GOVERNMENT: Case Dismissed

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Into a hushed and crowded Chicago courtroom one morning last week strode white-haired Federal Judge Walter J. La Buy. For almost a year, he had been studying the 2,500 exhibits and 2,500,000 words of testimony and argument in the biggest antitrust case in history: the Government's suit to force the Du Pont company to sell its holdings in General Motors and the members of the Du Pont family to sell their stock in U.S. Rubber (TIME, July 11, 1949)

Reading from his 220-page opinion, Judge La Buy lost no time in bringing the long-drawn-out proceedings to an end. Ruled he: "The Government has failed to prove conspiracy, monopolization, a restraint of trade, or any reasonable probability of a restraint, and for those reasons the . . . complaint should be dismissed."

Dropped Names. Filed five years ago, the suit originally involved 186 defendants, including Du Pont Chairman Walter S. Carpenter and President Crawford H. Greenewalt. Since then, 154 of the defendants had been dropped, many of them because they were minors. Of the three top Du Ponts named, only 77-year-old Irenee survived; Lammot died at 71 before the suit went to trial, and Pierre, 84, died last spring. The suit was costly both in money (an estimated $5,000,000 for the defense, including $750,000 in hotel bills alone) and in men: the defense required a battery of 33 lawyers; the Government's key attorney was forced to drop out of the case with a nervous breakdown while he was preparing the case for trial.

The core of the Government's massive case was that the Du Ponts had bought stock in General Motors and U.S. Rubber to assure markets for their own products. The Du Ponts defense: they had bought the stock purely as an investment. To protect their original G.M. investment they were forced to pour millions more into the company in the early '205, and run it, after G.M. Founder William C. Durant's enormous stock-market losses threatened to ruin him and G.M. alike. At the time, the Du Pont total investment was some $80 million; its holdings are now worth $1.8 billion.

In his decision, Judge La Buy, veteran antitrust jurist who once slapped a $1.3 million bill for damages on G.M., cut some new paths through the tangle of antitrust enforcement. Where other courts have ruled that the mere existence of a potential monopoly can be cause for conviction under the Clayton Act, La Buy said: Such a possibility existed for 30 years in the relationship between Du Pont and G.M. But "the record discloses that no restraint of trade has resulted. Accord ingly . . . there is not. . . any reasonable probability of such a restraint within the meaning of the Clayton Act."

Demolition Job. One by one, La Buy ran down the list of Government charges and carefully demolished each in turn. The U.S. charged that through Du Pont's ownership of 23% of General Motors stock, the company pressured G.M. to buy Du Pont products. Wrote La Buy: "No agreement was made . . . which bound [G.M.] to buy any portion of its requirements from Du Pont . . . [Du Pont] did not limit General Motors' purchasing freedom."