Northern Pacific Railway Company v. United States

• Citation: 2 L.Ed.2d 545,78 S.Ct. 514,356 U.S. 1
• Decision Date: 10 March 1958
• Docket Number: No. 59,59
• Parties: NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILWAY COMPANY and Northwestern Improvement Company, Appellants, v. UNITED STATES of America
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

356 U.S. 1

78 S.Ct. 514

2 L.Ed.2d 545

NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILWAY COMPANY and Northwestern Improvement Company, Appellants,

v UNITED STATES of America.

No. 59.

Argued Jan. 7 and 8, 1958.

Decided March 10, 1958.

[Syllabus from pages 1-2 intentionally omitted] Mr. M. L. Countryman, Jr., St. Paul, Minn., for appellants.

Mr. Daniel M. Friedman, Washington, D.C., for appellee.

Mr. Justice BLACK delivered the opinion of the Court.

In 1864 and 1870 Congress granted the predecessor of the Northern Pacific Railway Company approximately forty million acres of land in several Northwestern States and Territories to facilitate its construction of a railroad line from Lake Superior to Puget Sound.¹ In general terms, this grant consisted of every alternate section of land in a belt 20 miles wide on each side of the track through States and 40 miles wide through Territories. The granted lands were of various kinds; some contained great stands of timber, some iron ore or other valuable mineral deposits, some oil or natural gas, while still other sections were useful for agriculture, grazing or industrial purposes. By 1949 he Railroad had sold about 37,000,000 acres of its holdings, but had reserved mineral rights in 6,500,000 of those acres. Most of the unsold land was leased for one purpose or another. In a large number its sales contracts and most of its lease agreements the Railroad had inserted 'preferential routing' clauses which compelled the grantee or lessee to ship over its lines all commodities produced or manufactured on the land, provided that its rates (and in some instances its service) were equal to those of competing carriers.² Since many of the goods produced on the lands subject to these 'preferential routing' provisions are shipped from one State to another the actual and potential amount of interstate commerce affected is substantial. Alternative means of transportation exist for a large portion of these shipments including the facilities of two other major railroad systems.

In 1949 the Government filed suit under § 4 of the Sherman Act seeking a declaration that the defendant's 'preferential routing' agreements were unlawful as unreasonable restraints of trade under § 1 of that Act.³ After various pretrial proceedings the Government moved for summary judgment contending that on the undisputed facts it was entitled, as a matter of law, to the relief demanded. The district judge made numerous findings, as set forth in substance in the preceding paragraph, based on the voluminous pleadings, stipulations, depositions and answers to interrogatories filed in the case, and then granted the Government's motion (with an exception not relevant here). 142 F.Supp. 679. He issued an order enjoining the defendant from enforcing the existing 'preferential routing' clauses or from entering into any future agreements containing them. The defendant took a direct appeal to this Court under § 2 of the Expediting Act of 1903, 32 Stat. 823, as amended, 15 U.S.C. § 29, 15 U.S.C.A. § 29, and we noted probable jurisdiction. 352 U.S. 980, 77 S.Ct. 383, 1 L.Ed.2d 364.

The Sherman Act was designed to be a comprehensive charter of economic liberty aimed at preserving free and unfettered competition as the rule of trade. It rests on the premise that the unrestrained interaction of competitive forces will yield the best allocation of our economic resources, the lowest prices, the highest quality and the greatest material progress, while at the same time providing an environment conductive to the preservation of our democratic political and social institutions. But even were that premise open to question, the policy unequivocally laid down by the Act is competition. And to this end it prohibits 'Every contract, combination * * * or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States.' Although this prohibition is literally all-encompassing, the courts have construed it as precluding only those contracts or combinations which 'unreasonably' restrain competition. Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, 221 U.S. 1, 31 S.Ct. 502, 55 L.Ed. 619; Chicago Board of Trade v. United States, 246 U.S. 231, 38 S.Ct. 242, 62 L.Ed. 683.

However, there are certain agreements or practices which because of their pernicious effect on competition and lack of any redeeming virtue are conclusively presumed to be unreasonable and therefore illegal without elaborate inquiry as to the precise harm they have caused or the business excuse for their use. This principle of per se unreasonableness not only makes the type of restraints which are proscribed by the Sherman Act more certain to the benefit of everyone concerned, but it also avoids the necessity for an incredibly complicated and prolonged economic investigation into the entire history of the industry involved, as well as related industries, in an effort to determine at large whether a particular restraint has been unreasonable—an inquiry so often wholly fruitless when undertaken. Among the practices which the courts have heretofore deemed to be unlawful in and of themselves are price fixing, United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., 310 U.S. 150, 210, 60 S.Ct. 811, 838, 84 L.Ed. 1129; division of markets, United States v. Addyston Pipe & Steel Co., 6 Cir., 85 F. 271, 46 L.R.A. 122, affirmed 175 U.S. 211, 20 S.Ct. 96, 44 L.Ed. 136; group boycotts, Fashion Originators' Guild of America v. Federal Trade Comm., 312 U.S. 457, 668, 61 S.Ct. 703, 85 L.Ed. 949; and tying arrangements, International Salt Co. v. United States, 332 U.S. 392, 68 S.Ct. 12, 92 L.Ed. 20.

For our purposes a tying arrangement may be defined as an agreement by a party to sell one product but only on the condition that the buyer also purchases a different (or tied) product, or at least agrees that he will not purchase that product from any other supplier.⁴ Where such conditions are successfully exacted competition on the merits with respect to the tied product is inevitably curbed. Indeed 'tying agreements serve hardly any purpose beyond the suppression of competition.' Standard Oil Co. of California and Standard Stations v. United States, 337 U.S. 293, 305—306, 69 S.Ct. 1051, 1058, 93 L.Ed. 1371.⁵ They deny competitors free access to the market for the tied product, not because the party imposing the tying requirements has a better product or a lower price but because of his power or leverage in another market. At the same time buyers are forced to forego their free choice between competing products. For these reasons 'tying agreements fare harshly under the laws forbidding restraints of trade.' Times-Picayune Publishing Co. v. United States, 345 U.S. 594, 606, 73 S.Ct. 872, 879, 97 L.Ed. 1277. They are unreasonable in and of themselves whenever a party has sufficient economic power with respect to the tying product to appreciably restrain free competition in the market for the tied product and a 'not insubstantial' amount of interstate commerce is affected. International Salt Co. v. United States, 332 U.S. 392, 68 S.Ct. 12, 92 L.Ed. 20. Cf. United States v. Paramount Pictures, 334 U.S. 131, 156—159, 68 S.Ct. 915, 928—929, 92 L.Ed. 1260; United States v. Griffith, 334 U.S. 100, 68 S.Ct. 941, 92 L.Ed. 1236. Of course where the seller has no control or dominance over the tying product so that it does not represent an effectual weapon to pressure buyers into taking the tied item any restraint of trade attributable to such tying arrangements would obviously be insignificant at most. As a simple example, if one of a dozen food stores in a community were to refuse to sell flour unless the buyer also took sugar it would hardly tend to restrain competition in sugar if its competitors were ready and able to sell flour by itself.

In this case we believe the district judge was clearly correct in entering summary judgment declaring the defendant's 'preferential routing' clauses unlawful restraints of trade. We wholly agree that the undisputed facts established beyond any genuine question that the defendant possessed substantial economic power by virtue of its extensive landholdings which it used as leverage to induce large numbers of purchasers and lessees to give it preference, to the exclusion of its competitors, in carrying goods or produce from the land transferred to them. Nor can there be any real doubt that a 'not insubstantial' amount of interstate commerce was and is affected by these restrictive provisions.

As pointed out before, the defendant was initially granted large acreages by Congress in the several Northwestern States through which its lines now run. This land was strategically located in checkerboard fashion amid private holdings and within economic distance of transportation facilities. Not only the testimony of various witnesses but common sense makes it evident that this particular land was often prized by those who purchased or leased it and was frequently essential to their business activities. In disposing of its holdings the defendant entered into contracts of sale or lease covering at least several million acres of land which included 'preferential routing' clauses.⁶ The very existence of this host of tying arrangements is itself compelling evidence of the defendant's great power, at least where, as here, no other explanation has been offered for the existence of these restraints. The 'preferential routing' clauses conferred no benefit on the purchasers or lessees. While they got the land they wanted by yielding their freedom to deal with competing carriers, the defendant makes no claim that it came any cheaper than if the restrictive clauses had been omitted. In fact any such price reduction in return for rail shipments would have quite plainly constituted an unlawful rebate to the shipper.⁷ So far as the Railroad was concerned its purpose obviously was to fence out competitors, to stifle competition. While this may have been exceedingly beneficial to its business, it is the very...