Midland Oil Co. v. Sinclair Refining Co., Civil Action No. 1042.
| Decision Date | 15 September 1941 |
| Docket Number | Civil Action No. 1042. |
| Citation | 41 F. Supp. 436 |
| Parties | MIDLAND OIL CO. v. SINCLAIR REFINING CO. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois |
Maurice A. Frank, of Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff.
William R. Allen and Sturtevant Hinman, both of Chicago, Ill., for defendant.
The Court has carefully considered the defendant's motion to dismiss this suit for lack of jurisdiction and has studied the two briefs submitted by the defendant and the one submitted by the plaintiff in connection with the said motion and has read the authorities therein cited.
There appears to be sufficient facts before the Court at this time by admissions of each party in its brief to permit the Court to decide the jurisdictional question as to whether or not the defendant is engaged in commerce (i. e., interstate commerce) within the meaning of the Act sued upon herein.
Considering these facts and the argument of the parties and the authorities cited, the Court is of the opinion that the defendant is engaged in interstate commerce within the meaning of the said Act both as to its less-than-tank-car-load sales as well as its tank car load sales which admittedly constitute interstate commerce. The defendant is engaged in the business of refining and selling gasoline. Its refinery is located in the State of Indiana. For its less-than-tank-car-load sales which are the transactions at issue in this case, it ships its gasoline from Indiana to various "bulk plants" which it operates in the State of Illinois. The gasoline is stored at these bulk plants until an order is received from a customer whereupon the amount of gasoline ordered is taken by truck from the bulk plant to the customer. The fact that the defendant finds it convenient to use these bulk plants in its system of distribution for less-than-tank-car-load quantities does not alter the interstate nature of its business. The defendant owns the refineries, the bulk plants and the method of delivery to the customer. The customer deals with the defendant directly. The gasoline remains the property of the defendant from the time it is refined until the time it is actually delivered to the customer. In my opinion this constitutes one direct uninterrupted flow in Interstate Commerce.
A review of the cases cited by the defendant on this point in both of its briefs clearly distinguishes those cases factually from the facts in the case at bar. In many of the cases cited, notably in the recent Goldblatt Case, Fleming v. Goldblatt Bros., D.C., 39 F.Supp. 701, decided by Judge Sullivan in this District, the facts are vastly different from those in the instant case. There we have a mercantile house buying from various manufacturers throughout the country and having its purchases delivered to its warehouse in Chicago from which it proceeds to dispose of such merchandise by retail sale through its own stores. This clearly distinguishes that case from the one now under consideration. If in the Goldblatt case the defendant was receiving merchandise from its own factories all over the country and storing it in its warehouse in Chicago for subsequent sale at retail (which would be comparable to the case at bar), the decision undoubtedly would have been different.
It is, therefore, my opinion based on the facts submitted by the defendant that the defendant is engaged in "commerce" as defined in the Robinson-Patman Act, 15 U.S.C.A. §§ 13 et seq., 21a.
On the facts relating to the plaintiff's business recited by the defendant in its first brief which were neither admitted nor denied by the plaintiff's brief, it is obvious that by the same reasoning used in arriving at the foregoing opinion, the plaintiff is not engaged in interstate commerce within the meaning of the Act sued upon. The plaintiff is an Illinois corporation which apparently buys gasoline from another Illinois corporation in Chicago and distributes the same to its customers also in the City of Chicago. The firm from which the plaintiff buys its gasoline in turn buys the same from a refiner engaged in interstate commerce but the gasoline comes to rest in the State of Illinois, the property of the local corporation from which the...
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