Court Opinion

ID: 9419580
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:50:18.638389+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:19.168666
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Stone,
dissenting,
with whom Mr. Justice Roberts and Mr. Justice, Reed concur.
An injunction is a continuing threat to those named as subject to it, of the pains of contempt proceedings if they disobey its provisions. The opinion of the Court recognizes that the present injunction running against the employer’s “successors and assigns” purports to include within its sweep some who are not subject to its command and is thus a threat to those over whom the Court has no authority. The opinion also admits that the persons who are bound by the present decree would be as effectively bound if the decree were to omit the words *17“successors and assigns.” See Walling v. Reuter Co., 321 U. S. 671, 674-675, and cases cited.
It has long been deemed to be an abuse of power for a federal court to enjoin practices in which a defendant has not engaged and which are unrelated to those which may be properly enjoined. See Labor Board v. Express Publishing Co., 312 U. S. 426, and cases cited. To me it seems no less a misuse of authority for a court, as well as for the Labor Board itself, to threaten those who are not subject to its command. This is the more so where the tendency of the threat is to inflict an unauthorized penalty on the employer by deterring third persons from dealing with him to acquire his property and business, in circumstances in which that may lawfully be done.
That there have been numerous cases before this Court where the Board’s order has not been challenged in this respect, is significant only as showing how extensive the abuse has become and how ready employers and the lower courts have been to acquiesce in threatened wrong, when the injury seemed not to be immediate. But these are not reasons for our acquiescence, when the question is brought to us for decision for the first time. It is no part of the function of the Board or of courts to make unwarranted threats against suitors or innocent third persons. Such misleading and unwarranted use of the phrase should be avoided, either by striking it from the decree or so qualifying it as to designate the class of “successors and assigns” to whom it may be lawfully applied. Cf. Southport Co. v. Labor Board, 315 U. S. 100, 107.