Notes of Recent Cases. After remarking that the statute is highly penal -and should be strictly construed, the court points out that the power given Con gress is to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among "the several States" and with the Indian tribes, and says that it is at least possible that because of some doubt as to its power to so legislate, Congress in tentionally omitted to include shipment of lottery tickets from States to a territory or to the District of Columbia. It is true that In the Interstate Commerce Act, Congress has undertaken to regulate commerce be tween any State or territory and the District of Columbia. But that act was passed by the forty-ninth Congress, while the fifty-third Congress, which was responsible for the statute in question was composed, to a con siderable extent, of different individuals. Moreover, the court says that while it may be within the power of Congress to for bid interstate shipments of lottery tickets through any State, even when their ultimate destination is a Territory or the District of Columbia, it cannot think that it was the in tention of this statute. If a shipment were made from New Jersey through New York to Canada, it seems clear that the statute in question would not support an indictment therefor. In conclusion the court says, that if it gives Congress, which always numbers many able men of the legal profession among its members credit for knowing that the word "State" has often been held not to include a territory or the District of Columbia, it can not say with certainty that it intends the word "State" to mean Territory or the Dis trict of Columbia. MASTER AND SERVANT. (INTERFERENCE WITH RELATION — THREATS OF THIRD PERSON INDUC ING DISCHARGE — LIABILITY.)
ILLINOIS SUPREME COURT. London Guarantee and Accident Company v. Horn, 69 Northeastern Reporter 526, pre sents a somewhat novel and extremely in teresting question as to liability for securing the discharge of a person from his employ ment. The facts, which were somewhat complicated, are thus summarized in the syllabus: The plaintiff while employed for an
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indefinite time by the A. S. Company was in jured while at work and brought suit against his employer therefor. The employer was insured against loss for injuries to its em ployés by a policy issued by defendant which entitled the latter to cancel the policy on five days' notice and to defend actions for in juries brought against the employer, but which gave the defendant no right to de mand the discharge of an injured servant. Defendant at various times sought to settle plaintiff's claim and in order to induce a set tlement threatened to have him discharged. A representative of defendant went to the A. S. Company's factory and after an un successful attempt to settle the claim stated to the company that if it did not discharge plaintiff the policy would be canceled. The company would have employed plaintiff steadily had it not been for this threatened cancellation of the policy. It did discharge him, however, and plaintiff sued the insur ance company for its part in the matter. In defending the suit the insurance company relied largely on the case of Allen -v. Flood, 67 L. J. Q. B. 119, decided in the House of Lords in 1897. In that case certain ship wrights secured the discharge of certain boiler makers and a recovery was denied the latter principally on the ground that every workman has a right to exercise his own option with regard to the persons in whose society he will work, and that when the em ployer is confronted with the possibility of the loss of services of one set or the other, he has a right to elect which he will lose. That and other cases of a like kind are distin guished from the present case by the court on the ground that they presented instances of lawful competition, the view being taken that it is a violation of legal right to inter fere with the contractual relations of others if there is no sufficient justification therefor, but that competition in trade, employment, etc., is such a justification. It is then held that the insurance company and plaintiff were not in competition, despite the fact that the company wanted to settle the claim for the least possible amount, while the plaintiff wanted to secure the largest possible amount. The word "competition'* is held to
