Binderup v. Pathe Exchange, Inc., 263 U.S. 291 (1923)
Binderup v. Pathe Exchange, Incorporated
No. 77
Argued October 16, 1923
Decided November 19, 1923
263 U.S. 291
ERROR TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT
Syllabus
1. Where jurisdiction of the district court depends on the action arising under a law of the United States, and the court sustains a motion by the defense for a directed verdict based on the ground that the plaintiff’s petition and opening statement fail to state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action within the federal statute which the plaintiff relies on, the case is not reviewable directly by this Court under Jud.Code § 238 as one in which the jurisdiction of the district court was in issue. P. 304.
2. So held where the trial judge, in a memorandum accompanying the ruling, indicated his opinion that the motion went to the jurisdiction, erroneously assuming that failure to allege facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action under a federal statute is a jurisdictional defect. P. 305.
3. A complaint setting forth a substantial, as distinguished from a frivolous, claim under a federal statute presents a case within the jurisdiction of the district court as a federal court, and this jurisdiction cannot be made to stand or fall upon the way the court may chance to decide an issue as to the legal sufficiency of the facts alleged, any more than upon the way it may decide as to the legal,sufficiency of the facts proven. P. 305.
4. New York manufacturers and distributors of motion picture films, in the regular course of their business, shipped films from that state to Nebraska and delivered them there to a Nebraska resident, as lessee under agreements which, by their terms, were to be deemed and construed as New York contracts, and which licensed and obliged the lessee to exhibit the pictures for specified periods in moving picture theaters, reserved rentals to the lessors and provided for ultimate reshipment by the lessee on advices to be given by them. Held that the business of the lessors, and their transactions with the lessee, were interstate commerce notwithstanding that, in accordance with the contracts, the films were delivered to him through agencies of the lessors in Nebraska to which they were first consigned and transported. P. 309.
5. It does not follow that, because a thing is subject to state taxation, it is also immune to federal regulation under the commerce clause. P. 311.
6. A combination and conspiracy of concerns controlling the distribution of motion picture films to put out of business an exhibitor of motion pictures who has been procuring his films through agreements made in interstate commerce with members of the combination and can procure them in no other way, and to accomplish this end by illegally cancelling his existing contracts and by refusing to deal with him in the future, is a restraint on interstate commerce in violation of the Anti-Trust Act. P. 311.
280 F. 301 reversed.
Error to a judgment of the circuit court of appeals affirming, for want of jurisdiction in the district court, a judgment of the latter which dismissed, upon a directed verdict, an action for damages under § 7 of the Sherman Act.