Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 18.pdf/454

 NOTES OF RECENT CASES

NOTES OF THE MOST IMPORTANT RECENT CASES COMPILED BY THE EDITORS OF THE NATIONAL REPORTER SYSTEM AND ANNOTATED BY SPECIALISTS IN THE SEVERAL SUBJECTS (Copies of tbe pamphlet Reporters containing full reports of any of these decisions may be secured from the West Publishing Company, St. Paul, Minnesota, at 25 cents each. In ordering, the title of the desired case should be given as well as the citation of volume and page of the Reporter in which it is printed.)

ASSUMPSIT. (Duress.) Conn. — A union com posed of bricklayers and plasterers, and organ ized to promote the welfare of its members, voted to refuse to handle brick from any manu facturer delivering brick to boss masons employ ing non-union men, and notice of this resolution was served on the manufacturers. Subsequently a manufacturer sold brick to a boss mason em ploying non-union men. Learning of this the union voted to place damages at Sioo against the manufacturer. Afterwards the manufacturer be gan to deliver brick to a boss mason employing union men. The union demanded payment of the Si oo under threat that unless the same was paid the men employed by the boss mason would refuse to handle the brick, and payment was made. In March v. Bricklayers and Plasterers Union No. i, 6.3 Atlantic Reporter, zpi.it is held that this payment was extorted by means of threats in violation of a statute of Connecticut, punishing any person who shall threaten to com pel another against his will to do an act which such person has a legal right to do, and conse quently that the manufacturer was entitled to recover the money. The action of the union in extorting the payment is held not to be justifi able, either on the ground that its members had a right to decline to handle the manufacturer's brick and also had the right to waive the exercise of that right on such conditions as they might impose or on the ground that the action of the union merely amounted to an exercise of the right of fair trade competition. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. (Civil Rights — "Jim-Crow Cars.") Fla. — Three related and entirely consistent cases recently decided by the Supreme Court of Florida throw considerable light upon the constitutional requirement as to legislation relative to the separation of the races in public conveyances. In State v. Patterson, 39 Southern Reporter, 398. the court had under consideration a statute requiring street car com panies to provide separate compartments in their

cars for the Caucasian and African races and prohibiting persons of either, race from occu pying the compartment of the car set apart for the other race, but containing a provision that the a;t should not apply to colored nurses having the care of white children or sick white persons. This act was held to be in conflict with the T4th Amendment to the Federal Constitution, because giving to the white race the privilege of being accompanied by negro nurses while denying to negroes the privilege of being accompanied by white nurses; or, as the court puts it, it gives to the African nurse the right to space in either part of the car and withholds from the Caucasian nurse the same privilege, thereby discriminating be tween the races in favor of the African nurse as against the Caucasian person of the same occu pation. In view, very probably, of this holding, the city council of Pensacola passed an ordinance also requiring separate compartments for the two races, but providing in general terms that it should not be construed to apply to nurses attending children or invalids of the other race. This ordi nance is held in Grooms v. Schad, 40 Southern Reporter, 497, to be free from the vice of the statute and, with respect to the exception of nurses, it is declared that such exception was a proper and reasonable classification and did not render the ordinance invalid, unjustly discrim inative, or unreasonable. An ordinance of much the same nature enacted by the city of Jackson ville, but containing no provision at all as to nurses, was upheld as against an attack on the ground that it was unreasonable, the court hold ing that a passenger on a street car has no right to any particular seat nor to a seat in any particu lar end of the car and that a regulation of a street car company, acting pursuant to the ordinance, by which scats in the rear end of its cars were assigned to the use of colored passengers and seats in the front end to white passengers, was not an unreasonable regulation nor an unlawful discrimination between the races. Patterson v. Taylor, 40 Southern Reporter, 493.