At one point near the end, those three *were* found technically guilty of conspiracy, but no penalty was assessed so presumably it wasn't significant as far as the court was concerned. They were involved in many of the system demises, so what walks like a duck and quacks like a duck ... except that most of those systems were walking dead anyway. Transit as a private industry, and especially rail transit, had not made money since the 1920s, and was worn out especially those that survived WW2. No private company had access to the funds needed to even bring what they had back to a state of good repair, which people wouldn't ride in quantities that would cover expenses anyway as long as they had cars available. So selling to the bus people was a good bailout move, and provided minimal transit to the people who still wanted or needed it until most remaining private systems were dumped into public ownership in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Even the Muni in SF came very close to going bus-only in the 1950s, and the final shutdown of electric (bus and trolley) transit in LA came at the hands of the first LAMTA though with much help by NCL during the 1950s and early 1960s. In LA's case, what was left of the PE and streetcars by the 1950s was in such bad shape that to keep using it would have required pretty much starting over - as in other areas, given the usage of transit at the time, replacement by buses was the only thing that made sense. The remaining Muni rail lines were rescued only by a movement that probably planted the seeds for the Freeway Revolt and BART later.

Great movie, Roger, but the roads followed the cars even then, so in the real world the great public transit system in LA was already on borrowed time before the first freeways got started.