United States of America v. Motion Picture Patents Company and others (1914)

67 employment of unusual and abnormal methods of business, constitutes undue restraint or suppression, and so offends against the antitrust act. (Standard Oil Co., supra; America?! Tobacco Co., supra; Beading case, supra.) And at page 744: The fact that the towing and wrecking service has been improved under the towing company's administration can not legalize the combination if otherwise unlawful. Not only do good motives furnish no defense to a violation of the antitrust act (Standard Sanitary Mfg. Co. v. United States, 226 U. S., 20; 33 Sup. Ct, 9; 57 L. Ed., 107), but we have no right to assume that the unsatisfactory conditions existing in 1899 could not have been eliminated by lawful and normal methods. Has the towing company acquired this domination of the towing and wrecking service by normal methods alone; or, as otherwise stated, has it unduly restrained or suppressed competition? We think it clear that the towing company's domination does not result from normal methods alone. Whatever may be the views of individual economists, under the Federal statutory policy normal and healthy competition is the law of trade, and such evils as may result from such competition must be considered less than those liable to follow a complete unification of interests and the power such unification gives.