Moore v. New York Cotton Exchange

296 F. 61, 1923 U.S. App. LEXIS 3131
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Second Circuit
DecidedDecember 17, 1923
DocketNo. 40
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 296 F. 61 (Moore v. New York Cotton Exchange) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Moore v. New York Cotton Exchange, 296 F. 61, 1923 U.S. App. LEXIS 3131 (2d Cir. 1923).

Opinion

ROGERS, Circuit Judge

(after stating the facts as above). It appears that the New York Cotton Exchange provides an exchange room in the city of New York where its members meet and make contracts for themselves or as brokers for customers, for the purchase and sale of cotton for future deliveries. Their transactions aggregate many million bales of .cotton annually. The contracts are made on the Exchange between 10 a. m. and 3 p. m. by open viva voce'bidding. It claims that the knowledge of the prices upon which these contracts are based constitute a peculiar kind of property and that their value depends on the right to confine the distribution of the quotations to such telegraph companies as will contract with the Exchange therefor and to such customers as will agree with the telegraph companies and the Exchange not to furnish them to others. The Western Union Telegraph Company pays to the Exchange annually a considerable sum of money for the privilege of receiving these quotations and distributing them to those customers of whom the Exchange approves. If any person can promptly acquire these quotations, surreptitiously, and without paying therefor and can give them out to others, the telegraph companies would be put at a disadvantage in competing with such persons and would no longer be willing to pay to New York Cotton Exchange the annual sum now paid to it for the privilege of receiving these quotations.

The complainant does not challenge the claim of the Cotton Exchange that it has a property right in the quotations. Indeed, its right to come into equity for the relief which it seeks assumes that the quotations constitute á species of property. It is that upon which the jurisdiction of equity depends, as courts- of equity are concerned only in the protection of property rights. And the right to acquire property is as much entitled to protection as the right to protect property already acquired. International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U. S. 215, 236, 39 Sup. Ct. 68, 63 L. Ed. 211, 2 A. L. R. 293. And in Board of Trade v. Christie Grain & Stock Co., 198 U. S. 236, 250, 25 Sup. Ct. 637, 49 L. Ed. 1031, the Supreme Court held that quotations of prices or dealings upon a board of trade communicated on confidential terms to numerous persons under a contract not to make them public were entitled to the protection of the law. And see Hunt v. New York Cotton Exchange, 205 U. S. 322, 27 Sup. Ct. 529, 51 L. Ed. 821.

But all the parties to this suit are citizens of the state of New York, so that the jurisdiction of the court in this case does not rest upon diversity of citizenship. If jurisdiction of the bill exists, it must be because the acts complained of therein violate the federal anti-trust laws.

It is plain that the bill cannot be maintained under the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 (38 Stat. 717 [Comp. St. §§ 8836a-8836k]). That act declares that unfair methods of competition in commerce are unlawful and the Commission is empowered to prevent persons, partnerships, or corporations, with certain exceptions, from using suck methods of competition. But as the oply relief that act provides is before the Federal Trade Commission it affords no support whatever for the bill now before us.

[67]*67The Sherman Act to protect trade and commerce against unlawful restraints and monopolies, being the Act of July 2, 1890 (Comp. St. § 8820 et seq.), invested the District Courts with jurisdiction to protect trade and commerce against unlawful restraints and monopolies. That act made it the duty of the several district attorneys in their respective districts, under the direction of the Attorney General, to institute proceedings in equity to prevent and restrain violations of the act. It did not authorize a suit by an individual or cor- , poration for injunctive relief in a federal court. It affords no support, therefore, for this suit.

But the Act of October 15, 1914, known as the Clayton Act, in section 16 (Comp. St. § 8835o), provided that any person, firm,_ corporation, or association, shall be entitled to sue for and have injunctive relief in any court of the United States having jurisdiction over the parties against threatened loss or damage by a violation of the antitrust laws when and under the same conditions and principles' as injunctive relief against threatened conduct that will cause loss or damage is granted by courts of equity under the rules governing such proceedings, 38 St. part 1, Ch. 323, page 737. And it has been held in General Investment Company v. Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway Co., 260 U. S. 261, 287, 43 Sup. Ct. 106, 67 L. Ed. 244, that the right to sue thus given is to be exercised only in “a court of the United States.” It cannot be asserted in a state court.

The Sherman Anti-Trust Act provides as follows:

“Section 1. Every contract, combination in tbe form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among tbe several states, or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal. * * #
Sec. 2. Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several states, * * * shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor. * * *" 26 Stat. 209.

So that the question which we have to determine is whether the contract which the New York Cotton Exchange has made with the Western Union Telegraph Company, respecting the quotations on the Exchange, is a contract in restraint of trade or commerce, or whether there is shown on the part of the defendants or any of them a monopoly or an attempt to monopolize any part of interstate commerce.

The Supreme Court in Standard Oil Co. v. United States, 221 U. S. 1, 31 Sup. Ct. 502, 55 L. Ed. 619, 34 L. R. A. (N. S.) 834, Ann. Cas. 1912D, 734, and in United States v. American Tobacco Co., 221 U. S. 106, 31 Sup. Ct. 632, 55 L. Ed. 663, construed the Anti-Trust Act as prohibiting only contracts or acts which were unreasonably restrictive of competitive conditions, and in the case last cited the court quoted approvingly from the opinion in the Joint Traffic Case, 171 U. S. 568, 19 Sup. Ct. 25, 43 L. Ed. 259, the statement that—

“The act of Congress must have a reasonable construction, or else there would scarcely be” an agreement or contract among business men that could not be said to have, indirectly or remotely, some bearing upon interstate commerce, and possibly to restrain it.”

[68]*68As construed by the Supreme Court in the cases cited and in those about to be cited, the Sherman Act is not construed as forbidding or restraining the power to make normal and usual contracts to further trade by resorting to all normal methods, whether by agreement or otherwise, to accomplish such purpose. And see United States v. Union Pacific R. R. Co., 226 U. S. 61, 33 Sup. Ct. 53, 57 L. Ed. 124; United States v. Reading Co., 226 U. S. 324, 33 Sup. Ct. 90, 57 L. Ed. 243; Nash v.

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Bluebook (online)
296 F. 61, 1923 U.S. App. LEXIS 3131, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/moore-v-new-york-cotton-exchange-ca2-1923.