Continental Ore Co. v. Union Carbide & Carbon Corp.

Plaintiffs filed in the court below a treble damage antitrust complaint against defendants. Plaintiffs, a partnership and the partners in it suing individually, are the successors in interest to a family corporation known as Continental Ore Corporation. Both the plaintiff partnership, Continental Ore Company, and the previous corporation will be referred to as Continental.

The guiding light in Continental has been and still is the plaintiff Henry J. Leir. Leir was born in Germany and entered the ore and metal business there. His enterprises in Germany involved for the most part the purchase of raw materials for metal producers and the sale of their finished products. Upon Hitler’s rise to power Leir moved to Luxembourg, where he formed a company known as Soeiété Anonyme des Minerais. This corporation subsequently entered into a joint venture with the Soeiété d’ElectroChimie de Brignoud, a French company otherwise known as Fredet-Kuhlmann. Brignoud undertook to install equipment for the production of ferro-vanadium and other alloys by a process known as the alumino-thermic method; Minerais supplied the raw materials, and the profits were split evenly. In 1938 Leir moved again,…