In Blumenthal v. United States, the defendants were convicted for conspiracy to violate federal liquor laws by selling whiskey at prices above those established by the Office of Price Administration. The Supreme Court upheld their convictions in a 1947 decision, rejecting arguments that there was no single overall agreement among all conspirators but rather multiple agreements between different pairs or groups of individuals. The court held that even if individual participants did not know each other or participate in every detail, they could still be found guilty of conspiracy if they knew about and contributed to the overarching plan. This case is significant because it clarified what constitutes a "single" versus "multiple" conspiracies under U.S law.

In the dissenting opinion for Blumenthal v. United States, Justice Rutledge argued that the majority's decision to uphold the defendants' convictions was incorrect because it failed to properly apply principles of conspiracy law. He contended that a conspiracy requires an agreement between two or more people and in this case, there was no evidence proving such an agreement existed among all five defendants. Instead, he believed that there were multiple separate agreements involving different pairs or groups of defendants but not one overarching conspiracy involving all five individuals as charged by the government and upheld by the court's majority ruling. Therefore, he concluded that their joint conviction should be reversed due to lack of sufficient proof demonstrating they conspired together in a single scheme.