H and H Coffee

Dedicated to the history of the Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Co. founded 1899 in San Antonio, Texas.

Tips, Moody, Rogers v. Hartford-Empire, Ball, Owens-Illinois ($1.35M anti-trust suit)

On Thursday, 3 January 1946, three San Antonio men — Charles R. Tips, W. L. Moody III, and Harry R. Rogers — file suit with the U.S. District Clerk (San Antonio) seeking $1,350,000 in actual damages, to be trebled (~$4,050,000 with treble damages), against three out-of-state glass manufacturers:

The petition alleges violations of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and the Clayton Act, “unlawful conspiracies, unlawful monopolies, and combination in restraint of commerce.”

Plaintiffs and standing

The plaintiffs represent themselves as among more than 50 former shareholders of the dissolved Three Rivers Glass Co., the Texas corporation organized in March 1922 with ultimate paid-in capital of $550,000 (per the Jan 3 The News version) or $500,000 (per the Jan 4 SA Express-News version — a small per-paper figure discrepancy), of which approximately $250,000 was in plant, works and equipment.

The petition characterizes TRG’s operating history:

  • Made glass containers including milk bottles and fruit jars
  • From 1922 to 1929 and 1930, annual gross sales exceeded $500,000
  • “Continued in business until its dissolution in January, 1937, as a result of insolvency proceedings resulting from the unlawful acts of the defendant[s]”

This is the primary-source attestation for the January 1937 dissolution date — see 1937 dissolution event.

Coverage

  • The News (San Antonio, p. 1 / continued p. 2), Thursday Jan 3, 1946 — same-day filing, lead front-page story
  • San Antonio Express-News (p. 17), Friday Jan 4, 1946 — next-day coverage in the larger paper

The 1946 suit invokes the broader federal anti-trust frame of United States v. Hartford-Empire Co., the major federal anti-trust case against the glass-machinery patent pool decided in 1945 (the year preceding this filing). The 1938 TNEC Senate monopoly-committee hearings (1938 TNEC Hartford-Empire testimony event) established the evidentiary baseline: Hartford-Empire’s president F. G. Smith testified to the patent-pool’s licensing-and-machinery control of the glass-container industry, and Hartford-Empire’s counsel R. T. Bufford Jr. read aloud an internal Hartford-Empire memorandum calling Three Rivers Glass “a perpetual thorn in the side” of the pool’s manufacturing firms — direct period documentation that the upstream antagonism between Hartford-Empire and TRG was real and ongoing.

Disposition

Dismissed in Texas on plaintiff’s motion, 1 November 1947; refiled in U.S. District Court, Indianapolis, Indiana. Federal Judge Ben H. Rice Jr. granted the plaintiff-requested dismissal so the suit could proceed under Indiana’s 15-year anti-trust statute of limitations rather than Texas’s 2-year statute. By the November 1947 dismissal, the suit was carried in the name of the corporate plaintiff “Three Rivers Glass Co.” (with Charles R. Tips as president) and the trebled-damages figure had risen to $4,600,000 (vs. $4,050,000 = $1.35M × 3 in the original Texas filing). See 1947 dismissal and Indiana refiling event. The disposition of the Indianapolis refiling is itself undocumented on this site — S.D. Indiana federal court records 1947–1962 and Indianapolis Star / News coverage would resolve.

Corporate-vs-shareholder plaintiff framing

The Jan 3, 1946 Texas filing was in the name of the three individual former shareholders (Tips, Moody, Rogers) representing themselves and “more than 50 former shareholders” of the dissolved Three Rivers Glass Co. By the Nov 2, 1947 dismissal coverage, the plaintiff is framed as “the Three Rivers Glass co.” with Tips as president. The shift from individual-shareholder plaintiffs to corporate plaintiff between 1946 and 1947 isn’t explicit in either article — possibilities include: (1) the corporation was reorganized for litigation standing between filings, (2) the 1947 SA Light is using “Three Rivers Glass Co.” loosely as a shorthand for the shareholder class, or (3) the Indiana refiling restructured the caption. Not pinned down.

See also