Brooks also told the story of the 1961 price-fixing scandal among 29 electric companies. He looked particularly at the biggest party involved, General Electric, where employees worked on their own to profit from their illegal actions.
Brooks wrote that even after researching the case thoroughly, he couldn't tell if the higher-ups were responsible or at least aware of the price fixing because GE had a culture in which nobody seemed to communicate with one another. Multiple employees even testified that their bosses would often say things with a wink, making it difficult to ascertain if what they just said was what they actually meant.
Brooks wrote that, "the clear waters of moral responsibility at G.E. became hopelessly muddied by a struggle to communicate — a struggle so confused that in some cases, it would appear, if one of the big bosses at G.E. had ordered a subordinate to break the law, the message would somehow have been garbled in its reception, and if the subordinate had informed the boss that he was holding conspiratorial meetings with competitors, the boss might well have been under the impression that the subordinate was gossiping idly about lawn parties or pinhole sessions."
After an extensive SEC investigation and trial, GE was fined $437,500 and three employees were sent to jail for 30 days.