Rogers v. Douglas Tobacco Board of Trade
| Decision Date | 09 May 1957 |
| Docket Number | No. 16284.,16284. |
| Citation | 244 F.2d 471 |
| Parties | B. B. ROGERS et al., Appellants, v. The DOUGLAS TOBACCO BOARD OF TRADE, Inc., et al., Appellees. Charles B. HOLCOMB, Administrator, and Virginia H. Gambill, Administratrix, of the estate of Rady E. Holcomb, deceased, Appellants, v. B. B. ROGERS et al., Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Norman M. Littell, Charles J. Alexander, Washington, D. C., John G. Kopp, J. Edwin Peavy, Waycross, Ga., for appellants Rogers and others.
George E. Maddox, Douglas, Ga., R. Glenn Key, Winston-Salem, N. C., Gibson & Maddox, Douglas, Ga., for appellants Holcomb and others.
E. Kontz Bennett, Waycross, Ga., Montgomery L. Preston, Douglas, Ga., Harold F. Baker, Washington, D. C., A. W. Gholson, Jr., Henderson, N. C., for Douglas Tobacco, and others.
Before HUTCHESON, Chief Judge, and RIVES and BROWN, Circuit Judges.
In an action for treble damages for alleged violations of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act,1 the district court sustained the motions of the defendants to dismiss and for judgment on the pleadings, and this appeal ensued.
The basic facts as established by the pleadings, admissions and affidavits are substantially without dispute. We shall heed Judge Sibley's wise admonition,2 and go directly to the facts.
Beyond the control of the defendants, according to the present record, are many of the facts and circumstances from which it is claimed that the necessity arose for the allocation of selling time among tobacco warehouses in each of the local markets in the flue-cured area.3
The internal allocation of selling time among the warehouses on any local market is done by the tobacco board of trade of the particular city where the market is located. The defendants, as majority voting members of The Douglas Board of Trade, are responsible for the allocations of selling time among the warehouses on the Douglas, Georgia, tobacco market, and those allocations give rise to the present action.
The Douglas market has been in continuous existence since 1918. At the present time it includes seven tobacco warehouses, one of which is operated and controlled by the plaintiffs, and six by various parties named as defendants. Tobacco is brought by the farmer-growers to the warehouses where it is sold at auction by the basket or pile to buyers assigned to the market by the buying companies (see footnote 3, supra). Those companies have assigned to the Douglas market two sets of buyers, from which it follows that only two auction sales can be conducted simultaneously, and that the maximum amount of tobacco that can be sold on the Douglas market in any one day of the four or five weeks of the selling season is 4400 baskets. The opportunities of each of the seven tobacco warehouses to sell any part of this 4400 baskets is controlled by the local Board of Trade, which assigns to each of the warehouses a certain portion of each selling day during which sales can be held at that warehouse. The buyers attend only those sales held pursuant to the schedule of selling time issued by the Board. Eligible for membership in the Board of Trade are the tobacco warehousemen, the buyers, and all persons operating on the tobacco market. The defendants comprise the majority, of the participating or voting membership of The Douglas Board of Trade and, hence, control and direct the policies and practices of the Board.
For many years prior to the opening of the 1954 tobacco market season, it was the custom and practice of the Douglas Board of Trade to allocate selling time to each of the warehouses on the basis of the "Unit Floor-Space System." Each warehouse was credited with one unit for each 55,000 square feet of floor space. Five of the warehouses owned by various defendants were one-unit warehouses, and the sixth was a two-unit warehouse. Thus, prior to the construction of plaintiffs' warehouse, there were a total of seven units, the two-unit warehouse operated and controlled by one set of defendants, two of the one-unit warehouses by another set of defendants, and each of the three other one-unit warehouses by a separate set of defendants. There being a total of seven units of floor space in the six warehouses, the two-unit warehouse was allotted two-sevenths of the selling time, and each of the other warehouses one-seventh thereof. In May of 1954 the plaintiffs commenced the construction of a four-unit or 220,000 square foot warehouse in Douglas. If the "Unit Floor-Space System" of allocation had remained in effect, the plaintiffs, upon completion of their warehouse in time for the opening of the 1954 season on July 15, 1954, would have been entitled to considerably more than one-third of the total selling time available for the Douglas market.
As soon as the defendants learned of the plaintiffs' intention to construct a warehouse and throughout the period of construction differences arose, the defendants accusing the plaintiffs of trying to force them to buy the new warehouse rather than let the plaintiffs "hog" the market, and the plaintiffs accusing the defendants of trying to prevent them from engaging in the tobacco auction business on the Douglas market. The plaintiffs' warehouse, commonly known as the Big Independent 1, 2, 3, and 4, was completed by the end of June, 1954, at a cost of $200,000.00.
On July 10, 1954, about ten days after the completion of plaintiffs' warehouse and five days before the 1954 season opened, The Douglas Board of Trade adopted new by-laws to provide for the allocation of selling time as follows:
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