The case concerned whether a corporation that received cash as part of a corporate reorganization under the Revenue Act of 1928 could avoid recognizing taxable gain on that cash by passing it to its shareholders, who then used an equivalent amount to pay the corporation's debts pursuant to a prearranged resolution. The Court held that the cash was not "distributed" within the meaning of § 112(d), so the corporation remained subject to tax on the gain. The reasoning was that the shareholders functioned merely as a conduit: the transaction's purpose and result were to satisfy corporate liabilities rather than to confer a benefit on the shareholders, making the roundabout method equivalent to the corporation retaining and applying the funds directly to its debts.
The case concerned challenges by Alabama Power Company to federal loan-and-grant agreements under Title II of the National Industrial Recovery Act, by which the Public Works Administrator provided funds to four Alabama municipalities to build competing electricity distribution systems. The district court upheld the agreements on constitutional and statutory grounds and dismissed the complaints, while the court of appeals affirmed on the ground that the power company lacked standing. The Supreme Court agreed, holding that the company had no legal or equitable right invaded by the administrator’s actions because any resulting economic loss stemmed from lawful municipal competition rather than from fraud, coercion, or other unlawful conduct. The Court distinguished cases granting standing where a protected property right or statutory prohibition on competition was at issue, and it found no such right or prohibition here.
This case involved a challenge by Duke Power Company and related parties to the construction of a competing local electric power plant by Greenwood County, South Carolina, funded by a federal loan and grant under Title II of the National Industrial Recovery Act. The suit sought to enjoin both the project and the federal administrator's actions. The Supreme Court affirmed the lower courts' dismissal of the complaint. The Court held that the plaintiffs lacked standing because the proposed competition was lawful and no legal right of the power company was invaded, even assuming the loan and grant were unauthorized, consistent with its ruling in a related case.
This case concerned a criminal prosecution in Puerto Rico under the island's 1907 anti-trust statute, which charged a conspiracy in restraint of trade; lower courts had dismissed the case on the ground that the federal Sherman Anti-trust Act and Clayton Act occupied the entire field and rendered the local law void. The Supreme Court held that the existence of the federal acts, including section 3 of the Sherman Act, did not prevent Puerto Rico's legislature from adopting its own anti-trust law. The Court reasoned that Puerto Rico qualifies as a "territory" within the meaning of the Sherman Act because Congress intended the statute to address restraints of trade comprehensively, and nothing in the statute's language or purpose required excluding an insular dependency such as Puerto Rico; the federal and local provisions were substantially identical and could operate together without conflict.
In Willing v. Binenstock, respondents sued to offset individual deposits in an insolvent national bank against a partnership's joint promissory notes, after the receiver had already applied the partnership's own deposit. The district court and court of appeals allowed the offset based on Pennsylvania precedent permitting equitable set-off of individual claims against joint liabilities, even when the opposing party is solvent. The Supreme Court agreed that Pennsylvania law controlled and did not conflict with the National Banking Act's ratable-dividend requirement, because only the net balance after a valid set-off constitutes bank assets. The Court therefore affirmed the set-off for the partnership notes but remanded for further proceedings on whether the partnership could offset deposits against its secondary liability as endorser of a third-party note.
The case involved an Illinois corporation that owned a Chicago building subject to mortgages and was dissolved by state court decree in 1931 for failure to pay franchise taxes. After the two-year statutory winding-up period expired in 1933, new shareholders acquired the stock and caused the defunct entity to petition for federal reorganization under §77B of the Bankruptcy Act in 1935, seeking to halt ongoing state foreclosure proceedings. The Supreme Court held that the corporation lacked capacity to file the petition. The core reasoning was that a corporation's existence and authority to sue or act are determined by state law, and once dissolution and the grace period under Illinois statutes had ended, the entity could no longer initiate new proceedings even in federal bankruptcy court.