Opinion ID: 1475251
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: Examination of Plaintiff's Books.

Text: In the course of the hearing before the master the plaintiff refused to open its books to an accounting. The defendants claim that this affects the entire accounting. The trial court disregarded this contention. We might have deemed this error, had the plaintiff been attempting to recover profits for sales which it did not make or could not make because the defendants had taken customers from it. The bill and supplemental bill, however, indicate to us that the plaintiff has not attempted to recover from the defendants damages or profits for its loss of customers. The prayers of the bill and supplemental bill are (1) that the defendant be compelled to account for all strengthened (sic. laminated) glass embodying any of the improvements of the patent which it manufactured and sold etc.; (2) that the defendant be compelled to account for and pay to the plaintiff all profits, gains, and savings by it acquired and the actual damages suffered by the plaintiff from the infringement; (3) that the defendant and its officers be restrained from further violating the plaintiff's patent rights; (4) that the defendant be decreed to pay the costs of suit; (5) that the defendant be restrained from making and selling the product; (6) that the defendant be restrained from further infringing the patent; (7) that a writ of subpna ad respondendum issue. There is no prayer for an accounting of damages for loss of sales by the plaintiff occasioned by acts of the defendant. We think that inasmuch as the question of damages through the loss of sales was not raised by the pleadings, the matter of an examination of the plaintiff's books by the defendants was not vital to the issues raised by the plaintiff in its two bills. We find no error in the ruling of the court below on this issue.