Court Opinion

ID: 9641486
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:33:01.981043+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:37.787803
License: Public Domain

EDGERTON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Appellant’s lot extends along the east side of Connecticut Avenue, one of Washington’s main thoroughfares, from Northampton Street to Oliver Street. It is not disputed that this was a quiet neighborhood when the covenant was made but has since become so unsuitable for private dwelling purposes that the injunction makes the lot practically useless to appellant and the community. The court’s conclusion, that the judgment in the former suit for cancella*29tion requires an injunction now, involves' these propositions among others: (1) if a restrictive covenant is valid it must he enforced by injunction, and (2) the neighborhood did not become substantially less suitable for private dwellings' during the interval between the two suits. I think (1) an error of law and (2) an error of fact.
The complaint in the former suit asked the court to cancel the covenant. The court dismissed that complaint without giving reasons. No doubt it thereby adjudged the covenant valid. But it did not and on the pleadings could not adjudge that the covenant should be enforced by injunction. What was not adjudged and could not be adjudged did not become res judicata.
The character of the neighborhood and the extent of change were relevant not only to the question whether the covenant was valid, which the court decided in the cancellation suit, but also to the question whether it would be equitable to enjoin the erection of an apartment house (or other violation of the covenant), which the court did not decide or have before it. But this does not make the two questions one. Neighborhood changes which may make it inequitable to enjoin a particular violation of a covenant at a particular time may not make it inequitable to impose damages for the same violation,1 or to enjoin a different violation, or even to enjoin the same violation at a different time. In other words, to say that a proposed violation of a covenant should not be enjoined is not to say that the covenant is invalid and should be can-celled. Conversely, to say that a covenant should not be cancelled is not to say that a particular violation, or any other, should be enjoined.
Though a covenant is both valid and, like the one here, of a sort usually enforceable by injunction, no injunction is granted if it would be of little use to the plaintiff, very hard on the defendant, and harmful to the public. Damages are then the only available remedy. In the case of a restrictive covenant, as in many other cases, the remedy of damages, whether or not it happens to be valuable, is technically called inadequate and equity, unless limited by Constitution or statute, has jurisdiction to grant an injunction. But “an injunction is, as it always has been, ‘an extraordinary remedial process which is granted, not as a matter of right, but in the exercise of a sound judicial discretion.’ Morrison v. Work, 266 U.S. 481, 490, 45 S.Ct. 149, 153, 69 L.Ed. 394.” 2 This rule of equity is so fundamental that the Supreme Court has enforced it where statutory language had seemed to us to obviate it. The Emergency Price Control Act of 1942, 50 U.S.C.A.Appendix, § 901 et seq., provided that when certain violations were shown “a permanent or temporary injunction, restraining order, or other order shall be granted without bond.” 3 Because of that language we held in the Iiecht case, Judge Groner dissenting, that “an injunction or other order is to be granted as of course when violations of the Act are found.”4 The Supreme Court held without dissent that we were wrong. It said: “A grant of jurisdiction to issue compliance orders hardly suggests an absolute duty to do so under any and all circumstances. We cannot but think that if Congress had intended to make such a drastic departure from the traditions of equity practice, an unequivocal statement of its purpose would have been made. * * * We are dealing here with the requirements of equity practice with a background of several hundred years of history.” 5
The court suggests that appellant’s proposed building would reduce the value for residence purposes of the lots east of it and thus gradually undermine the covenant over the whole area. I think it more *30likely that the building would increase the value for residence purposes of those lots, because it would screen them from Connecticut Avenue. But this matter is not for us to decide. The District Court should consider it, along with all other relevant circumstances, in exercising its discretion on the question whether it is or is not equitable to grant an injunction. In the cancellation suit the court could not exercise its discretion on that question because the question was not before it. In this injunction suit the question was before it and it failed to consider the question. This failure would have been erroneous even if the court had decided in the present suit that the covenant was valid.
It was not less erroneous because the validity of the covenant was not decided in this suit but in a former suit. On the contrary that fact, in my opinion, makes the appealed judgment erroneous for a further reason. If the covenant was valid at the time of the suit for cancellation it does not follow that it remained valid. The District Court recognized in this injunction suit that if changes since the date of the cancellation suit were “substantial * * * it would be proper to permit further testimony to show changes [before that date] in order that the Court might determine whether the changes shown to have occurred. before and after that date would make it inequitable to enforce the covenants.” 6 The court found there was no substantial change since 1943. This finding seems to me clearly erroneous.
In June 1943, 9,500 vehicles used this part of Connecticut Avenue on an ordinary day. In December 1947, 16,000 vehicles did so, though there is less traffic in winter than in summer. It seems a fair inference that traffic approximately doubled between 1943 and 1948. That gasoline was rationed in 1943 does not greatly reduce the importance of the fact that in 1943 the place was, and was likely to remain for an indefinite time, not more than half as busy and noisy as in 1948. A witness who lived close by described the increase in traffic as “tremendous.” Another said “the flow of traffic * * * is almost continuous from about 6:30 or 7 a.m, until well after midnight. Especially on Sundays and holidays the traffic is very bad all day and all night.” Not only traffic but business activity in the neighborhood increased considerably between 1943 and 1948. There is now a “very active * * * commercial island” on the opposite side of Connecticut Avenue. Liquor stores, a shoe store, and a furniture repair shop-have been opened. Commercial buildings have been remodeled and enlarged. Taken together, the changes since 1943 seem to me clearly substantial.

 This was held or suggested in Jackson v. Stevenson, 156 Mass. 496, 31 N.E. 691, 32 Am.St.Rep. 476; McClure v. Leaycraft, 183 N.Y. 36, 75 N.E. 961, 5 Ann.Cas. 45; Amerman v. Deane, 132 N.Y. 355, 30 N.E. 741, 28 Am.St.Rep. 584; and Bull v. Burton, 227 N.Y. 101, 124 N. E. 111. Dean Bound has criticized these cases. 33 Harv.L.Rev. 813, 820.

 Mr. Justice Frankfurter, concurring, in Hurd v. Hodge, 334 U.S. 24, 36, 68 S.Ct. 847, 853.

 § 205(a), 56 Stat. 23, 33, 50 U.S.C. A.Appendix, § 925(a).

 Brown v. IIecht Co., 78 U.S.App.D. C. 98, 101, 137 F.2d 689, 692.

 Hecht Co. v. Bowles, 321 U.S. 321, 329, 64 S.Ct. 587, 591, 88 L.Ed. 754.

 Accord, Hurd v. Albert, 214 Cal. 15, 3 P.2d 545, 76 A.L.R. 1348. Cf. Williamson v. Grider, 97 Ark. 588, 135 S. W. 361.