Word: antitrust
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Until the waning days of 1961, it was possible to argue that under Attorney General Robert Kennedy the Justice Department was actually showing itself easier on business than it had in the days of Dwight Eisenhower: in the first year of the Kennedy Administration the Justice Department brought fewer antitrust suits than it did in the last year of the Eisenhower Administration. Then, in one action, the Kennedy trustbusters more than made up the difference by unlimbering a startling new concept of antitrust enforcement...
...field. From the Justice Department viewpoint, this would have twin advantages: 1 ) it would make all G.E. divisions, rather than just those already convicted, fearful of price fixing; and 2) since there are no statutory limits on contempt of court sentences as there are on penalties for antitrust violations, a judge could, if he chose, punish future price fixing by G.E. far more heavily than the antitrust laws call...
...lawyers were sure that peppery Lee Loevinger, chief of Justice's Antitrust Division, had initiated the new action in reprisal for G.E.'s refusal to sign a consent decree under which the company would bind itself not to charge "unreasonably low" prices that might tend to harm competitors. Another theory was that Loevinger was worried by the vagueness of the proposed consent decree, which might make it legally untenable...
Last week, bringing criminal charges against the company, the Justice Department contended that hard work and imaginative research did not constitute the whole story of 3M's success. For the past three decades, the nine-count indictment said, 3M has systematically violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by attempting to monopolize markets in sealing and masking tapes, magnetic tape and aluminum lithograph plates. Among the charges: > That in exchange for licenses to produce 3M-patented products, 3M demanded of competitors the right to fix prices and production and dictate markets. > That to supplement the patent-licensing tactic, 3M banded together...
...grand jury, thus far, has cast 3M as the heavy in the Justice Department's latest antitrust drama. It has named ten other companies and the Illinois Institute of Technology's Armour Research Foundation as co-conspirators but has not asked for their appearance in court as defendants. Refusing to comment on the charges in detail, 3M President Herbert P. Buetow last week would only say that it is "firm company policy to operate in conformity with the antitrust laws." But he did note pointedly that Justice Department trustbusters spent 15 years looking into 3M's affairs...