United States v. B. Goedde & Co.

• Decision Date: 06 September 1941
• Docket Number: No. 15253.,15253.
• Citation: 40 F. Supp. 523
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. B. GOEDDE & CO. et al.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Illinois

40 F. Supp. 523

UNITED STATES v. B. GOEDDE & CO. et al.

No. 15253.

District Court, E. D. Illinois.

September 6, 1941.

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Paul V. Ford, Sp. Asst. to the Atty. Gen., of St. Louis, Mo., Roscoe Steffin, Sp. Asst. to the Atty. Gen., of Washington, D. C., Arthur Roe, U.S.Dist. Atty., of Danville, Ill., and Walter R. Powell, Jr., of Washington, D. C., for plaintiff.

Baker, Lesemann, Kagy & Wagner, of East St. Louis, Ill., Terry, Gueltig & Powell and M. D. Powell, all of Edwardsville, Ill., Karns & Bandy, of East St. Louis, Ill., Phillip Liestman, of Alton, Ill., Lindauer & Lindauer, and Sam S. Pessin, both of Belleville, Ill., R. E. Costello, of East St. Louis, Ill., Carl W. Feickert, of Belleville, Ill., Thos. Williamson, of Edwardsville, Ill., Oehmke & Dunham, of East St. Louis, Ill., Manuel M. Wiseman, of Alton, Ill., L. Harold Degnan, of East St. Louis, Ill. and Bryan Purteet, of St. Louis Mo., for defendants.

LINDLEY, District Judge.

The indictment charges that defendant labor unions and officers thereof, finishing mill operators, engaged in the manufacture and sale of millwork, kitchen cabinets, prefabricated houses and other lumber products, and certain individuals participating or otherwise interested in the alleged violation conspired and combined in violation of the Anti-Trust Act. To the charge, defendants have interposed: (1) motions to quash; (2), pleas in abatement and (3), petition of one for return of documents. The Government has demurred to the pleas and interposed its motion to impound the documents held. Certain of defendants' pleas in abatement go to the sufficiency of an indictment of unincorporated associations and certain others assert immunity from prosecution. Extensive briefs have been filed and extended arguments presented.

Defendants are charged with a conspiracy, (a), "unreasonably to prevent persons, * * * in the East St. Louis area from purchasing, using, and installing * * * building products manufactured in states other than * * * Illinois"; (b), "to prevent manufacturers of such products located in states other than * * * Illinois from selling * * * in the East St. Louis area"; (c), "to increase artificially and maintain high and noncompetitive prices for similar products permitted by defendants to be sold in the * * * area"; (d), all "in restraint of trade and commerce in prefabricated houses, kitchen cabinets, millwork and other building products among the several states" in violation of the Anti-Trust Act; (e), the control effectuated has been detrimental to the public interest and has deprived purchasers and prospective purchasers of prefabricated houses and lumber products of free and unrestricted competition therein.

Relative to the means employed, certain specific acts are charged:

(1) Contracts were executed between defendant mill owners and unions, (a), providing for employment of only such persons as are members of the unions; (b), permitting the mill owners to use the American Federation of Labor Union label; (c), excluding unlabeled lumber.

(2) Acts of the unions: (a), the unions warned builders that their members would not erect, utilize or install such products as did not bear the label; (b), the unions required that certain products bear the label and warned purchasers and prospective purchasers that material bearing no label would have to be removed from "the job" and returned to the manufacturer or, (c), no member of the union employed on a job where unlabeled goods were used would be permitted to work but all members would refuse to work; (d), manufacturers supplying such unlabeled material were forced by the unions to remove it from the job and return it to plants outside Illinois.

(3) Coercion: (a), the unions intimidated and coerced, by strikes and threats to strike, builders, forcing them to purchase material bearing the union label from defendant mills although "similar products could be purchased at lower prices in Missouri and other states"; (b), the unions refused to install material manufactured in states other than Illinois; (c), they refused to erect prefabricated houses manufactured outside Illinois; (d), the unions have threatened to commit and committed acts of violence in order to restrict mill owners in the area of East St. Louis.

(4) Acts of violence: (a), The unions have violently assaulted and beaten laborers not affiliated with them, to prevent and discourage the latter's working on material not bearing the label; (b), they have threatened violence and bodily harm to members of such persons' families; (c), they have threatened to destroy products not so labeled; (d), they have prevented members of other labor organizations, affiliated with the union defendants through the American Federation of Labor, from working upon such material and such laborers have refused to work or haul same.

The intent and purpose of defendants are said to be: (a), to prevent manufacturers of material not bearing the label from competing with other mills and mill owners; (b), to maintain the prices of such products at an unreasonably high level; (c), to raise artificially prices of products; (d), to limit their production in states other than Illinois for shipment to Illinois; (e), to restrict the amount of products coming into Illinois; (f), to discriminate between sellers and purchasers in East St. Louis area for the benefit of defendant mill owners; (g), to exercise complete control over the East St. Louis market in prefabricated houses, millwork and other building products for the benefit of defendants; (h), (negative), not with any intent to raise wages, shorten hours, better working conditions or terms of employment or other legitimate or normal objective of labor unions but with the intent, unduly, to restrict interstate commerce.

Sufficiency of the indictment so far as notice and certainty are required. In United States v. General Motors Corp., D. C., 26 F.Supp. 353, Judge Slick held sufficient an indictment charging violation of the Anti-Trust Act in some seventy-two paragraphs. Subsequently, at the trial, I adhered to his conclusions. The conviction was affirmed in United States v. General Motors Corp. et al., 7 Cir., 121 F.2d 376. What was said there is applicable to and decisive of the issue here. It is not necessary to set out in detail the evidence of a conspiracy or to describe it with the same degree of particularity as a substantive offense. Mercer v. United States, 3 Cir., 61 F.2d 97. All that is essential is certainty to a common intent sufficient to identify the offense which defendants are charged to have conspired to commit. Williamson v. United States, 207 U.S. 425, 28 S.Ct. 163, 52 L.Ed. 278; Blaine v. United States, 5 Cir., 29 F.2d 651, certiorari denied 279 U.S. 845, 49 S.Ct. 342, 73 L.Ed. 990.

The indictment contains some twenty-two printed pages. As is readily apparent from the excerpts included herein, the charge is clear and the means and methods pursued to achieve the same are set forth in detail, sufficiently explicitly to afford to all defendants a clear understanding of the charge submitted and to protect them from the possible peril of double jeopardy growing out of any subsequent prosecution. United States v. Patterson, 6 Cir., 201 F. 697, certiorari denied 238 U.S. 635, 35 S.Ct. 939, 59 L.Ed. 1499; United States v. MacAndrews & Forbes Co., C.C., 149 F. 823, writ of error dismissed, 212 U. S. 585, 29 S.Ct. 681, 53 L.Ed. 661; United States v. Moore, D.C.E.D.Ill. 7 F.2d 734. The language of United States v. Moore et al., D. C., 7 F.2d 734, 736, where I had occasion to consider the sufficiency of an anti-trust indictment, is applicable to the present cause: "The elements of the crime are not only charged in the language of the statute, but the means whereby the combination or conspiracy is and has been formed and carried on, and the details thereof, adequate to identify the specific combination or conspiracy and to enable the defendants to prepare for trial and to protect them against a new prosecution in the event of acquittal or conviction, are likewise all set forth with particularity and definiteness."

I do not accept the suggestion that several separate and distinct conspiracies are charged. An indictment is not duplicitous because it alleges different means of accomplishing the purpose. Duplicity arises from charging more than one offense; not from charging a single offense committed in more than one way, Swift & Co. v. United States, 196 U.S. 375, 25 S.Ct. 276, 49 L.Ed. 518, or from pleading different acts, if they contribute to the ultimate, charged offense. United States v. Mac Andrews & Forbes Co., supra. The test for duplicity must be applied only to the result charged and not to averments of various methods of its attainment.

It is insisted by certain defendants that their relationship, each with the others, is not disclosed. The indictment charges that "all defendants have entered into and engaged in a combination or conspiracy with each other." This is a sufficient charge under the statute. If there remains any reasonable ground for additional information as to the participation of any defendant, a remedy exists in a motion for bill of particulars. The Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C.A. §§ 1-7, 15 note, does not make the doing of any act other than the act of conspiring a crime. Nash v. United States, 229 U.S. 373, 33 S.Ct. 780, 57 L.Ed. 1232.

It is said that the indictment does not state facts but conclusions of law. The purpose of the pleading is to guarantee that proper notice of the charge be given; and it seems obvious here, upon careful reading, that the indictment makes such a full disclosure. That only ultimate facts are pleaded and the details of evidence omitted furnishes no valid ground for objection. If any averments constitute, strictly speaking, conclusions of the pleader, they will not vitiate the indictment when the strict averments of fact...