Court Opinion

ID: 9423012
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:05:31.309429+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:40.959801
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Harlan,
concurring in the judgment.
Had the Commission’s complaint been grounded on § 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, it seems manifest to me that no case would have been made out on this record. But given the ambulatory use of § 7 of the Clayton Act sanctioned by the Court in United States v. du Pont & Co., 353 U. S. 586, I concur in the judgment.
I do so, however, upon the premises stated in the concurring opinion of my Brother Stewart, post, p. 602, but with one reservation. To the extent that anything in his opinion might be taken as drawing on evidence upon which the Commission indicated no reliance, I could not subscribe to that approach. This Court must review administrative findings as they are made by the agency concerned, and if the evidence will not support the findings and theory upon which the agency acted, an affirmance of the agency’s order cannot properly rest upon a reassessment of the record by us. See Securities & Exchange Comm’n v. Chenery Corp., 332 U. S. 194, 196; Labor Board v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., ante, pp. 438, 443-444. However, since both sides agree that “conglomerate” mergers and reciprocal buying are within the purview of § 7,1 think the Commission’s order is supportable, though *602barely so, within the confines of the evidence upon which it apparently relied.
Brown Shoe Co, v. United States, 370 U. S. 294, forecloses any contention that the “market affected” was not substantial enough to bring § 7 into play. In this Court Consolidated has pitched its case on the proposition that it used to the full whatever power it acquired as a result of the merger to bring about reciprocal buying. The Commission found only seven instances of Successful efforts by Consolidated to pressure suppliers to buy from Gentry. If in fact these few instances had represented the full measure of Consolidated’s ability to induce purchasing from Gentry, they would for me be insufficient to carry the day for the Commission’s order, and I would vote to affirm. While I cannot subscribe to the undiscriminating use made in the Court’s opinion of the buying statistics, I think there was enough in these seven instances — for example, the Phillips Packing Company, J. J. Gielow & Sons, Illinois Meat Company, and Morgan Packing Company episodes — for the Commission justifiably to find that Consolidated had not used all the reciprocal buying leverage it could muster; the Commission, therefore, could reasonably conclude that the probable effect of the Gentry acquisition would be substantially to lessen competition in the relevant market.
On this basis I concur in the result reached by the Court.