Northern Securities Co. v. United States

In 1901, James Jerome Hill, president of and the largest stockholder in the Great Northern Railway, won the financial support of J. P. Morgan and attempted to take over the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q). The CB&Q served a traffic-rich region of the Midwest and Great Plains, was well-managed, and quite profitable. It possessed a finely-engineered line connecting the Twin Cities to the nation's rail center of Chicago, which made it particularly attractive as an addition to Hill's Great Northern. Hill's strategy was for his railroad and Morgan's Northern Pacific Railway to jointly buy the CB&Q. ==Judgment==

Justice Harlan held that the merger was unlawful. Justices Day, Brown, McKenna and Brewer concurred. Justice Holmes, joined by Fuller, White, Peckham, dissented. The Holmes dissent included the famous passage: "Great cases like hard cases make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their real importance in shaping the law of the future, but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment." ==Significance==

Hill was forced to disband his holding company and manage each railroad independently. The Northern Pacific; the Great Northern; and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy companies would later merge in 1969. The case was an example of Roosevelt's trust-busting procedures, prosecuting under the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890), and it marked a major victory for the antitrust movement. ==Notes==