Trial by Congress?

Child rearing and glacial activity aside, hardly anything moves slower than a major antitrust case against a big U.S. corporation. The Government filed suit to break up American Telephone & Telegraph in 1974; last fall the federal courts finally decided that they had jurisdiction to hear the case--so the Government and company served each other with demands for millions of documents to be examined before trial. The Federal Trade Commission's suit against eight major oil companies is flowing about as speedily as heavy motor oil; it was filed four years ago, but lawyers do not expect trial to begin until the early 1980s. That would about match the pace of a Justice Department suit seeking to break up IBM, which took six years to move to trial in a New York courtroom in 1975.

Business Lobbying. Griffin Bell has had three chances to observe the snail's-pace process: as a federal appeals judge, a highly paid corporate attorney and as Jimmy Carter's Attorney General. In speeches and in testimony last week to a Senate subcommittee, he advanced a bold idea: sending the biggest cases to Congress "as legislative matters" rather than taking them to court. "My idea," he said, "would be to certify to Congress that the case is beyond the capacity of the courts to handle." In an earlier speech before the American Bar Association, he described what sounds like a legislative trial: "Congress could hear the evidence and find the facts as to the existence of monopoly or the need for a remedy in a monopolistic situation," presumably by passing a law requiring the breakup of one or several giant corporations.

Bell has not yet begun drafting legislation for such a policy. It is opposed by some of his own antitrust lawyers, who view Congress as a cockpit of political pressures and business lobbying.

Bell's answer: Big antitrust cases "involve the basic restructuring of American industry and the shape of the American economy. These are questions that are perhaps more appropriately answered by the legislature, and not by the courts."

Whatever comes of his idea, Bell left no doubt that he will try to stop what he views as an increasing concentration of economic power in the boardrooms of a few hundred huge corporations. His greatest concern, he told the Senators, is "shared monopoly": a situation in which a handful of big companies dominate an industry and follow similar product and pricing policies. The Federal Trade Commission has brought suits against alleged shared monopolies, including one against eight oil companies and another against the four largest cereal makers. The Justice Department has not filed any shared monopoly suits, but Bell thinks that it should.

In shaping antitrust policy, Bell has one problem of his own making: finding a new chief for the Justice Department's antitrust division to replace Donald I. Baker, who left last week. Baker, who demanded jail sentences for price fixers, loved the job but was let go mainly because he was a holdover from the Ford Administration.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.