Imperial Valley press., 1936-12-18
| News Behind the News
The Bar Suffers A Broken Heart
Utility Company Cases To Blame :.
Holes In The Meal Ticket =.

WASHINGTON.-Many stout hearts In the
American bar were practically broken wnen tne
o. s. Supreme Court acted In the utility hoohs
company cases, trial of which the government
wanted to delay pending decision on single
case.
During the last few years, the New Deal and
Its legislation have provided magnificent meal
ticket for lawyers. Thousands OF SUITS nave
been filed against the government and tens Oh
millions of dollars in fees collected Tor hanoiing
them.
But now the court has struck cruelty at this
group which has profeSSed the greatest Venera-
ton for the very justices who have now punch
ed so many holes in the meal ticket as TO leave
available something comparable TO the price ol
a couple bowls of soup.
The effect is to save the government legal
staff from being haraSsed by mass onsaughts
of suits brought by the most talented ana ex-
pensve attorneys in private practice.
Heretofore corporations have been running
the federal lawyers ragged and the govern
ment has been practically at the mercy OF money.
But the supreme court has made new law
and given the government new weapon. II the
next Congress passes another Guffey coal act.
and hundred suits are brought against it. the
attorney general will be in position to ignore
all but one or two, upon which he can concen,
trate toward building up the best possible case
Eight justices have said in effect that the
attorney general can take on Americas biggest
corporations and their lawyers one at time
instead of having to be "ganged up on.
Justice Stone being i'll and absent this meant
a
friends and enemies of the holding company
act, pleasing the former and discomfiting the
latter.
It means that when the big test on the
act reaches the supreme court government law
yers won't be compelled to feel that certain
number of justices already are lined up against
them.
Background of the decision is a fight begun
by Attorney General Homer S. Cummings and
his aides when about so widely scattered suits
were filed against the act by holding companies
and operating utility companies, with promise
just hasn't enough lawyers, let alone good ones,
to fight as many cases as that.
Cummings went personally into federal dis
trict court in Washington and asked stay of
several suits filed there until the government
could get supreme court decision on its main
case-the suit against the huge Electric Bond &
Share Company.
This was his answer to utilities officials,
lawyers, and publicity men who had insisted
that the government must get together with
them and agree on four or five suits which
would be fought out as test cases. (The alter
native would be necessity of contesting hum
dred suts)
In the public utilities industry the obvious
effect of the supreme court action narrowing
the fee field for lawyers Is to benefit consumers
of electricity and gas as well as stockholders.
Much the same applies to other corporations
which apparently now will be restrained from
pouring out money to contest federal laws.
The possible total sum of legal expenses
incurred in contesting federal legislation of the
last four years has been Standardization haz-
srdously, since no one knows-at more than
$100,000,000, assuming all the cases were to be
fought up TO the supreme court.
-O-
The malefactors who took $2500 worth of