FL players remained under reserve for five years, after which owners and players could mutually agree to extend the reserve option. Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National League In January 1915, the Federal League owners sued the major leagues and three members of the National Commission for antitrust violations, hoping that noted trustbuster Kenesaw Mountain Landis would rule in their favor. Landis, however, announced that "any blows at the thing called baseball would be regarded by this court as a blow to a national institution", and he took the case under advisement for a year to stall any action. Meanwhile, the FL incurred great financial losses that season, and came to a settlement with MLB at the end of the year. Most FL owners were bought out by MLB teams or allowed to buy interests in existing major league clubs. The one exception was Ned Hanlon of the Baltimore Terrapins. Hanlon and his partners brought an antitrust lawsuit in D.C. District Court, alleging that MLB had colluded to "wreck and destroy" the FL by purchasing and dissolving its teams. Judge Wendell Phillips Stafford ruled in Hanlon's favor, agreeing that baseball games constituted interstate trade and commerce under the Sherman Act and that MLB had engaged in impermissibly monopolistic behavior. Hanlon was awarded $80,000 in damages, which was increased to $240,000 ($ in modern dollars) under the treble-damages provision of the Clayton Act. On appeal, Judge George W. Pepper of the D.C. Circuit held that sports like baseball, "a spontaneous product of human activity", were "not in [their] nature commerce", and thus not subject to antitrust legislation. The circuit's chief judge, Constantine Joseph Smyth, wrote in his opinion that "sport" such as professional baseball fell outside the realm of business and thus monopoly. Hanlon then brought his claim to the Supreme Court, where former US president and baseball fan William Howard Taft was Chief Justice. In May 1922, the Court unanimously affirmed the appellate decision in Federal Baseball Club v. National League. The Sherman Act required that businesses be engaged in interstate commerce to incur government intervention, and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. interpreted commerce to include only physical goods. Because baseball exhibitions did not fall under this definition, the sport consisted of "purely state affairs". The next term the Court considered Hart v. B.F. Keith Vaudeville Exchange, a Clayton Act suit brought by a talent agent alleging the defendants