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tion rarely attended its meetings. Undoubtedly that association took an active part in bringing into effect the Standard Form of Contract, although I do not find any by-law going further than recommending its adoption. But assume that it did pass a by-law formally adopting it, what of it? The Standard Contract was in my view as much to the interest of the exhibitor as of the distributor in this sense at least that it was desirable that the former should know, when he was dealing each season with many different distributors, that the contract he signed with each was the same in its genera] terms and differed only in details.
And the very fact that these various contracts did differ in detail indicates wherein the argument of the Crown fails. The important terms as to price, play dates, protection etc., were left to individual bargaining between the parties, and were never arrived at as the result of arrangement between the distributors themselves —or if they were I have not been able to find the evidence of it.
Undoubtedly Famous Players were striving to get greater protection and towards the end of the years here in question their demand became so excessive that the distributors rebelled, appointed a committee to deal with the subject and passed a resolution indicating the limit to which they were prepared to go. Beyond doubt the tone of some of the demands made by B. &. F. as well as by Famous Players was quite dictatorial, so much so, that one general manager of a distributor was moved to reply with sarcasm that his head office would be glad to know that they were to be saved the expense of maintaining an office in Toronto since it appeared that the terms upon which they were to do business in the future were apparently to be fixed by their customers. But
* these demands, as I say, were never acceded to and I have to do only
with the situation as it existed during the years named in the indictment.
I find as a fact that protection in itself is conceded to be and is a proper enough arrangement. Undoubtedly there are individual cases in which it may have seemed to work a hardship. But I am quite unable to find that the accused or any of them combined together to grant to Famous Players or their associates such a degree of ‘protection’ as worked to the detriment of the independents as a whole by controlling or limiting the supply of film. It was to the benefit of the exchanges to keep all their pictures workIng continuously—they had nothing to gain and everything to lose by doing otherwise. While Famous Players was enjoying a first
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