Originally, the Patriarch of the family's character was named "T. Coleman du Pont", but as the film shows him to be an overbearing, humorless father, and his son, the main focus of the story, an irresponsible jerk who is expelled from a prestigious Ivy league university, then gets kicked out of the family mansion, then goes on to start fights in dance halls, chase people up trees with his auto, and is quite nearly lynched by the men in a cowboy town, this didn't sit well with the actual T. Coleman du Pont, a prominent industrialist (Dynamite, Chemicals, Insurance) and contender for the Republican presidential nomination that year.
du Pont appealed to Supreme Court Justice Greenbaum for an injunction against William Fox and the Fox Film Corp. to prevent the film's exhibition. He said "The use of my name and of my picture and the picture of my son, (Francis Victor Du Pont) in the manner described, tends to hold me up to ridicule and disgrace, and to injure my good name and reputation."
Fox's lawyer, S. E. Rogers, said the choice of the names was a "Coincidence", and offered a written apology and a name change if Du Pont withdrew his suit, and the offer was accepted. (New York Press, 14 April 1916)