Court Opinion

ID: 9653406
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:46:14.450899+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:58.919455
License: Public Domain

*699On Petition for Rehearing.
As appellant says, United Shoe Mach. Co. v. United States, 258 U.S. 451, 42 S.Ct. 363, 66 L.Ed. 708, did not involve a criminal prosecution but arose out of a proceeding wherein the government sought to enjoin certain practices of the defendant upon the ground that they violated the provisions of the Clayton Act. Defendant contended that an adverse decree in an earlier suit, in which the Government sought to enjoin similar practices on the ground that they constituted a violation of the Sherman Act was res adjudicata of the issue in the Clayton Act case. The Supreme Court declined to accept this contention, pointing out that, in the first case, the Government sought to have defendants declared a monopoly and dissolved under the Sherman Act, whereas, in the second case, it sought to have the acts complained of enjoined because they violated those provisions of the Clayton Act which forbid certain practices where their effect “may” he substantially to lessen competition or create a monopoly. Therefore, said the court “the cause of action is not the same.”
That the cited case did not involve a criminal prosecution is unimportant. The essential teaching is that the Government had a right to complain of violations of each of two different statutes. Here we are deciding the question of whether a plaintiff who avers that his contract right to sell defendant’s automobiles has been invaded through the wrongful action of defendant may maintain a second action therefor after once having lost. We hold that such a plaintiff can not split that cause of action; that he must assert in his suit all wrongful acts on the part of defendant upon which he relies to show invasion of his asserted right and that, if he fails, he may not, later, recover in another suit for invasion of the same right by wrongful acts on defendant’s part which he failed to assert in his original suit. It is clear that plaintiff suffered but one actionable wrong and was entitled to but one recovery, whether his injury was due to one or another of wrongful actions by defendant or to a combination of some or all of them. There is, under either view, but a single wrongful invasion of a single primary right, whether the acts constituting such invasion are one or many, simple or complex. Baltimore S. S. Co. v. Phillips, 274 U.S. 316, 47 S.Ct. 600, 71 L.Ed. 1069.
The petition for rehearing is denied.