Opinion ID: 1503668
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Pre-emption of Bauxite and Water-Power.

Text: The plaintiff attempted to prove, and asserts that it did prove, that Alcoa bought up bauxite deposits, both in Arkansas  the chief source of the mineral in the United States  and in Dutch, and British, Guiana, in excess of its needs, and under circumstances which showed that the purchases were not for the purpose of securing an adequate future supply, but only in order to seize upon any available supply and so assure its monopoly. The very statement of this charge shows that it depends upon Alcoa's intent, for, if the purchases provided for the future needs of the business, or for what Alcoa honestly believed were its future needs, they were innocent. In its effort to show such an intent, here and elsewhere, the plaintiff made the whole history of the industry from its beginning the subject of inquiry, with a persistence which left no corner unsearched. The judge heard the evidence with unmatched patience, and punctilious care and minuteness; and with equal industry and detail considered it for almost a year before he gave his opinion, in which he overruled all the plaintiff's contentions. The plaintiff's brief before us seems to intimate that in doing so he was actuated by a bias in Alcoa's favor; and, if by that is meant that Alcoa completely satisfied him of its innocence throughout, bias he certainly showed. That, however, is precisely the bias which all evidence is intended to create, and which it should create, if a court does its duty. If, on the other hand, it is suggested that into his conclusions there entered motives, not derived from the evidence, the record is utterly devoid of any support for it. We assume that Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 52(a), 28 U.S.C. A. following section 723c, applies as well to appeals taken under Rule 72, as to those taken under Rule 75, although it makes very little difference whether or not it does, because Rule 52(a) in substance merely carried over the earlier practice in equity to all trials before a judge. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. v. Bonacci, 8 Cir., 111 F.2d 412, 415; Petterson Lighterage & Towing Corporation v. New York Central R. Co., 2 Cir., 126 F.2d 992, 995; Katz Underwear Co. v. United States, 3 Cir., 127 F.2d 965, 966; 3 Moore's Federal Practice, § 52.01. It is idle to try to define the meaning of the phrase, clearly erroneous; all that can be profitably said is that an appellate court, though it will hesitate less to reverse the finding of a judge than that of an administrative tribunal or of a jury, will nevertheless reverse it most reluctantly and only when well persuaded. This is true to a considerable degree even when the judge has not seen the witnesses. His duty is to sift the evidence, to put it into logical sequence and to make the proper inferences from it; and in the case of a record of over 40,000 pages like that before us, it is physically impossible for an appellate court to function at all without ascribing some prima facie validity to his conclusions. Consumers Import Co. v. Kawasaki, 2 Cir., 133 F. 2d 781, 787. What the plaintiff is really asking is that we shall in effect reconsider the whole evidence de novo, as though it had come before us in the first instance. The impossibility of that at once appears, if we consider what it would have involved, had the appeal taken its usual course and been heard by the nine justices of the Supreme Court. However, whatever may be said in favor of reversing a trial judge's findings when he has not seen the witnesses, when he has, and in so far as his findings depend upon whether they spoke the truth, the accepted rule is that they must be treated as unassailable. Davis v. Schwartz, 155 U.S. 631, 636, 15 S.Ct. 237, 39 L.Ed. 289; Adamson v. Gilliland, 242 U.S. 350, 353, 37 S.Ct. 169, 61 L.Ed. 356; Alabama Power Co. v. Jckes, 302 U.S. 464, 477, 58 S.Ct. 300, 82 L.Ed. 374. The reason for this is obvious and has been repeated over and over again; in such cases the appeal must be decided upon an incomplete record, for the printed word is only a part, and often by no means the most important part, of the sense impressions which we use to make up our minds. Morris Plan Industrial Bank v. Henderson, 2 Cir., 131 F.2d 975, 977. Since an appellate court must have some affirmative reason to reverse anything done below, to reverse a finding it must appear from what the record does preserve that the witnesses could not have been speaking the truth, no matter how transparently reliable and honest they could have appeared. Even upon an issue on which there is conflicting direct testimony, appellate courts ought to be chary before going so far; and upon an issue like the witness's own intent, as to which he alone can testify, the finding is indeed unassailable, except in the most exceptional cases. In the case at bar, the first issue was whether, when Alcoa bought up the bauxite deposits, it really supposed that they would be useful in the future. It would be hard to imagine an issue in which the credibility of the witnesses should more depend upon the impressions derived from their presence. Alcoa relied principally upon the testimony of three of its officers, though there were some issues (the purchase of bauxite was among them), as to which not all three testified. These were the chairman of its board, Arthur V. Davis; its president, Roy A. Hunt; and Davis' brother, Edward K. Davis, a former vice-president. Arthur V. Davis was on the stand for seven weeks; his testimony occupies 844 printed pages on the direct and 1445, on the cross; Edward K. Davis, called by the plaintiff, was on the stand six weeks; his direct occupies 1727 pages and his cross, 146; Hunt was on the stand two weeks; in his case the corresponding figures are 266 and 346. Thus the judge had an unrivaled opportunity to observe how they bore themselves under a most prolonged and searching test; and he went out of his way to commend their candor and credibility. Nor could the issue turn upon the dependability of their memory; they knew why they had bought the bauxite; they were either speaking the truth, or perjuring themselves, not only upon this issue but elsewhere throughout this amazing record. Evidence must be beyond measure convincing which leads to that conclusion in the face of the most positive assurance from the only impartial observer at the time, that they seemed to him men of honor and veracity. While it is of course true that they had an interest to excuse their past conduct and that the transactions admitted a sinister interpretation, neither of these facts was conclusive. Upon this, as upon all the issues, the plaintiff had the burden and must lose unless it succeeded in doing more than leaving the proof in balance. Taking all these considerations together, it seems plain to us that we should be unwarranted in declaring these findings clearly erroneous. Little need be added as to the similar charge that Alcoa bought up suitable water power which it did not need; and did so for the purpose of preventing competition. It did buy a number of such sites which it did not fully use; but, considering the extraordinary increase in ingot production which in fact took place even without the witnesses' explanations the inference which the plaintiff asks us to draw would be weak indeed; and certainly we should not be justified in holding that it overbore those explanations.