JUDICIARY: Price Tampering Is Illegal

NRA had been dead three years when a Federal jury and judge at Madison, Wis. convicted twelve U. S. oil companies, two tycoons and three underlings of fixing (and raising) prices in the Midwest—what NRA had previously encouraged them to do.* For violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, each company was fined $5,000, each individual defendant $1,000. Upholding the convictions this week, the U. S. Supreme Court—which had just heard the Government argue its own right to fix coal prices (see p. 83)—knocked out any idea that under the law there is good price-fixing and bad price-fixing.

Said Justice Owen Roberts in a dissenting opinion: “No case decided by this court has held a combination [of businessmen] illegal solely because its purpose or effect was to raise prices.” Justice William Orville Douglas tossed away lack of precedent, held (for a majority of five): “Any combination which tampers with price structures is engaged in an unlawful activity. The [Sherman] Act places all such schemes beyond the pale. . . . Congress has not left with us the determination of whether or not particular price-fixing schemes are wise or unwise, healthy or destructive.”

*Among the defendants: Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., Inc. and its Vice President Charles E. Arnott, Mid-Continent Petroleum Corp. and its Vice President Robert W. McDowell.