Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/537

 502us2$26D 01-22-99 08:32:58 PAGES OPINPGT

Cite as: 502 U. S. 367 (1992)

379

Opinion of the Court

had not been made, and that resort to Rule 60(b)(6) was also unavailing. This construction of Rule 60(b) was error. Swift was the product of a prolonged antitrust battle between the Government and the meat-packing industry. In 1920, the defendants agreed to a consent decree that enjoined them from manipulating the meat-packing industry and banned them from engaging in the manufacture, sale, or transportation of other foodstuffs. 286 U. S., at 111. In 1930, several meat-packers petitioned for modification of the decree, arguing that conditions in the meat-packing and grocery industries had changed. Id., at 113. The Court rejected their claim, finding that the meat-packers were positioned to manipulate transportation costs and fix grocery prices in 1930, just as they had been in 1920. Id., at 115–116. It was in this context that Justice Cardozo, for the Court, set forth the much-quoted Swift standard, requiring “[n]othing less than a clear showing of grievous wrong evoked by new and unforeseen conditions”. . . as a predicate to modification of the meat-packers’ consent decree. Id., at 119. Read out of context, this language suggests a “hardening” of the traditional flexible standard for modification of consent decrees. New York State Assn. for Retarded Children, Inc. v. Carey, 706 F. 2d 956, 968 (CA2), cert. denied, 464 U. S. 915 (1983). But that conclusion does not follow when the standard is read in context. See United States v. United Shoe Machinery Corp., 391 U. S. 244, 248 (1968). The Swift opinion pointedly distinguished the facts of that case from one in which genuine changes required modification of a consent decree, stating: “The distinction is between restraints that give protection to rights fully accrued upon facts so nearly permanent as to be substantially impervious to change, and those that involve the supervision of changing conduct or conditions and are thus provisional and tentative. . . . The consent is to be read as directed toward events as they then were. It was not an abandonment of the