UNTERMYER, SAMUEL ), American law yer, was born at Lynchburg (Va.), on March 2, 1858. He was educated at the College of the City of New York and at the Columbia law school, and was admitted to the bar in 1879, practising thereafter in New York city. He was counsel in many celebrated cases covering almost every phase of corporate, civil, criminal and international law. As counsel for H. Clay Pierce he prevented the Standard Oil Co., after its dissolution in 191o, from dominating the Water-Pierce Company. In the same year he effected the merger of the Utah Copper Co. with the Boston Consolidated and the Nevada Consolidated Cos., involving more than $1 oo,000,000. In 1903 he undertook the first judicial ex posure of "high finance" in connection with the failure of the U.S. Shipbuilding Co., organized as a consolidation of the larger shipbuilding companies in America. After this he conducted a number of similar exposures. In 1911 he delivered an address entitled, "Is There a Money Trust?" which led the following year to the so-called Pujo money trust investigation by the com mittee on banking and currency of the Federal House of Representatives. Mr. Untermyer urged measures like the com
pulsory regulation of stock exchanges, reform of the criminal laws and the regulation of trusts and combinations. He took part in preparing the Federal Reserve Bank law, the Clayton bill, the Federal trade commission bill and other legislation curbing trusts. He was a delegate to Democratic conventions and a strong supporter of President Wilson, who appointed him to serve on the commission which sat at Buenos Aires in 1916 to frame uniform laws for the Pan-American countries.
Untermyer acted for Governor Smith in a water-power con troversy over the Niagara, St. Lawrence river, Adirondack for est reserve and other hydro-electric power rights, resulting in the defeat of the grant of the water-power rights of the State to private interests. He was counsel for Herman Bernstein in the first suit brought against Henry Ford because of attacks on the Jewish people published in the Dearborn Independent. In July 1927, Mr. Ford agreed to destroy the publications.