ABSTRACT
The divestiture in El Paso was ultimately successful, according to a lawyer who handled the matter for the government,13 but at enormous cost. That lawyer stated in the Senate hearings:
[C]onsider the extraordinary expenditure of time, as well as resources, which have been devoted to this [divestiture] effort, While there is no tally of the total cost that was made in seeing this case through to complete divestiture, it is safe to say that it ran into many millions, employed hundreds of lawyers, accountants and others, consumed great quantities of the scarce resources of our courts, and left a noncompetitive market structure in the gas industry in the west for a decade after that market structure had been declared unlawful by our highest court. Another incalculable, but very significant cost was the substantial loss of the time and talents of key El Paso executives from the important jobs of running a major utility and developing new sources of energy supplies in a time of growing energy shortages because of the inordinate demands made upon them in the defense of this antitrust proceeding. Surely, we can come up with a better way to enforce the important public policy of § 7 of the Clayton Act.14
