ARMSTRONG v. DE FOREST RADIO TELEPHONE & TELEGRAPH CO.
10 F.2d 727 (1926)
ARMSTRONG et al.
v.
DE FOREST RADIO TELEPHONE & TELEGRAPH CO.*
No. 218.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
February 8, 1926.
Thomas G. Haight, of Jersey City, N. J., and Samuel E. Darby, Jr., of New York City, for appellant.
Stephen H. Philbin and Charles Neave, both of New York City, for appellees.
Before HOUGH, MANTON, and HAND, Circuit Judges.
HOUGH, Circuit Judge (after stating the facts as above).
The practice pursued below has been criticized at bar, but the matter has been sufficiently treated in Green v. Adams Co., 247 F. 485, 159 C. C. A. 539, and Gordon v. Turco-Halvah Co., 247 F. 487, 159 C. C. A. 541. Supplemental injunctions are sometimes useful remedies. We note Minerals, etc., v. Miami Co. (C. C. A.) 269 F. 265, and remain of opinion that at times injunction is preferable to contempt proceedings.
In a sense they are alike, for both reach only matters fairly covered by the decision already made. But in another sense injunction gives definition of whatever rights, always growing out of the original decision, plaintiff may be found to possess.
But, whichever method is pursued, the basis of procedure is that the parties before the court are those whose rights have been finally adjudicated and on the merits. Yet a decree, though given in general terms, is to be interpreted and enforced in accord with the findings of fact embodied in the findings directing decree.
The first thing to be done is to ascertain exactly what was decided according to the opinions filed. As between the parties, whatever was there found is final. The facts as between the parties are not open to further examination, and it is improper to turn either a contempt proceeding or an application for supplemental injunction into an inquiry whether the court was wrong, or whether some hole or omission can be discovered in its opinion. That the matter has been judged is the fundamental fact, but exactly what was adjudged is matter for investigation, not requiring further evidence, but only the record of the opinions. Otherwise there is no end to the suit, and the well-known dictum of Judge Coxe, that "even patent litigation must come to an end sometime," would be even harder to believe than it now is.
It is not true that the object of a supplemental injunction is to amplify the original one; the object is not to amplify, but to specify, and apply the original injunction to actions and objects nonexistent when the case was decided. The inquiry is whether acts and things that have come into existence since decree would have been enjoined by that decree, had they then existed.
So the present inquiry is: Does the new thing, known as receiving set D-17, fall within the injunction issued in accordance with the final decree herein, as interpreted by the opinions directing the same?
* Certiorari denied 46 S.Ct. 471, 70 L. Ed. ___.