Court Opinion

ID: 3299869
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2016-07-05 17:16:29.669841+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:14:24.416328
License: Public Domain

In response to the petition for a rehearing of this cause I desire to say that, while concurring in the judgment of reversal, I find some expressions in the opinion of Justice Henshaw which I deem unnecessary to the conclusion of the court, and which, if not absolutely inconsistent with my views, as expressed in the case of Parkinson v. Building Trades Council, 154 Cal. 581, [98 P. 1027], are yet in apparent conflict with what I deem to be the true doctrine applicable in cases of this character. I take no exception to the proposition that an act in its essence lawful does not become actionable *Page 558 
because inspired by a bad motive. But I am convinced that the weight of reason and authority is in favor of the view that the motive of a harmful act is material where the act is not absolutely and unqualifiedly lawful in itself. This is illustrated by cases of malicious prosecution, unlawful imprisonment, and libel, in which the pleas of probable cause and privilege are defeated by proof of actual malice, and the doctrine of those cases rests upon a principle which makes it fully applicable to a case wherein it is made to appear that the ruin or injury of a legitimate business (by which I mean any useful vocation open to every citizen as of common right) is the direct result of a combination formed for the primary purpose of injuring that business, and this notwithstanding such injury may involve some incidental advantage to those who have caused it. This, which appears to be the necessary complement or counterpart of the proposition that injury incidentally resulting to a business from a combination entered into for the benefit by lawful means of those who engage in it, is not actionable, is supported not only by reason but by authority. Besides the case of Quinn v. Leatham referred to and commented upon in the Parkinson case, I would call attention to the opinion of the circuit court of appeals in National Fire-proofing Co. v. MasonBuilders' Association, 169 Fed. 259, from which I quote the following statement of the doctrine for which I am contending.
"The direct object or purpose of a combination furnishes the primary test of its legality. It is not every injury inflicted upon third persons in its operation that renders the combination unlawful. It is not enough to establish illegality in an agreement between certain persons, to show that it works harm to others. An agreement entered into for the primary purpose of promoting the interest of the parties is not rendered illegal by the fact that it may incidentally injure third persons. Conversely, an agreement entered into for the primary purpose of injuring another is not rendered legal by the fact that it may incidentally benefit the parties. As a general rule it may be stated that, when the chief object of a combination is to injure or oppress third persons, it is a conspiracy; but that when such injury or oppression is merely incidental to the carrying out of a lawful purpose, it is not a conspiracy. Stated in another way: A combination entered *Page 559 
into for the real malicious purpose of injuring a third person in his business or property may amount to a conspiracy and furnish a ground of action for the damages sustained, or call for an injunction, even though formed for the ostensible purpose of benefiting its members and actually operating to some extent to their advantage; but a combination without such ulterior oppressive object, entered into merely for the purpose of promoting by lawful means the common interests of its members, is not a conspiracy."
This doctrine, however, cannot avail the respondent here as the case is presented by the record, for although it is found by the trial judge that the defendants without any interests of their own to subserve, or any lawful object to promote did conspire and confederate together for the purpose of unlawfully injuring the plaintiff in the manner alleged in the complaint, it is also found, as shown in the opinion of the court, that the agreement with the four favored hospitals was entered into by the defendants solely for the purpose and with the intent to subservetheir own interests. These two findings appear to me to stand in absolute and irreconcilable opposition to each other and the result is no finding at all upon a point essential to the validity of the judgment, which must therefore be reversed.