Court Opinion

ID: 8756254
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 11:47:31.027426+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:01:16.383389
License: Public Domain

GRAY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting). I am constrained to dissent from the judgment of the majority of the court. I do not think the learned judge of the court below exercised other than a sound judicial discretion in granting the motion for a special injunction, pendente lite. He has stated in his opinion that important and doubtful questions of law and fact had been raised by the pleadings and affidavits, and I cannot agree that these questions should have been so determined by him on a motion for a preliminary injunction, as to make necessary the dismissal of the bill. I say, to make necessary the dismissal of the bill, because it is apparent that, to have denied the injunction pendente lite, and thus to have permitted the distribution of the stocks of the Northern Pacific and Great Northern, in the custody and control of the defendant company, according to the plan proposed, would have practically frustrated the object of the suit, and have rendered unavailing a decree, as prayed for, in favor of complainants. Nothing but a clear conviction that complainant’s bill was without equity, and should therefore be dismissed without further hearing, would have justified the court below in refusing the preliminary injunction. On the other hand, if the court were satisfied that a prima facie case had been presented by complainants, and that the balance of advantage or disadvantage to result to the-parties respectively from the granting or withholding an injunction was such as to sanction such action, it was the exercise of a sound judicial discretion to grant the injunction and preserve the status quo,, until there was opportunity, after full hearing, in the orderly progress of the suit, to consider, with the deliberation they demanded, the questions of law and fact raised by the pleadings and evidence in the case. The responsibility for the exercise of this power and duty rested upon, the court below.
Upon appeal from an order granting a preliminary injunction, a reviewing court is not called upon, ordinarily, to enter into and decide-the merits- of the case, and unless the court below, in granting the preliminary injunction, has violated some rule of equity or abused its discretion, or acted improvidently, this court should not interfere with its-discharge of the responsibility and duty imposed upon it. “The right to exercise this discretion has been vested in the trial courts. It has not been granted to the appellate courts, and the question for them to determine is, not how they would have exercised this discretion, but whether or not the courts below have exercised it so carelessly or unreasonably that they have passed beyond the wide latitude permitted them, and violated the rules of law which should have guided their action.” That there was no such abuse of discretion in this case by the learned judge of the court below, will, I think, be apparent from his own statement, and from the admission made to that effect by the majority of the court. It seems to me clear that he should be afforded the untrammeled opportunity he sought, for a full hearing and deliberate investigation of' what he has stated to be the important and doubtful questions of law and fact presented by this record. Such a course would be consonant with the genius of our judicial system, by not depriving the parties, or a reviewing court, of the benefit to result from the examination and judgment of a court of first instance. This salutary feature of our system would be measurably lost, if the right to appeal from an interlocutory-*341decree for a special injunction, given by the act of Congress, should be so construed as to allow courts of first instance to refer, and the appellate courts to assume, the determination of questions arising on motions for such injunctions. I cannot accept the view, that it is our duty in the case at bar to do more than merely determine whether the sound judicial discretion of the court below has or has not been abused, declining to consider what ought to be the decision on the merits at final hearing. I do not think that the established general rule of appellate courts requires more than this, and I think we can conform to this general rule “without in effect renouncing the appellate jurisdiction conferred upon us by Congress.”
As I am clearly of the opinion that the court below, in granting the special injunction, pendente lite, has given due consideration and effect to the balance of inconvenience and injury which may result to one partv or the other, and that the prima facie case was sufficiently established at the hearing to entitle the complainants to the protection of such an injunction, I am in favor of affirming the interlocutory decree.