Court Opinion

ID: 9421737
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:59:36.736596+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:31.959333
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
dissenting in part.
While I have heretofore expressed views in favor of the almost controlling deference to be paid to a District Court's considered formulation of the provisions appropriate to a decree designed to remedy adjudicated violations of the antitrust laws, those views have not prevailed, see the opinions in United States v. Paramount Pictures, 334 U. S. 131, and this Court has felt free to modify and eliminate provisions of an antitrust decree, particularly when a single judge has imposed an unconventional and drastic remedy. The main issue dealt with in Mr. Justice Harlan's dissent, while a narrow one, is, in my view, important. While divestiture has been decreed by the district judge, the mandatory disposition of the stock has been delayed for five years, and the stock placed in trusteeship. During this five-year period a series of detailed controls have been imposed, under the supervision of the District Court, in order to prevent appellants Norris and Wirtz from exercising the power their stock ownership has given them over the operations of Madison Square Garden. The ownership itself has been sterilized. I think it not an unreasonable forecast that, even were we to postpone for five years the decision whether to order the divestiture or continue the trusteeship, appellants Norris and Wirtz would not find it profitable to continue their sterilized ownership of the Garden stock. How*264ever, there is no compelling reason to order them to do what sound business judgment may compel. One has the right to assume that, in view of this Court’s unanimous affirmance of the findings below that appellants were in violation of the Sherman Law, they will scrupulously obey the decree and not even by the subtlest indirection seek to avoid our decision. Therefore I think it is needless now to determine that divestiture must take place five years hence, rather than wait upon the event in order to determine whether divestiture should then be ordered.
Accordingly, I join Mr. Justice Harlan’s opinion.