delivered the opinion of the court.
This is an action brought to recover threefold damages under the Act to Protect Trade against Monopolies. July 2, 1890, c. 647, § 7. 26 Stat. 209, 210. The Circuit Court dismissed the complaint upon motion, as not setting forth a cause of action. 160 Fed. Rep. 184. This judgment was affirmed by the Circuit Court Of Appeals, 166 Fed. Rep. 261, and the case then was brought to this court by writ of error.
*354 The allegations of the complaint may be summed up as follows: The plaintiff is an Alabama corporation, organized in 1904. The defendant is a New Jersey corporation, organized in 1899. Long before the plaintiff was formed, the defendant, with intent to prevent competition and to control and monopolize the banana trade, bought the property and business of several of its previous competitors, with provision against their resuming the trade, made contracts with others, including a majority of the most important, regulating the quantity to be purchased and the price to be paid, and acquired a controlling amount of stock in still others. For the same purpose it organized a selling company, of which it held the stock, that by agreement sold at fixed prices all the bananas of the combining parties. By this and other means it did-monopolize and restrain the trade and maintained unreasonable prices. The defendant being in this ominous attitude, one McConnell in 1903 started a banana plantation in Panama, then part of the United States of Colombia, and began to build a railway (which would afford his only means of export), both in accordance with the laws of the United States of Colombia. He was notified by the defendant that he must either combine or stop. Two months later, it is believed at the defendant’s instigation, the governor of Panama recommended to his national government that Costa Rica be allowed to administer the territory through which the railroad was to run, and this although that territory had been awarded to Colombia under an arbitration agreed to by treaty. The defendant, and afterwards, in September, the government of Costa Rica, it is believed by the inducement of the defendant, interfered with McConnell. In November, 1903, Panama revolted and became an independent republic, declaring its boundary to be that settled by the award. In June, 1904, the plaintiff bought out McConnell and went on with the work, as it had a right to do under the laws,of Panama. But in July, Costa Rican soldiers and officials, instigated by the defendant, seized a part of the plantation and a cargo of supplies and have held them ever since, and stopped the construction and operation *355 of the plantation and railway. In August one Astua, by ex parte proceedings, got a judgment from a Costa Rican court, declaring the plantation to be his, although, it is alleged, the proceedings were not within the jurisdiction of Costa Rica, and were contrary to its laws and void. Agents of the defendant then bought the lands from Astua. The plaintiff has tried to induce the government of Costa Rica to withdraw its soldiers and also has tried to persuade the United States to interfere, but has been thwarted in both by the defendant and has failed. The government of Costa Rica remained in possession down to the bringing of the suit.
As a result of the defendant’s acts the plaintiff has been deprived of the use of the plantation, and the railway, the plantation and supplies have been injured. The defendant also, by outbidding, has driven purchasers out of the market and has compelled producers to come to its terms, and it has prevented the plaintiff from buying for export and sale. This is the substantial damage alleged. There is thrown in a further allegation that the defendant has “sought to injure” the plaintiff’s business by offering positions to its employés and by discharging and threatening to discharge persons in its own employ who were stockholders of the plaintiff. But no. particular point is made of this. It is contended, however, that; even if the main argument fails and the defendant is held not to be answerable for acts depending on the cooperation of the.government of Costa Rica for their effect, a wrongful conspiracy resulting in driving the plaintiff out of business is to be gathered from the complaint and that it was entitled to go to trial upon that.
It is obvious that, however stated, the plaintiff’s case depends on several rather startling propositions. In the first place the acts causing the damage were done, so far as appears, outside, the jurisdiction of the United States and within that of other states. It is surprising to hear it argued that they were governed by the act of Congress.
No doubt in regions subject to no sovereign, like the high seas, or to no law that civilized countries would recognize ap
*356
adequate, such countries may treat some relations between their citizens as governed by their own law, and keep to some extent the old notion of personal sovereignty alive. See
The Hamilton,
Law is a statement of the circumstances in which the public force will be brought to bear upon men through the courts. But the word commonly is confined to such prophecies or threats when addressed to persons living within the power of *357 the courts. A threat that depends upon the choice of the party affected to bring himself within that power hardly would be called law in the ordinary sense. We do not speak of blockade running by neutrals as unlawful. And the usages of speech correspond to the limit of the attempts of the lawmaker, except in extraordinary cases. It is true that domestic corporations remain always within the power of the domestic law, but in the present case, at least, there is no ground for distinguishing between corporations and men.
The foregoing considerations would lead in case of doubt to a construction of any statute as intended to be confined in its operation and effect to the territorial limits over which the lawmaker has general and legitimate power. “All legislation is prima facie territorial.” Ex parte Blain, In re Sawers, 12 Ch. Div. 522, 528; State v. Carter, 27 N. J. (3 Dutcher) 499; People v. Merrill, 2 Parker, Crim. Rep. 590, 596. Words having universal scope, such as “Every contract in restraint of trade,” “Every person'who shall monopolize,” etc., will be taken as a matter of course to mean only every one subject to such legislation, .not all that the legislator subsequently may be able to catch. In the case of the present statute the improbabilty of the United States attempting to make acts done in Panama or Costa Rica criminal is obvious, yet the law begins by making criminal the acts for which it gives a right to sue. We think it-entirely plain that what the defendant did in Panama or Costa Rica is not within the scope of the statute so far as the present suit is concerned. Other objections of a serious nature are. urged but need not be discussed.
For again, not only were the acts of the defendant in Panama or Costa Rica not within the Sherman Act, but they were not torts by the law of the place and therefore were not torts at all, however contrary to the ethical and economic postulates of that statute. The substance of the complaint is that; the plantation being within the
de facto
jurisdiction of Costa Rica, that state took and keeps possession of it by virtue of its sovereign power. But a seizure by a state is not a thing that can be
*358
complained of elsewhere in the courts.
Underhill
v.
Hernandez,
The fundamental reason why persuading a sovereign power to do this or that cannot be a tort is not that the sovereign cannot be joined as a defendant or because it must be assumed to be acting.lawfully.' The intervention of parties who had a right knowingly to produce the harmful result between the defendant and the- harm has been thought to be a non-conductor and to bar responsibility,
Allen
v.
Flood
[1898], A. C. 1, 121, 151, etc., but it is not clear that this is always true, for instance, in the case of the privileged repetition of a slander,
Elmer
v.
Fessenden,
151 Massachusetts, 359, 362, 363, or the malicious and unjustified persuasion to discharge froiri employment.
Moran
v.
Dunphy,
177 Massachusetts, 485, 487. The fundamental reason is that it is a contradiction in terms to say that within its jurisdiction it is unlawful to persuade a sovereign-power to bring about a result that it declares by its conduct to be desirable and proper. It does not, and foreign courts cannot, admit that the influences were improper or the results bad. It makes the persuasion lawful by its pwn .act. The very meaning of sovereignty is that the decree of the sovereign makes law. See
Kawananakoa
v.
Polyblank,
The plaintiff relied a good deal on Rafael v. Verelst, 2 Wm. Bl: 983; Ib. 1055. But in that case, although the Nabob who imprisoned the plaintiff was called a sovereign for certain purposes, he was found to be the mere tool of the defendant, an English Governor. That hardly could- be listened to concerning a really independent state. But of course it is not. alleged *359 that Costa Rica stands in that relation to the United Fruit Company.
The acts of the soldiers and officials of Costa Rica are not alleged to have been without the consent of the government and must be taken to have been done by its order. It ratified them, at all events, and adopted and keeps the possession taken by them;
O’Reilly de Camara
v.
Brooke,
Further reasons might be given why this complaint should . not be upheld, but we have said enough to dispose of it and to indicate our general point of view.
Judgment affirmed.