United States v. Swift Co

• Decision Date: 15 March 1943
• Docket Number: No. 529,529
• Citation: 87 L.Ed. 889,63 S.Ct. 684,318 U.S. 442
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. SWIFT & CO. et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

318 U.S. 442

63 S.Ct. 684

87 L.Ed. 889

UNITED STATES

v SWIFT & CO. et al.

No. 529.

Argued Feb. 11, 12, 1943.

Decided March 15, 1943.

Mr. Charles H. Weston, of Washington, D.C., for appellant.

Mr. Kenneth W. Robinson, of Denver, Colo. for appellees.

PER CURIAM.

This is a direct appeal under the Criminal Appeals Act, 18 U.S.C. § 682, as amended by the Act of May 9, 1942, 56 Stat. 271, 18 U.S.C.A. § 682, from a judgment of the district court setting aside an indictment under the Sherman Act. 15 U.S.C.A. §§ 1—7, 15 note. By the statute our jurisdiction is restricted to review of a decision or judgment based upon the invalidity or construction of the statute on which the indictment is founded. Included among the defendants are the commission firms which receive and sell fat lambs on the Denver Livestock Exchange, and three packing companies which purchase fat lambs on the Denver market for shipment interstate to their manufacturing plants.

The indictment charges that the defendants agreed among themselves to purchase lambs only on the Exchange, and to abandon the previously prevailing practice of making direct purchases from producers in the country, for interstate shipment, 'thereby restraining the channels of distribution within the Denver marketing area through which said fat lambs for eastbound shipment move, and * * * restraining the interstate trade and commerce described in this indictment, in violation of § 1 of the Sherman Act'. It also alleges that the agreement or conspiracy among the defendants is 'in restraint of the hereinbefore described trade and commerce in fat lambs among the several states of the United States and in violation of § 1' of the Sherman Act.

The district court dismissed the indictment on the ground that the alleged agreement and practices under it are not in any way shown to have affected the price of lambs or the amount of lambs raised or produced, or to have lessened their flow in interstate commerce. While its decision was rested in part upon the construction of the Sherman Act, the court also relied on the insufficiency of the pleading in that it failed to allege any injury to or effect upon interstate commerce resulting from the alleged agreement or conspiracy. It said: 'the indictment is defective in that it does not go far enough in its charges to bring the agreement within any of the recognized canons of construction of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, because, as stated before, there is no allegation that the defendants intended to or in any way harmed anyone or affected the price of fat lambs, the amount of them that could be sold, or the places where they could be sold'; and again, 'the government has gone beyond the extent and meaning of that law as interpreted by the Supreme Court, for, as stated, there is no allegation that anyone has been injured or the flow of interstate commerce in any way affected'. 46 F.Supp. 848, 852.

From this we must take it that the court found that the general allegations with respect to the effect of the alleged agreement on commerce were not sufficiently specific. It thus placed its decision in part at least on the inadequacy of the allegations of the indictment, which we have quoted, to charge that the conspiracy or agreement affected commerce within the meaning of the Sherman Act. These we think were rulings upon the sufficiency of the indictment as a matter of pleading, the correctness of which cannot under the statute be reviewed here on direct appeal from the district court. And such an appeal to this Court does not lie when the district court has considered the construction of the statute but has also rested its decision upon the independent ground of a defect in the pleading. United States v. Hastings, 296 U.S. 188, 56 S.Ct. 218, 80 L.Ed. 148; United States v. Halsey, Stuart & Co., 296 U.S. 451, 56 S.Ct. 299, 80 L.Ed. 323; United States v. Borden Co., 308 U.S. 188, 193, 60 S.Ct. 182, 185, 84 L.Ed. 181; United States v. Wayne Pump Co., 317 U.S. 200, 63 S.Ct. 191, 87 L.Ed. —-, and cases cited.

This practice was recognized and confirmed by the adoption of the amendment of May 9, 1942, to the Crim- inal Appeals Act. The amendment authorized the Government to appeal to the circuit court of appeals from a decision of the district court sustaining a demurrer to the indictment in any case 'except where a direct appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States is provided by this Act (section)', and provided that where an appeal is taken to the Supreme Court 'which, in the opinion of that Court, should have been taken to a circuit court of appeals, * * * the Supreme Court * * * shall remand the cause to the circuit court of appeals * * * which shall then have jurisdiction to hear and determine the same as if the appeal had been taken to that court in the first instance * * *.' In urging the passage of this legislation the Attorney General, in his letter to the Speaker of the House of January 10, 1941, pointed out that 'It not infrequently happens that a demurrer to an indictment is sustained or a motion in arrest of judgment is allowed on grounds other than the invalidity or construction of the statute upon which the...