Everyman's Sherman Act

To the individual businessman who is the victim of a conspiracy by his competitors and suppliers the U.S. Supreme Court last week handed a potent antitrust club. Overruling two lower courts, it ordered a trial for a private businessman on the ground that the attempted elimination of even one merchant from the market tended to monopoly.

The suit was brought by Klor's, Inc., a small San Francisco appliance store, against its next-door competitor, the big Broadway-Hale (19 stores), and ten appliance makers and eight distributors. Klor's charged that the manufacturers and distributors had conspired to deny it merchandise, except at extremely unfavorable terms, because of pressure brought by Broadway-Hale's using its monopolistic buying power. The defendants did not deny the boycott, but claimed that the public could still buy the same goods at many other San Francisco stores. The District Court thereupon concluded that the suit was a "purely private quarrel." Flatly rejecting the argument, the Supreme Court said the conspiracy against Klor's was a full-fledged illegal restraint of trade. "As such, it is not to be tolerated merely because the victim is just one merchant whose business is so small that his destruction makes little difference to the economy. Monopoly can as surely thrive by the elimination of such small businessmen, one at a time, as it can by driving them out in large groups."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.