Triple Damage

Aluminum Co. of America has been damned as a monopoly, double-damned as a Mellon monopoly. It has been accused of attempting to buy up the world's supply of bauxite, of cornering the supply of scrap aluminum, of conspiring to fix the world price of aluminum. Latest and most vociferous of Aluminum's accusers is Baush Machine Tool Co., independent aluminum fabricator of Springfield, Mass. Baush lost a $9,000,000 damage suit against Aluminum in a New Haven court in 1933. Last year a U. S. Court of Appeals granted a new trial which was concluded last week in Federal Court in Hartford.

Among the law firms which conducted Baush's case was the Stamford one of Cummings & Lockwood, of which Attorney General Homer Stille Cummings used to be a partner. Lawyer Cummings has had a feud with Aluminum since 1925 when he argued a case against the company and lost. At the long Hartford trial Lawyer Mark W. Norman of Mr. Cummings' old firm, and other Baush attorneys, once again sought to prove two stock charges: 1) that Aluminum tried to monopolize interstate trade in virgin aluminum through a price agreement with foreign importers of the metal; 2) that by taking enormous profits from the sale of raw aluminum it was able to undersell competitors on fabricated aluminum products. Forced to pay Aluminum's price for virgin ingots on the one hand and to compete with it in finished products on the other, Baush was caught in a "squeeze" which, according to counsel, had cost the company $3,000,000 between 1925 and 1931.

Last week the jury, after plodding through 1,000,000 words of evidence and nearly 600 exhibits, decided in favor of Baush, ordered Aluminum to pay $956,000 in damages. "The amount awarded is too small," exclaimed Federal Judge Harland B. Howe. Exercising his right under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, he trebled the damages to $2,868,900. Counsel for Aluminum filed notice of appeal.

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