Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/306

 FAIR COMPETITION that the policy of allowing free competition justifies the intentional inflicting of tem poral damage, including the damage of in terference with a man's business, by some means, when the damage is done not for its own sake, but as an instrumentality in reaching the end of victory in battle of trade." 1 IV It is not altogether impossible to find cases where the decision turns upon the fact that what is complained of is nothing more than mere competition; for a judge will sometimes find it a convenient method of disposing of a case to reduce it thus to simplest terms. In Snowden v. Noah (Hop kins Ch. 351), for example, an injunction asked by the purchaser of a newspaper property to prevent the former editor who had set up a new journal from getting away his subscribers was refused, Chancellor Hop kins saying: "The business of printing and publishing newspapers, being equally free to all, the loss to one newspaper establish ment, which may follow from the competi tion of any rival establishment, is merely a consequence of the freedom of this compe tition, and gives no claim to legal .redress." In a recent case of this same sort, Ricker & Sons v. Portland and Rumford Falls Rail road (90 Me. 395), an elaborate bill in equity was held by the court to set out nothing more substantial than that the business of stage proprietors was injured by the opening of a railway station nearer, and therefore dismissed the bill; Mr. Justice Strout saying: "The fact that complainants for a series of years had run a stage line from Danville Junction to their hotels, affords no legal right to exclude another stage line over the same route; much less from another station upon another railroad to the same destination, so long as the new line is not represented in some way as that 1 See the language of Lord Holt in Keeble v. Hickeringill, 11 East, 574 n, 575, and Chief Justice Shaw in Com. v. Hunt, 4 Met. m, 134.

of the complainants, and by this means a fraud is perpetrated upon the traveler, or the complainants." 1 V Another way in which the question comes up is when a person who has been damaged by the construction of the works for a com peting business claims that he is one of the persons who should have compensation, reparation having been provided for in some general way. Thus in Hopkins v. Great Northern Railway (L. R. 2 Q. B. D. 224), plaintiff as the proprietor of a ferry sued the defendant railway company under the Rail way Clauses Act for damage caused to his busi ness by the construction of the railway bridge across the river, which diverted travel from his ferry. Lord Justice Mellish held that the plaintiffs were not entitled to any thing: "If owners of ferries are held entitled to compensation, they will certainly form a singular exception to all other persons who were the owners of highways, or had a legal interest in the profits to be derived from the use of highways before railways were in vented. It can hardly be necessary to enumerate the different classes of persons who had a legal interest in the old high ways, and who have suffered loss from the diversion of traffic from those highways to railways; proprietors of canals, turnpike trustees, holders of turnpike bonds, trustees of river navigations, and holders of bonds secured on their tolls, have all suffered great losses from the diversion of traffic to railways and have received no compensa tion. No doubt their rights have not been infringed, though their property has been affected." There are several cases also where the grantees of a franchise have brought suit against those who are damaging their in1 The cases of this same sort are very numerous; see for good examples: Parsons v. Gillespie, 1898 A. C. 239; Globe Wernicke Co. v. Fred Macey Co., 119 Fed. 696; Van Camp v. Cruikshank, 90 Fed759; Ayer v. Rushton, 7 Daly, 9.