Court Opinion

ID: 9445665
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:35:57.85875+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:22.276426
License: Public Domain

FINNEGAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Actually this is an action by Seagram Distillers Corp. to enjoin the multiple defendants from advertising, offering for sale or selling Seagram products at less than the prices stipulated from time to time in. accordance with the Fair Trade contracts entered into by Seagram-Distillers Corporation in the State of Illinois. A preliminary injunction was granted below and we affirmed that restraining order. 221 F.2d 815. After our remand the parties stipulated in the district court:-
“Plaintiff is, and at all times mentioned in the complaint has been engaged throughout the United States and Illinois, in the business of dealing in, selling and distributing alcoholic beverages of standard quality produced by Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Ltd., Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Inc., and corporations affiliated with said corporations. Said bever.ages (sometimes hereinafter referred to as ‘Seagram products’) include Seagram’s V. O., Seagram’s Seven Crown Blended Whiskey and Seagram Ancient Bottle Gin, and are sold in various sized bottles, the labels or containers of which bear the trade-marks, brands or names of Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Ltd., Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Inc., or of corporations affiliated with said corporation, which are the producers thereof. Each of the beverages is, and during all of the times mentioned in the complaint was, in free, fair and open competition with commodities of the same general class, produced by others, and sold and distributed throughout Illinois. Plaintiff herein has for several years pri- or to the dates mentioned in the complaint expended large sums of money in advertising Seagram products and during the past several years plaintiff expended for such purpose an amount in excess of Five Hundred Thousand Dollars ($500,-000.00) in Illinois alone, and the trade-marks, brands or names under which Seagram products are sold have become widely and favorably known to the trade and public generally in Illinois and plaintiff has sold large quantities of each of said products in Chicago and throughout Illinois.
“Plaintiff is and continuously, since long prior to the dates mentioned in the complaint, has been the sole person authorized by the producers of Seagram products to sell and distribute said products in Illinois, and has during all of said time made sales of said products to various wholesale distributors throughout Illinois.
“Plaintiff has executed so-called Fair Trade contracts with large numbers of retailers of alcoholic beverages in Illinois. A copy of the form of said executed contracts is attached hereto as Exhibit A.”
That, in my judgment, is not merely an ineffectual stipulation to confer jurisdiction on the district court, but rather a stipulation of the matter in controversy. Plaintiff’s vice-president, Teece, in charge of Central Division of Seagram-Distillers Corporation testified in substance during the preliminary injunction hearings that his company spent in excess of $300,000 for advertising promotion and outdoor signs in Illinois, all in connection with Seagram products. Use of that first record was authorized by order of this court based on the parties’ agreement.
Plaintiff brought this action to protect good will manifested under paragraph 3 of the stipulation, quoted above. But I refrain, for the purposes of this dissent from reaching other points raised by defendant’s appeal which incidently are *461far more serious than the short treatment accorded them by the majority.
Under 28 U.S.C.A. § 1332 “The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of all civil actions where the matter in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $3,-000 exclusive of interest and costs, and is between: (1) Citizens of different States * * * ” “By matter in dispute,” Mr. Justice Field wrote in Smith v. Adams, 1889, 130 U.S. 167, 175, 9 S.Ct. 566, 569, 32 L.Ed. 895, “is meant the subject of litigation — the matter upon which the action is brought and issue is joined, and in relation to which, if the issue be one of fact, testimony is taken. It is conceded that the pecuniary value of the matter in dispute may be determined, not only by the money judgment prayed, where such is the case, but in some cases by the increased or diminished value of the property directly affected by the relief prayed * * *.” Starting with Glenwood Light & Water Co. v. Mutual Light, Heat & Power Co., 1915, 239 U.S. 121, 36 S.Ct. 30, 60 L.Ed. 174, there is a line of decisions in various federal courts, permitting “the jurisdictional amount is to be calculated on the basis of the property right which is being injured.” John B. Kelly, Inc., v. Lehigh Nav. Coal Co., 8 Cir., 1945, 151 F.2d 743, 746; First English Lutheran Church of Oklahoma City v. Evangelical Lutheran Synod, 10 Cir., 1953, 135 F.2d 701; Purcell v. Summers, 4 Cir., 1942, 126 F.2d 390. And several of the district judges in our own circuit have thought that in Fair Trade cases the jurisdictional amount is measured by the value of the right to be protected. See, e. g., Calvert Distillers Corp. v. Rosen, D.C.Ill.1953, 115 F.Supp. 146.
McNutt v. General Motors Acceptance Corp., 1936, 298 U.S. 178, 56 S.Ct. 780, 80 L.Ed. 1135, rests upon an attack directed at a regulatory statute. There General Motors sought to restrain enforcement of an Indiana Act regulating the business of purchasing contracts arising out of retail installment sales. In the case before us we are not dealing with state taxation or its regulatory authority but with an alleged invasion by the defendants of a right asserted by plaintiff. If the plaintiff’s alleged right fails because of some defect in the Illinois Fair Trade Act that is something else and should be faced. But to stop short and reverse this case on the mechanical basis of a tenuous determination of the jurisdictional dollar sign is an approach I refuse to pursue.