State v. Meen
| Decision Date | 10 February 1920 |
| Parties | STATE v. MEEN. |
| Court | Wisconsin Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Error to Circuit Court, Marathon County; A. H. Reid, Judge.
Fred W. Meen was prosecuted for willfully, knowingly, and intentionally, for the purpose of creating a monopoly and of destroying the business of a competitor, discriminating between two different sections by buying cream and butter fat at a higher price in one village than he paid in another town in the same county. From an order arresting judgment after verdict of guilty and discharging defendant for want of evidence to sustain the verdict, the State brings error. Writ of error quashed.
Writ of error prosecuted by the state to review an order of the circuit court for Marathon county, A. H. Reid, presiding judge, entered July 12, 1919, arresting judgment after verdict of guilty and discharging the defendant in error for want of evidence to sustain the verdict of the jury.
The defendant was charged with having violated Statutes, §§ 1791n1 and 1791n2, in that while engaged in the business of buying cream and butter fat for the purpose of manufacture, he did willfully, knowingly, and intentionally, for the purpose of creating a monopoly and of destroying the business of a competitor in the village of Hatley, Marathon county, discriminate between the different sections, communities, towns, villages, and cities of the state by buying cream and butter fat at a higher price in the village of Hatley than he then paid for the same commodity in the town of Franzen, in the same county; due allowance being made for the difference in cost of transportation from point of purchase and place of manufacture.
Four charges were preferred against the defendant for violating this statute in the month of October, 1918. The case was tried to the court and a jury. The jury, on June 26, 1918, rendered a verdict finding the defendant guilty on each of the four counts in the information. The defendant, after verdict, moved in arrest of judgment and that notwithstanding the verdict the information be quashed and defendant discharged upon the grounds: (1) That the warrant states no offense known to the law; (2) that the statutes on which the complaint is based are unconstitutional and void; (3) that the state has offered no evidence sufficient to show, or tending to show, a violation by defendant of the law as charged in the information, and in the alternative, if this motion be denied, the defendant moved for a new trial for manifest errors specified in the motion. The court passed on the first motion, holding that the Statutes, § 1791n1 are not obnoxious to the constitutional objection as claimed by defendant. The court, however, determined that the defendant's motion excepting to the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdict in any reasonable view thereof was well taken, and held that the defendant's motion “to arrest judgment on the verdict and to discharge the defendant must be granted.” The record shows that the defendant, at the conclusion of receiving the testimony and before the case was submitted to the jury, made a motion to direct a verdict of acquittal, that the information be quashed and that the defendant be discharged. The court in ruling on this motion stated:
The court then denied the motion without prejudice to the right to review the same question by motion in arrest of judgment after the verdict.John J. Blaine, Atty. Gen., J. E. Messerschmidt, Asst. Atty. Gen., and George W. Lippert, Dist. Atty., of Athens, for the State.
Harry L. Reevs,...
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...Oil Co., 23 F. Supp. 937 (WD Wis. 1938), aff'd in United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., 310 U. S. 150, 165, n. 1 (1940); State v. Meen, 171 Wis. 36 (1920) (same); see also Advisory Committee's Notes to Rule 29 (endorsing these practices). Moreover, prior to the adoption of Rule 29 in 1944......
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