United States v. Trans-Missouri Freight Association
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| United States v. Trans-Missouri Freight Association | ||||||||||
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| Argued December 8 – 9, 1896 Decided March 22, 1897 |
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| Holding | ||||||||||
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| Chief Justice: Melville Fuller Associate Justices: Stephen Johnson Field, John Marshall Harlan, Horace Gray, David Josiah Brewer, Henry Billings Brown, George Shiras, Jr., Edward Douglass White, Rufus Wheeler Peckham |
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| Majority by: Peckham Joined by: Fuller, Harlan, Brewer, Brown Dissent by: White Joined by: Field, Gray, Shiras |
United States v. Trans-Missouri Freight Association, 166 U.S. 290 (1897), was a United States Supreme Court case holding that the Sherman Act (which was an antitrust measure that prohibited anticompetitive behavior in commerce) applied to the railroad industry, even though the U.S. Congress had enacted a comprehensive regime of regulations for that injury.
Various railroad companies had formed an organization to regulate prices charged for transportation. The federal government charged these companies with violating the Sherman Act, and the railroad companies replied that they were not in violation of the act because their organization was designed to keep prices low, not to push them higher. The Supreme Court disagreed, holding that the Sherman Act prohibited all such combinations, irrespective of the purpose.
The companies also contended that Congress had not intended the Sherman Act to apply to them, because there were already a wide array of laws governing the railroads. The Court also rejected this argument, noting that no exception was stated in the Sherman Act.
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