the Code, would not include a man's business, and there could not certainly be an indictment for larceny for stealing the business.
The meaning of a threat to do an unlawful injury to the person of an individual would be a threat to, in some way, injure liis body, and the threat to do an unlawful injury to his property, applying the words in their ordinary significance, would be in some way to injure some specific property.
It could hardly be claimed that a threat to injure a person's character or his professional reputation would be an injury to» property within the meaning of this act; and yet, such a threat, where the successful conduct of such person's business depended largely upon his character or reputation, might seriously injure his business.
It is a threat to injure the thing that constitutes the crime; not to do an act which indirectly may do damage to business or its-successful conduct.
I think, therefore, that the evidence was insufficient to sustain the conviction, and the judgment must be reversed and a new trial ordered.