Court Opinion

ID: 9442265
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 18:41:31.260501+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:01.907797
License: Public Domain

RIDDICK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting in part).
*372I agree that the evidence wholly fails to establish any agreement between the defendants to fix the price of fluid milk sold to consumers or any concerted action to suppress competition between them in the sale and distribution of fluid milk in St. Louis. This, of course, requires reversal of the judgment below. But I am also of the opinion that the Government’s action should be dismissed because the so-called current or flow of fluid milk in interstate commerce from producers in Illinois ended at the processing plants of the defendants.
The fluid milk which reached defendants’ processing plants in St. Louis was raw milk. Its sale by the defendants to their customers in St. Louis was prohibited by the St. Louis Milk Ordinance. That portion of the raw milk from Illinois which failed to pass the inspection required by the St. Louis Milk Ordinance remained the property of the Illinois producer. The portion of it which met the test of inspection was commingled with inspected milk produced in Missouri, and, after the processing required by local law ior its sale in St. Louis, was held exclusively for distribution to purchasers in St. Louis. Neither the Illinois shippers nor the defendants could have intended that the interstate transportation of the raw milk should proceed beyond defendants’ processing plants since its further progress was prohibited by local law. And since the defendants processed the raw milk in various forms, including several kinds of fluid milk as well as butter, ice cream, and powdered milk, no producer in Illinois could have intended that milk shipped to one of the defendants in St. Louis would continue in commerce to the ultimate consumer as Grade A pasteurized fluid milk. The mere fact that defendants, because of the perishable character of fluid milk, were compelled to process and distribute that part of the raw milk received from' Illinois which finally reached the St. Louis consumer in fluid form with all possible speed is not, in my opinion, sufficient to establish the interstate commerce in milk charged in the indictment.