Mr. Charles Weston, Washington, D.C., for petitioner. [ United States v. National City Lines 337 U.S. 78 (1949) ][337 U.S. 78, 79]

Mr. C. Frank Reavis, New York City, for respondents.

Mr. Chief Justice VINSON delivered the opinion of the Court.

The issue here is whether the 1948 revision of the Judicial Code, Title 28, United States Code, 28 U.S.C.A. 1 et seq., extends the doctrine of forum non conveniens to antitrust suits. The Governments complaint in this civil suit alleged that respondent corporations have conspired to obtain control of local transportation companies in at least 44 cities in 16 states in different sections of the country, in order to restrain and monopolize interstate commerce in busses and the petroleum and other supplies incident thereto, in violation of 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, 26 Stat. 209, 15 U.S.C. 1, 2, 15 U.S.C.A. 1, 2.

This is the second time that an order of the court below, the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, attempting to effectuate a transfer of the case from Los Angeles to Chicago, has been before this Court. When respondents motion was first granted, the District Court dismissed the action, 1947, 7 F.R.D. 456, inasmuch as the federal courts then lacked statutory power to transfer cases. We reversed, holding that [337 U.S. 78, 80] forum non conveniens was not applicable in antitrust suits. United States v. National City Lines, 1948, 334 U.S. 573. After September 1, 1948, the effective date of the present Judicial Code,1 respondents filed a new motion under the doctrine of forum non conveniens, citing 1404(a), which reads as follows: For the convenience of parties and witnesses, in the interest of justice, a district court may transfer any civil action to any other district or division where it might have been brought. Again the District Court below granted the motion. It ordered the case transferred. D.C. 1948, 80 F.Supp. 734. The Government thereupon submitted in this Court a motion for leave to file petition for writ of certiorari. We assigned the case for hearing on this motion. 1948, 335 U.S. 897.

In taking the position that the District Court lacked authority to enter its order of transfer, the Government has advanced many of the arguments which we have already considered today-and rejected-in Ex parte Collett, 337 U.S. 55, and Kilpatrick v. Texas & Pacific R. Co., 337 U.S. 45, 959, in which we held that actions under the Federal Employers Liability Act, 45 U.S.C.A. 51 et seq., were now subject to the doctrine of forum non conveniens. The Government contends, for example, that Congress intended 1404(a) to apply only to actions the venue provisions of which were formerly contained in Title 28, rather than to any civil action (the venue requirements in antitrust cases are defined in 15 U.S.C. 22, 15 U.S.C.A. 22; in Liability Act cases, 45 U. S.C. 56, 45 U.S.C.A. 56); and that the legislative history establishes very clearly that Congress had no desire substantially t [337 U.S. 78, 81] change the law-indeed, the Government urges us to disregard the revisers notes which were printed in the House Reports. 2 We cannot accept this position for the reasons discussed in our previous decisions today. The revisers notes are so obviously authoritative in perceiving the meaning of the Code that the Government itself, in discussing a section other than 1404(a), refers to them in its brief in this case. And we have already had occasion to look to the revisers notes. Stainback v. Mo Hock Ke Lok Po, 1949, 336 U.S. 368, 376, n. 12, 610.

It is true that the revisers notes to 1404(a), although citing a Federal Employers Liability Act decision, make no reference to the antitrust laws or to our previous decision in this litigation. The Government therefore urges that our disposition of the Liability Act cases is not conclusiv