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Opinion of the Court.

upon the giving of bond, while the plaintiff was taxed with the costs of the case. On appeal, the action of the lower court was affirmed by the Supreme Court. 187 N. C. 184. This Court then granted a certiorari and brought the case here. 264 U. S. 579.

Section 237 of the Judicial Code, as amended by the Act of September 6, 1916, c. 448, 39 Stat. 726, provides that final judgments of the highest court of a State are subject to review by certiorari. Is this judgment a final judgment? We think it is. In its terms it affirms the refusal of the lower court to continue the temporary order and to grant a permanent injunction. The Supreme Court based its decision on the facts admitted in the petition and answer. Its judgment was that the previous judgment as between the parties was res judicata, estopped the Company from resisting execution and thereby deprived it of any right to either a temporary or permanent injunction. Injunction was the only relief which the Company sought or could seek under its petition and prayer. The affirmance of the judgment of the lower court upon the certified opinion of the Supreme Court, left nothing for the Guilford County Court to do but to dismiss the petition. Something is said about other issues raised by the administrator in his answer; but the ruling of the Supreme Court ignored them and disposed of the case in his favor. Such a decree is a final decree. Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company v. Manning, 186 U. S. 238; Mower v. Fletcher, 114 U. S. 127; Commissioners v. Lucas, Treasurer, 93 U. S. 108; Flemming v. Roberts, 84 N. C. 532, 539. See also Forgay v. Conrad, 6 How. 201; Bronson v. Railroad Company, 2 Black, 524; Beebe v. Russell, 19 How. 283; Crosby v. Buchanan, 23 Wall. 420; Thomson v. Dean, 7 Wall. 342. Compare Headman v. Commissioners, 177 N. C. 261.

It is said that the judge of the lower court to whom the application for the continuance of the temporary injunc

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tion and the granting of a permanent injunction in this case had been referred by the regular judge of Guilford County, was a judge of a court of another county, and had by the practice of the State no power to grant a permanent injunction, and so that the appeal from his order denying the application to continue the temporary injunction did not bring to the Supreme Court for its decision the question of the issue of a permanent injunction. The report of the case in the Supreme Court shows it as one presenting the question of an application to continue the temporary injunction and to make it permanent, and, whatever the power of a judge of a court in another county in North Carolina to allow a permanent injunction in his court, we must assume from the action of the Supreme Court, and the recital of what was before it, that it intended the Guilford County Court on the coming down of its mandate to terminate the case by following its opinion. By the ordinary practice in equity as administered in England and this country an appellate court has the power on appeal from a temporary or interlocutory order or decree, to examine the merits of the case if sufficiently shown by the pleadings and the record and upon deciding them in favor of the defendant to dismiss the bill and save both parties the needless expense of further prosecution of the suit. Smith v. Vulcan Iron Works, 165 U. S. 518, 523, 524, and cases cited; Denver v. New York Trust Co., 229 U. S. 123; Meccano Ltd. v. John Wanamaker, 253 U. S. 136, 141. We think we have jurisdiction.

Coming now to the merits, it may be conceded that the first judgment against the Company in favor of the administrator, however erroneous it was in view of the cases of Missouri Pacific Railroad v. Ault, 256 U. S. 554, and North Carolina Railroad Company v. Lee, Administrator, 260 U. S. 16, not having been appealed from was res judicata. Nor could § 206 (g) prevent the second judgment. It was not directed against judgments. It was intended to pro

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tect the property of the Company not by preventing a judgment but by preventing an execution to satisfy a judgment for injury by Government operation of its road, whether that judgment was rendered against the carrier which leased the road, against the carrier which owned the road, or against the Government itself. The language of the statute assumes the existence of judgments against carriers for fault of the Government management before the section comes into play. There had been so much diversity of practice as to the person against whom the judgment should be rendered in seeking to establish and collect claims for injuries caused in government operation that Congress adopted this unusually broad method of rendering the property of the carriers immune. By virtue of a law of Congress plainly within its power, a distinction was thus made between the judgment and the execution. The state Supreme Court decided that the right to a judgment as between the plaintiff and the Railroad Company in the second case was established by the first judgment, not that a right to execution thereon was established. 184 N. C. 442.

After considering the contention made by the Company against the right to a judgment because of § 206 (g), the court said (page 448):

"It might suffice to say in answer to this position that plaintiff thus far has not undertaken to levy any process or execution against the property of the defendant road, and his proceeding, therefore, does not come within the literal terms of the provision on which he here relies, but inasmuch as the answer contains averment that plaintiff is wrongfully seeking in this present suit to avoid the force and effect of the statutory provision just quoted, we consider it pertinent to say that in our opinion the judgment. sued on does not come within the inhibition as stated."

The Court then proceeded to consider § 10 of the Federal Control Act, 40 Stat. 456, and paragraphs A, B, C,

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D, E, and G of § 206 of the Transportation Act of 1920, and to hold that the former was a prohibition against physical interference by third persons, creditors or others, while the road was in the possession of the Government, and that the latter was a protection of the carriers in possession from physical interference by actions or judgments provided and allowed for by the Government. "But," said the Court, "this legislation in our view was never intended to protect the carriers from judgments in independent suits by claimants when they have failed to plead or properly insist on the immunity from liability which had been provided for their protection." In effect, the Court gave two reasons for its conclusion, the first of which was that it was not dealing with an execution and the second that § 206 (g) did not apply to either a judgment or an execution in a case like the one before it. But the point adjudged was not the effect of § 206 (g) on an execution, whatever the inference from the Court's reasoning. The estoppel of the Court's conclusion reached only the judgment

It is well settled that the principle of res judicata is only applicable to the point adjudged and not to points only collaterally under consideration, or incidentally under cognizance or only to be inferred by arguing from the decree. Hopkins v. Lee, 6 Wheat. 109, 114; Norton v. Larney, 266 U. S. 511, 517. The reasoning and opinion of the court are not res judicata unless the subject matter in issue be definitely disposed of by the decree. Keane v. Fisher, 10 La. Ann. 261; Bridges v. McAlister, 106 Ky. 791; Probate Court v. Williams, 30 R. I. 144; ScottishAmerican Mortgage Company v. Bunckley, 88 Miss. 641; Braun v. Wisconsin Rendering Company, 92 Wis. 245; Citizens Bank of Emporia v. Brigham, 61 Kan. 727.

The judgment of the Supreme Court of North Carolina is reversed and the cause remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

Reversed.

Syllabus.

CORONADO COAL COMPANY ET AL. v. UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA ET AL.

ERROR TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT.

No. 671. Argued January 7, 1925.-Decided May 25, 1925. 1. Where the constitution of an "international" trade union provided that its constituent district organizations might order local strikes within their respective districts on their own responsibility, but that such strikes, to be financed by the international union, must be sanctioned by its executive board, held that liability for damages to property inflicted in a local strike called without such sanction by a district organization could not be imposed on the larger organization, and that evidence of participation by its president was insufficient to show participation by the organization itself or to bind it on principles of agency. P. 299.

2. The mere reduction in the supply of an article to be shipped in interstate commerce by the tortious prevention of its production is ordinarily an indirect and remote obstruction to that commerce; but when the intent of those unlawfully preventing the production is to restrain or control the supply entering and moving in interstate commerce, or the price of it in interstate markets, their action is a direct violation of the Anti-Trust Act. P. 310. 3. In an action brought under the Anti-Trust Act by the owners of coal mines against a district union and local unions of coal miners and individuals, to recover damages resulting from the destruction of the mines during a strike, held that there was substantial evidence tending to prove that the purpose of such destruction on the part of the defendants was to stop the production of non-union coal and prevent its shipment to markets in other States where it would by competition tend to reduce the price of the commodity and thus affect injuriously the maintenance of wages for union labor in competing mines, and that direction of a verdict for the defendants was therefore erroneous. P. 305.

4. In such a case, evidence tending to prove that the production of the plaintiffs' mines with non-union labor would be sufficient to become a serious factor in the interstate coal market, is relevant, in connection with other evidence of the intent of the defendants to prevent its shipment to neighboring States at non-union cost. P. 305.

300 Fed. 972, in part affirmed; in part reversed.

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