Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States

The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and 33 other corporations, John D. Rockefeller, William Rockefeller, and five other individual defendants prosecute this appeal to reverse a decree of the court below. Such decree was entered upon a bill filed by the United States under authority of § 4 of the act of July 2, 1890, c. 647, p. 209, known as the Anti-Trust Act, and had for its object the enforcement of the provisions of that act. The record is inordinately voluminous, consisting of twenty-three volumes of printed matter, aggregating about twelve thousand pages, containing a vast amount of confusing and conflicting testimony relating to innumerable, complex and varied business transactions, extending over a period of nearly forty years. In an effort to pave the way to reach the subjects which we are called upon to consider, we propose at the outset, following the order of the bill, to give the merest possible outline of its contents, to summarize the answer, to indicate the course of the trial, and point out briefly the decision below rendered… The bill was divided into thirty numbered sections, and sought relief upon the theory that the various defendants were engaged in conspiring