Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/134

 to bear on him to leave the Buffalo Lubricating Works, the "fixing" of the still at their advice so that something would "smash," the transfer of his property, his two years of semi-idleness on $1,500 a year and a bonus of $1,000, paid for a reason which can only be surmised, and his final breaking in California, because, as he claimed, he saw no settled employment in view and no prospect of the Everests doing more for him than they were, and, as they claimed, because he believed he could get a big sum from the Standard to keep silent. To all of this Miller made deposition in July, 1884.

The first civil suit was brought to trial early in March, 1885, and it resulted in the jury giving a verdict of $20,000 to Matthews for damages. The court set the sum aside, claiming that they had proved only $4,000 in damages and that he would not sustain an award of punitive damages. Matthews's counsel now obtained a stay of proceedings and finally a new trial. Now about this time Matthews secured evidence which emboldened him to give his suit a much wider range than he had at first intended. This was the testimony of the lawyer Truesdale, quoted above, that in his office Everest had suggested that Miller "arrange the machinery so that it would bust up or smash up." The explosion of June 15 was immediately construed as the result of this counsel. On the strength of this evidence Matthews instituted a second civil suit for damages of $250,000 caused by conspiracy to blow up the works of the Buffalo company, to entice away its employees, to bring unfounded suits against it, and to slander the company's product, and he added to the original defendants the three other directors of the Vacuum Works—H. H. Rogers, J. D. Archbold and Ambrose McGregor—and the Standard Oil Company of New York, the Acme Oil Company of New York and the Vacuum Oil Company. Matthews seems to have argued that, as Rogers, Archbold and McGregor were directors with