Fine on Standard Oil

Date: August 3, 1907 • Location: New Delhi, India

Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis fines Standard Oil of Indiana a record $29.4 million for illegal rebating to freight carriers; the conviction and fine are later reversed on appeal.

Kenesaw Mountain Landis was an American jurist who served as a United States federal judge from 1905 to 1922 and as the first commissioner of baseball from 1920 until his death in 1944. He is remembered for his resolution of the Black Sox Scandal, in which he expelled eight members of the Chicago White Sox from organized baseball for conspiring to lose the 1919 World Series and repeatedly refused their reinstatement requests. His iron rule over baseball in the near quarter-century of his commissionership is generally credited with restoring public confidence in the game.