Aluminum Suit Forever

From his huge oak bench high in Manhattan's gold-topped Federal courthouse, aging Judge Francis Gordon Caffey looked down last week upon a courtroom empty save for two dozen polite attorneys. Their faces were familiar to him. He had been looking at them for 22 months (minus a few recesses) while the Government's anti-trust suit against big Aluminum Co. of America (TIME, July 3) droned on. To the bench came youthful Defense Counsel Edgar Baker. "Your Honor," he petitioned, "I would like to be excused. I have heard only ten minutes ago that I have a daughter."

Up popped another defense counsel. "Mr. Baker tells me," he informed, "that he has the distinction of having had two children born during the course of one trial--which is something of a record."

Addressing the court, earnest, wave-topped Walter Lyman Rice, trust-busting special assistant to the U. S. Attorney General, commented: "I sincerely hope that Mr. Baker's progeny will not be able to participate in this trial."

Well-taken was his remark. In its attempt to dissolve $253,000,000 Alcoa as a monopoly in restraint of trade, the Government filed suit April 23, 1937, kicked off on June 1, 1938. Year later it rested its case, and the defense took the ball. It still has it. In that time the courthouse, which was brand-new when the case was filed, has aged with the processes of jurisprudence; Austria, Czecho-Slovakia and Poland have disappeared; World War II began; two of the Government attorneys took wives; another became a father; two of the original 63 Alcoa defendants died (Vice President Winthrop Neilson and Stockholder Andrew William Mellon).

As lawyer Baker left the courtroom last week to attend his newborn infant, the Alcoa suit had already smashed all long-distance records for U. S. court cases. Yellow with age are the early pages of testimony in its 61-volume record. Stacked high in the courtroom are the 68 volumes holding 1,462 exhibits. Still the end is not in sight. Maybe next June, the Alcoa case's second anniversary. Maybe not before election next November. When it does come, it will not be the end. The U. S. Supreme Court will write the final chapter.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.