Supreme Court Doings

Rum Runners. British subjects on the high seas may be punished by the U. S. under the Volstead Act, if they are hovering with rumful purpose anywhere off the coast of the U. S. Thus did Mr. Chief Justice William Howard Taft of the Supreme Court interpret last week the 1925 liquor treaty between the U. S. and Great Britain. Said he: "To give immunity to the cargo and guilty persons on board would be to clear those whose guilt should condemn the vessel and to restore to them the liquor and thus release for another opportunity to flout the laws of a friendly government which it was the purpose of the treaty to discourage." As a result of this decision, the captain and four members of the crew of the British ship, Quadra,, captured 25 miles off San Francisco in 1924, were convicted of conspiracy against the U. S.

No Right to Refuse. The Journeymen Stone Cutters' Association decided that the Bedford Cut Stone Co. (Indiana) and 23 other corporations were unfair to union labor. So the union ordered all its 5,000 members to refuse to work on stone cut by these corporations. Last week the Supreme Court reversed the decision of a lower court; ruled that the union was restraining trade in violation of the anti-trust laws, that the stone corporations were entitled to relief by injunction. Associate Justices Louis Dembitz Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes, the two great liberals of the Supreme Court, dissented vigorously from this decision. Said Justice Brandeis: "They [the union members] were innocent alike of trespass and of breach of contract. They refrained from violence, intimidation, fraud and threats." Old but Able. Before the Supreme Court last week, a stocky 93-year-old gentleman with neatly trimmed snow-white beard and abundant snow-white hair, looking a bit like the late Viscount Bryce, pounded a desk and argued a water power case with vigorous conviction. He was Moses Hooper--for 70 years an able lawyer of Oshkosh, Wis. He had ridden in his automobile to Washington and intends to ride back to Oshkosh soon. Beech-Nut v. Beechnut. P. Lorillard Co. (Beechnut chewing tobacco) is not infringing the trademark of the Beech-Nut Packing Co. (BeechNut chewing ' gum, candies, ham, peanut butter, etc.) -- decided the U. S. Supreme Court last week. Said Mr. Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: "The Lorillard Co. is at least as well known to those who do not despise tobacco as the Beech-Nut Co. is to its refined customers." Bathtub Trust. Eight members of the so-called Bathtub Trust last week paid the U. S. Government fines totaling $169,000; had their suspended sentences of six and ten months changed to probation. The U. S. Supreme Court, by vote of 5 to 3 (Justice Brandeis not voting) had found them guilty of violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. The decision established an important precedent for future "trust" prosecutions, inasmuch as the Supreme Court ruling held that monopolies were illegal even if they did not abuse their dominant position by fixing high and unreasonable prices. The defendants in the Bathtub case represented manufacturers producing about 80% of the bathtubs and plumbing fixtures made in the U. S.