A bill to enjoin a trade union from calling a strike is properly
to be dismissed as moot when, as the result of a preliminary
injunction in the suit, the men have continued at work and the job
which the bill sought to protect has been completed. P.
281 U. S.
463.
34 F.2d 3 affirmed.
Certiorari, 280 U.S. 550, to review a decree of the circuit
court of appeals which affirmed a decree of the district court
dismissing the bill in a suit to enjoin two trade unions and their
agents from calling or fomenting a strike. The petitioner here
contended that wage rules which the unions sought to enforce
against it were unreasonable; that defendants were in a conspiracy
illegal at common law, and violative of the public policy of New
Jersey and of the United States as evinced by the Sherman Act, and
that the district court had placed a construction on a New Jersey
statute offensive to the Fourteenth Amendment. The opinion of the
district court on interlocutory hearing is in 12 F.2d 945.
Page 281 U. S. 463
MR. JUSTICE HOLMES delivered the opinion of the Court.
For the purpose of the present decision, this case may be stated
as it is stated by the circuit court of appeals.
"The Barker Painting Company, a corporation of New York with its
'home office' in New York City, had a contract for painting at
Somerville, New Jersey. The job was about thirty percent completed
when the defendant union called off its men by force of the
offending rules which require a contractor to pay the wage rate of
his home district or that of the locality of the work, whichever is
higher. The Barker Company filed the bill in equity in this case
stating the facts and alleging unlawfulness of the rules because
violative of sundry provisions of the federal Constitution and
federal laws. The trial judge issued a preliminary injunction,
mandatory in character in that it restrained the workmen from
observing the union rules and from not returning to work. All the
men save one obeyed the injunction, returned to work, and completed
the job."
This happened before a decision upon the merits by the district
court, April 14, 1926, 12 F.2d 945, and a final decree dismissing
the bill, March 23, 1928. The circuit court of appeals, while
intimating its probable adhesion to its former decision in a
similar case,
Barker Painting Co. v. Brotherhood of Painters,
Decorators and Paperhangers of America, 15 F.2d 16, in accord
with the decree below, declined to deal with the merits on the
ground that it had become unnecessary to deal with them and for
that reason affirmed the dismissal of the bill. 34 F.2d 3.
Both sides desired that the Court should go farther afield. But
a Court does all that its duty compels when it confines itself to
the controversy before it. It cannot be required to go into general
propositions or prophetic statements of how it is likely to act
upon other possible
Page 281 U. S. 464
or even probable issues that have not yet arisen.
See
Willing v. Chicago Auditorium Association, 277 U.
S. 274. The controversy here was between the plaintiff
and the painters in Somerville who prevented its finishing its job.
If the case had needed to be considered on its merits, it would
have been likely to involve a discussion, more or less
far-reaching, of the powers of the Union, but the plaintiff could
not impose a duty to go into that discussion when, before the time
for it, the resistance had been withdrawn and the job had been
done.
Decree affirmed.
