Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1911-06-03
HITS OIL DECISION
Harlan Sees LOOphoIe For
the Trust.
FILES DISSENTING OPINION
Calls Notifications Mischievous and
Predicts Decision Will Disturb
Trade and Cause Unend.
ing Litigation.

with his oral dissent from the courts
decision in the Standard Oil case, AS
sociate Justice Harlan filed in the
United States supreme court docu-
ment containing about 5000 words.
Justice Harlan brands as mischiev-
GUS the modification made by the
court in the decree of the lower court
permitting subsidiary corporations of
the Standard Oil, after the dissolution
of the combination, to make normal
and lawful agreement" among them
selves. Chief Justice White had char
acterized this modification as minor"
The justice also says:
1.-The disposition of the case under
consideration, according to the views
of the defendants, will, it Is claimed,
quiet and give rest to the business OF
the country On the contrary, | have
a strong conviction that it will throw
the business of the country into con-
fusion and invite widely extended and
harassing litigation, the injurious ef.
fects of which will be felt for many
years to come"
In connection with what he terms
"mischievous modification" Justice
Harlan quotes the chief justice as say
ing that lit does not necessarily fol-
low that because an Illegal restraint
of trade or an attempt to monopolize
or monopolization resulted from the
combination and the transfer of the
stocks of the subsidiary corporation
to the New Jersey corporation, that
like restraint of trade or attempt to
monopolize or a monopoliZation would
necessarily arise from agreement be-
tween one or more of the subsidiary
corporations after the transfer of the
stock by the New Jersey corporation"
Calls 1t "Unwise Warming"
Taking this language in connection
with other parts of the opinion" says
Justice Harlan, the subsidiary CON-
panies are thus, in effect, informed
unwisely, | think-that although the
New Jersey corporation, being an H.
legal combination, must go out of ex-
istence, they may join in an agree
ment to restrain commerce among the
states, if such restraint be not 'un-
due"
Justice Harlan reiterates that the
court reversed it's former rulings in
the Trans-Missouri Freight and Joint
Traffic association cases. Quoting from
each, he says:
These utterances show SO clearly
and afirmatively, as to admit of no
doubt, that this court, many years ago,
upon the fullest consideration, inter-
preted the antitrust act, as prohibit
ing and making allegal not only every
contract or combination, in whatever
form, which was in restraint of inter-
state commerce, without regard to its
reasonableness or unreasonableness,
but all monopolies or attempt to mo-
nopolize any part of such trade or
commerce"
Justice Harlan calls particular at
tention to an opinion of Judge Taft,
now the president, in the Addystone
Pipe case.
Judge Taft said," he points out,
that, according to the decision of this
court in the freight association case,
contracts in restraint of interstate
transportation were within the statute
whether the restraints could be re-
garded as reasonable at common law
or not"
The justice also quotes from an ad-
verse report made in 1909 by the SEN
ate judiciary committee in reference
to bill proposing to amend the Sher-
man antitrust law to distinguish be-
tween reasonable and unreasonable
restraints.