Meta fined $567m in largest child safety ruling against social media giant

Chicago, Aug. 3.—Judge Kenesaw M. Landis today in the United States district court fined the Standard Oil company of Indiana $20,100,000 for violations of the law against accepting rebates from the railroads. The fine is larger than any assessed against any individual or any corporation in the history of American jurisprudence. The case will be carried to the higher courts by the defendant company. The penalty imposed on the company is the maximum permitted under the law and it was announced at the end of a long opinion in which the methods and practices of the Standard Oil company were mercilessly scored. The judge, in fact, declared, in his opinion, that the officials of the Standard Oil company, who were responsible for the practices of which the corporation was found guilty, were no better than counterfeiters and thieves, his exact language being: "We may as well look at this situation squarely. The men who thus deliberately violate the law wound society more deeply than those who counterfeit the coin or steal letters from the mail. The nominal defendant is the Standard Oil company of Indiana, a million dollar corporation. The Standard Oil company of New Jersey, whose capital is one hundred million, is the real defendant. If a body of men organize a large corporation under the laws of one state for the purpose of carrying on business throughout the United States and for the accomplishment of that purpose absorb the stock of other corporations, such cor—"