United States v. National City Lines

• Decision Date: 07 June 1948
• Docket Number: No. 544,544
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. NATIONAL CITY LINES, Inc., et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

334 U.S. 573

68 S.Ct. 1169

92 L.Ed. 1584

UNITED STATES

v NATIONAL CITY LINES, Inc., et al.

No. 544.

Argued April 28, 1948.

Decided June 7, 1948.

Rehearing Denied June 21, 1948.

Appeal From the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of California.

Mr. Charles H. Weston, of Washington, D.C., for appellant.

Mr. C. Frank Reavis, of New York City, for appellees.

Mr. Justice RUTLEDGE delivered the opinion of the Court.

In United States v. Scophony Corporation, 333 U.S. 795, 68 S.Ct. 855, we recently considered the meaning and effect of § 12 of the Clayton Act,¹ providing for venue and service of process in civil antitrust proceedings against private corporations. This case brings before us another phase of the section's effect in like proceedings. The principal ques- tion, and the only one we find it necessary to consider, is whether the choice of forums given to the plaintiff by § 12 is subject to qualification by judicial application of the doctrine of forum non conveniens.

The suit was brought by the United States against nine corporations² for alleged violation of §§ 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act. 26 Stat. 209, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1, 2, 15 U.S.C.A. §§ 1, 2. The basic charge is that the appellees conspired to acquire control of local transportation companies in numerous cities located in widely different parts of the United States,³ and to restrain and monopolize interstate commerce in motorbusses, petroleum supplies, tires and tubes sold to those companies, contrary to the Act's prohi- bitions.⁴ Injunctive and other relief of an equitable nature was sought.⁵

The appellees filed various motions, including the one involved in this appeal. It sought dismissal of the complaint on the ground that the District Court for the Southern District of California was not a convenient forum for the trial. This motion was supported by a showing not only of inconvenience to the defendants of trial in the California district, but also that the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division (Chicago), would be the most convenient forum for them. The showing was by affidavits, executed by officers, attorneys and employees of the corporate defendants.⁶ Counteraffidavitswere filed in opposition on behalf of the Government.⁷

After oral argument, h e District Court filed findings of fact and conclusions of law together with a written opinion, substantially accepting appellees' showing and sustaining the motion. 7 F.R.D. 456. Accordingly it entered judgment dismissing the complaint, but without prejudice to the institution of a similar suit against the named defendants 'in a more appropriate and convenient forum.' This decision is brought to us for review on direct appeal pursuant to the statutes applicable in such cases.⁸

It is not disputed that the District Court has jurisdiction in the basic sense of power to hear and determine the cause or that it has venue within the provisions of § 12.⁹ Nor can it be questioned that any of the defendants can be brought personally within that court's jurisdiction by service of process made in accordance with the provisions of either § 12, or those of § 5 of the Sherman Act.¹⁰ The only question presented concerning the court's power is whether, having jurisdiction and venue of the cause and personal jurisdiction of the defendants, the court also was authorized to decline to exercise its jurisdiction upon finding, without abuse of discretion, that the forum was not a convenient one within the scope of the non-statutory doctrine commonly, though not too accurately, labeled forum non conveniens.

It would serve no useful purpose to review in detail the reasoning or the authorities upon which the District Court ruled the doctrine applicable in such cases as this, or therefore the further groundings upon which it proceeded in holding the forum inconvenient. For the view has prevailed without qualification during the life of § 12, thirty-four years, that the choice of venues expressly given to the plaintiff is not to be qualified by any power of a court having venue under any of the section's alternatives to decline to exercise the jurisdiction conferred. None of the decisions on which the District Court relied suggested, much less decided, that such a power exists. This therefore is a case of first impression, seeking departure from long-established practice. Moreover, the analogies drawn from other types of cases in which the doctrine has been applied¹¹ cannot survive in the face of the section's explicit terms and the patent intent of Congress in enacting it.

In the Scophony case we gave attention to the history of § 12, which as there related is as pertinent to the question now presented as it was to the issues then under consideration.¹² Reference to the Scophony opinion, Part I, 333 U.S. at pages 795, 802, 68 S.Ct. 855, 859, will avoid the necessity for repeating the history here in extenso. But its present applicability will be accentuated by recalling that we reaffirmed the ruling in Eastman Kodak Co. v. Southern Photo Material Co., 273 U.S. 359, 47 S.Ct. 400, 71 L.Ed. 684, namely, that § 12 of the Clayton Act had enlarged h e venue provision of § 7 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C.A. § 15 note, with the intent and effect to give the plaintiff the right to bring antitrust proceedings not only in the districts where the corporate defendant 'resides or is found,' as § 7 had authorized, but also 'in any district wherein it * * * transacts business.'¹³

In the Eastman case, as the Scophony opinion emphasized, the Court had rejected the argument that the addition of 'or transacts business' (333 U.S. 802, 68 S.Ct. 859) was no more than a redundant reformulation of 'is found'; instead it gave the added words broader and less technical meaning than 'is found' had acquired under prior decisions.¹⁴ This was done, as the Eastman opinion stated, because accepting the contrary view would have rendered the addition meaningless and defeated the plain remedial purpose of § 12.273 U.S. at page 373, 47 S.Ct. at page 403, 71 L.Ed. 684. That section, the Court held, supplemented 'the remedial provision of the Anti-Trust Act for the redress of injuries resulting from illegal restraints upon interstate trade, by relieving the injured person from the necessity of resorting for the redress of wrongs com- mitted by a nonresident corporation, to a district however distant, in which it resides or may be 'found'—often an insuperable obstacle—and enabling him to institute the suit in a district, frequently that of his own residence, in which the corporation in fact transacts business, and bring it before the court by the service of process in a district in which it resides or may be 'found." (Emphasis added.) 273 U.S. at pages 373, 374, 47 S.Ct. at page 403, 71 L.Ed. 684.

The Scophony opinion reaffirmed this view: 'Thus, by substituting practical, business conceptions for the previous hairsplitting legal technicalities encrusted upon the 'found'-'present'-'carrying-on-business' sequence, the Court yielded to and made effective Congress' remedial purpose. Thereby it relieved persons injured through corporate violations of the antitrust laws from the 'often insuperable obstacle' of resorting to distant forums for redress of wrongs done in the places of their business or residence. A foreign corporation no longer could come to a district, perpetrate there the injuries outlawed, and then by retreating or even without retreating to its headquarters defeat or delay the retribution due.' 333 U.S. at page 808, 68 S.Ct. at page 862.

These conclusions concerning the section's intent and effect are altogether inconsistent with any idea that the defendant corporation can defeat the plaintiff's choice of venue as given, by asking for and securing dismissal of the suit, either on the ground that the venue selected within the statutory limits is inconvenient for the defendant or that another authorized venue is more convenient for it.

No such discretionary power had been exercised by any court during the twenty years of the Sherman Act's application prior to the enactment of § 12, under the narrower range of choice afforded by § 7. None had been suggested, and uniform practice had established that the plaintiff's choice was conclusive, as was true later under § 12 until the deviation in this case.

When therefore Congress came to face the problem of making the nation's antitrust policy more effective through the Clayton Act's provisions, that body was not confronted with any problem of abuse by plaintiffs in selecting venue for antitrust suits; nor was it concerned with any question of providing means by which the defendants in such suits might defeat the plaintif § choice to serve their own convenience. Congress' concern was quite the opposite. It was to provide broader and more effective relief, both substantively and procedurally, for persons injured by violations of its antitrust policy.¹⁵ Insofar as convenience in bringing suit and conducting trial was involved, the purpose was to make these less inconvenient for plaintiffs or, as was said in the Eastman opinion, to remove the 'often * * * insuperable obstacle' thrown in their way by the existing venue restrictions.

To have broadened the choice of venue for the reasons which brought about that action, only to have it narrowed again by application of the vague and discretionary power¹⁶ comprehended by forum non conveniens would have been incongruous, to say the least. In making the change Congress did not authorize plaintiffs to institute civil antitrust suits in the newly specified districts, merely in order to have them transferred back for trial to one of the districts comprehended by § 7. It intended trial to take place in the district specified by the statute and selected by the plaintiff.¹⁷

This conclusion is supported as strongly by the history of the legislative proceedings relating to the enactment of § 12 as by the...