Word: medinae
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...well-chosen words-probably the longest court opinion ever written -Federal Judge Harold R. Medina last week told why he dismissed the antitrust case against 17 leading investment banking firms. The antitrust laws, he said, require proof of an agreement or conspiracy, something the Government attorneys had not shown. Wrote Medina: "The Sherman Act is not an open door through which any court or judge may pass at will in order to shape or mold the affairs of businessmen according to his own individual notions of sound economic policy . . . Unless there is some agreement, combination or conspiracy the Sherman...
...Judge Medina declared that the syndicate system, in which investment bankers pool their resources to underwrite and distribute new security issues, does not destroy competition, and "has no effect whatever on general market prices...
...most telling points, Judge Medina rapped the trustbusters for the methods they had used to gather evidence. Back in 1940 and 1941, the Securities & Exchange Commission had asked investment bankers for their opinions on compulsory sealed bidding by investment bankers for new security issues. Many of those who were later defendants in the case had expressed a preference for negotiated bidding, the traditional method of floating securities. "Incredible as it may seem . . . the . . . replies . . . were offered in evidence by Government counsel as some proof of the existence of the conspiracy . . . Here we are dealing with concededly honest expressions of opinion...
...prove their charge, the Government lawyers probed practices in the banking business dating back to the 1912 Pujo investigation of the "money trust." But, as exasperated Judge Medina pointed out repeatedly, they failed to produce a single instance of deliberate conspiracy. Finally, after 16 months, the Government got down to the key part of its case: an attempt to show that the bankers had invented the syndicate system in 1915. But one of the two Government witnesses, Harold L. Stuart, 72, head of Chicago's huge Halsey, Stuart & Co., directly contradicted the Government's contentions. He said that...
...defense did not have to present its side. Last week, after 5,000,000 words of testimony, Judge Medina dismissed the suit "on the merits and with prejudice" (i.e., the Government cannot reopen the case, although it can appeal Judge Medina's decision to the U.S. Supreme Court). There was no proof whatever, said Medina, of any conspiracy, and therefore "the monopoly charges fall of their own weight." In all, the marathon trial had cost the bankers at least $4,000,000, and some estimates ran as high as $7,500,000. How much it cost taxpayers, nobody knew...