Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ Without excluding the considerations that equity always takes into account, we cannot give the weight that was given them in argument to a comparison between the damage threatened to the plaintiff and the calamity of a possible stop to the defendants' business, the question of health, the character of the forests as a first or second growth, the commercial possibility or impossibility of reducing the fumes to sulphuric acid, the special adaptation of the business to the place. ”

“ If this were a suit between private parties, and if, under the evidence, a court of equity would not give the plaintiff an injunction, then it ought not to grant relief, under like circumstances, to the plaintiff, because it happens to be a state, possessing some powers of sovereignty. Georgia is entitled to the relief sought, not because it is a state, but because it is a party which has established its right to such relief by proof. ”

“ Without any attempt to go into details immaterial to the suit, it is proper to add that we are satisfied, by a preponderance of evidence, that the sulphurous fumes cause and threaten damage on so considerable a scale to the forests and vegetable life, if not to health, within the plaintiff state, as to make out a case within the requirements of Missouri v. Illinois, 200 U.S. 496, 50 L. ed. 572, 26 Sup. Ct. Rep. 268. Whether Georgia, by insisting upon this claim, is doing more harm than good to her own citizens, is for her to determine. ”