Word: antitrusters
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Under the Clayton Act of 1914, anybody who can prove that his business has been injured by another company's antitrust violations is entitled to damages amounting to three times the loss suffered. Along with the humiliation of being convicted of criminal price fixing ten months ago, the 29 companies involved in the great electrical-equipment conspiracy looked forward apprehensively to a flood of treble-damage claims. Last week their worst apprehensions came true as more than 60 public and private utility companies combined to file nearly 40 suits complaining that they had been overcharged on electrical equipment...
Always Prepared. Many of the electrical companies began to anticipate the damage suits during the original antitrust trial by pleading "no contest" to the price-fixing charge-a move that kept details of the alleged conspiracy off the court record. Now, without benefit of those details, the suing utilities face the task of proving that over the years the prices of electrical equipment would have been lower had there been no conspiracy. Says one antitrust lawyer: "You have to compare what you paid with what you would have paid under conditions that didn't exist." To do this, some...
...fined for breaking a federal law, the town's preachers and the rest of its' residents must inevitably make some jarring moral adjustments. Just that happened early this year in Pittsfield, Mass., when executives of General Electric (Pittsfield's biggest employer) were convicted of violating the antitrust laws (TIME, Feb. 17). In Christian Century, the Rev. Raymond E. Gibson, who then was pastor of Pittsfield's South Congregational Church, describes the resulting shock. It passed through several waves...
Later, when it became evident that the antitrust conspiracy, by lessening price competition, had encouraged smaller automated companies to cut into G.E.'s market, the executives' halos dimmed somewhat, says Gibson. It seemed harder to argue that what the executives had done was moral when it turned out to be unprofitable. But "by and large, the community did nof begin to censure the men involved until the deviousness of their manner of violating the statues was revealed- which suggest that they were polularly condemned for deviousness rather than law breaking...
Last August the Justice Department's Antitrust Division brought suit against three major drug makers-American Cyanamid. Bristol-Myers and Chas. Pfizer & Co.-on charges that they had conspired to fix prices of three "broad spectrum" antibiotics. The trustbusters' charges were similar to those that the Federal Trade Commission had been pressing since 1958 against six drug companies-including the three under fire from Justice. Last week the drug industry got a shot in the arm when FTC Hearing Examiner Robert Piper ordered dismissal of the FTC charges...