United States v. Wayne Pump Co

• Decision Date: 07 December 1942
• Docket Number: Nos. 81 and 82,s. 81 and 82
• Citation: 317 U.S. 200,87 L.Ed. 184,63 S.Ct. 191
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. WAYNE PUMP CO. et al. (two cases)
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

317 U.S. 200

63 S.Ct. 191

87 L.Ed. 184

UNITED STATES

v WAYNE PUMP CO. et al. (two cases).

Nos. 81 and 82.

Argued Nov. 16, 1942.

Decided Dec. 7, 1942.

Appeals from the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of Illinois.

Mr. Thurman Arnold, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellant.

Mr. Edward R. Johnston, of Chicago, Ill., for appellee Wayne Pump Co. et al.

Mr. James H. Winston, of Chicago, Ill., for appellee Gilbert & Barker Mfg. Co. et al.

Mr. Harold F. McGuire, of Washington, D.C., for appellee Veeder-Root, Inc., et al.

Mr. Justice REED delivered the opinion of the Court.

These are companion appeals from orders sustaining demurrers to indictments for violations of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C.A. § 1 et seq. The indictment in No. 81 charges the defendants, manufacturers of gasoline pumps, a manufacturer of gasoline computing mechanisms and a gasoline pump manufacturing association, and certain of their officers, with conspiracy extending from 1932 to the date of the indictment, January 31, 1941, to fix the prices of computer pumps in interstate trade and commerce, in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. Computer pumps are gasoline pumps embodying a mechanism which calculates, measures, displays and records the quantities and prices of gasoline passing through the pumps to the purchasers. In No. 82 the defendants are the same except that the association and its officer are omitted. This latter indictment varies from the former in that in two counts it charges a conspiracy to monopolize the manufacture and sale of computer pumps and computing mechanisms in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act.¹

The facts alleged to support the charge in the count for price fixing and those to support the count for monopolizing are substantially the same. The counts vary only as to the purposes alleged. The same means allegedly are employed to carry out each conspiracy. As similar legal issues arise in each case and as our conclusions upon each count are based upon the same reasoning, it is not necessary to make further differentiations between the counts. One opinion was handed down by the district court. It sets out the indictments quite fully. United States v. Wayne Pump Company, D.C., 44 F.Supp. 949.

As our decision does not and cannot in our view consider the correctness of a trial court's judgment that an indictment failed properly to allege the facts establishing a crime (United States v. Sanges, 144 U.S. 310, 12 S.Ct. 609, 36 L.Ed. 445; United States v. Burroughs, 289 U.S. 159, 53 S.Ct. 574, 77 L.Ed. 1096) we do not set out the allegations of these counts in extenso. This has been done in United States v. Wayne Pump Company, supra. We shall state here for convenience in getting a focus on the problem only that the counts of the indictments charged conspiracies among the defendants to fix prices on and monopolize the interstate trade in computer pumps and computing mechanisms by a scheme for using patent rights and licenses to manufacture under them.

The defendants demurred to the indictments as insufficient in law to state an offense. It was said in the demurrers that the indictments failed to describe or particularize the offense attempted to be charged with sufficient definiteness, certainty or specificity to inform the defendants of the nature and causes of the accusations or to enable them to plead an acquittal or conviction thereunder in bar of other proceedings.

The trial court sustained the demurrers to each count from which ruling appeals to this Court were prayed under the Criminal Appeals Act, 34 Stat. 1246. That statute authorizes an appeal to this Court 'from a decision or judgment quashing, setting aside, or sustaining a demurrer to, any indictment, or any count thereof, where such decision or judgment is based upon the invalidity, or construction of the statute upon which the indictment is founded.'² We have no jurisdiction if the judgment below is not so based. United States v. Hastings, 296 U.S. 188, 56 S.Ct. 218, 80 L.Ed. 148; United States v. Halsey, Stuart & Co., 296 U.S. 451, 56 S.Ct. 299, 80 L.Ed. 323; United States v. Borden Co., 308 U.S. 188, 60 S.Ct. 182, 84 L.Ed. 181.

In their statement opposing jurisdiction appellees contended that the demurrers were sustained because of the insufficiency of the indictments as pleadings, as distinguished from a construction of the statute upon which the indictments were based and therefore questioned our jurisdiction under the Act. We postponed decision of this question to the argument on the merits and we now come to its decision.

There is disagreement between the parties as to whether the district court sustained the demurrers on the ground of the deficiency of the pleadings as well as upon a construction of the statute. The language of the opinion makes it apparent to us that the district court's conclusion was at least in part bottomed upon the indefiniteness, uncertainty and lack of specificity of the indictments. In the opinion it is said, 44 F.Supp. 949, 956:

'There is no charge that defendants fixed the prices of gasoline pumps generally, or restricted their manufacture and sale. They are charged only with fixing the prices of computer pumps, a right which the Wayne Pump Company already had under the statutory monopoly granted by the Government when its patent was issued. What is meant by the phrase 'used the Jauch patent' is not quite clear. If the defendants did more than enter into ordinary patent license agreements, under the terms of which the Wayne Pump Company, as owner of the patent, licensed the others to manufacture computer pumps, and fixed the prices at which the pumps should be sold; or if the Government claims that these defendants were involved in some offense under the Sherman Act other than the exercise of a patent monopoly, then such offense should be set out clearly in the indictments.'

The court further said, 44 F.Supp. 956:

'How they took joint action or entered into joint agreements to use the Jauch patent to achieve the alleged illegal objectives, or how they went outside the monopoly granted to the patentee and its licensees, is nowhere set out in the indictments.'

The lower court in United States v. Colgate & Co., D.C., 253 F. 522, affirmed 250 U.S. 300, 39 S.Ct. 465, 63 L.Ed. 992, 7 A.L.R. 443, had criticized an indictment because of failure to set out facts against any set of wholesalers or retailers alleged to have acted in combination with the defendant. In this case, commenting upon what is said to be a similar situation, the district court said, 44 F.Supp. 958:

'So in the case at bar, if these conditions exist, the Government should have no difficulty in setting forth at least one specific instance of where defendants determined the resale price at which jobbers might resell computer pumps. If this condition does exist, surely the Government must be in possession of the facts, and they should be set out in the indictments, so as to reasonably inform defendants of the offense with which they are charged.'

The opinion added, 44 F.Supp. 958:

'The Government in its argument insists that competing patents are here involved, and that a monopoly of competing patents was acquired by some of the defendants in furtherance of the plan to carry out the conspiracy, but the indictments set out no facts whereby to identify these competing patents, nor in what manner nor by whom such monopoly in them was acquired.'

Finally the trial court concluded, 44 F.Supp. 959:

'It is fundamental that in every indictment the defendant is entitled to be informed with such definiteness and certainty of the accusations against him as will enable him to make his defense, and avail himself of acquittal or conviction in any further prosecution for the same offense. Having in mind that the subject matter of the instant indictments is protected by a patent, I am of the opinion that the defendants here have not been furnished with such definite and particular allegations of fact as will meet this test. The charges are much too general. They do not adequately describe the nature of the alleged unlawful conspiracy agreements or arrangements which defendants are accused of having made, nor show how the defendants became parties thereto, nor how they collaborated in doing the unlawful things; nor set out any unlawful means whereby the unlawful objectives were accomplished.'

Further, the district court, in our opinion, made it altogether clear that it was not determining solely the limits of a patent monopoly. It pointed out that a patentee might license (44 F.Supp. 954) as it chose, provided only that in so doing it did not violate any other law. The Sherman Act was in mind. The court said, 44 F.Supp. 956:

'While ownership of the patent gives to the patentee a complete monopoly within the field of his patent, it of course does not give him any license to violate the provisions of the Sherman Act or of any other law. Under his monopoly he may not use his patent as a pretext for fixing prices on an unpatented article of commerce; nor fix the resale price on his patented article; nor make use of 'tying clauses."

The government of course recognizes that the opinion manifests the district court's view that the indictment failed to allege violations of the Sherman Act with sufficient definiteness and particularity. But the government urges that such a ruling arose from the district court's error in holding on the merits that the facts set out in the indictment do not charge, as a matter of substance, crimes within the meaning of the Sherman Act. It is the government's contention that after making this fundamental ruling, the district court 'then simply went on to say that the indictments are defective as pleadings if they are intended to charge crimes within the Sherman Act as that Act is construed by the court below.'

We do not read the district court's opinion in that way. Where a court interprets a criminal statut...