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.

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