This case addresses the adaptation of a novel to the big screen.  It is between the makers of the 1907 version of Ben-Hur, the Kalem Company, and Lew Wallace's estate, The Harper Brothers. 

For us, the piece of this case that is important is "whether the public exhibition of these moving pictures infringed any rights under the copyright law." 

If the court were to side with Wallace's estate, then movies would not be created without the author's permission because they "have the exclusive right to dramatize their works."  If the Kalem Company were victorious, then any novel could be made into a film based on the current copyright law because no one knew film would exist upon the law's creation.  The difference between a stage play and a motion picture is that each shot of a film was a still frame--hence a piece of art in its own. 

The Supreme Court said that "drama may be achieved by action as well as by speech," and that "action can tell a story, display all the most vivid relations between men, and depict every kind of human emotion without the aid of a word."  With this, the court found "that Ben-Hur was dramatized by what was done" meaning that the Wallace estate was the victor. 

For my question, "How can one scene effect a studio?" we can start by saying that this case established that MGM could buy the rights to the novel Ben-Hur.  Moreover, this case establishes that all authors' rights are protected in adaptations and led to all studios having to buy rights to make films. 

For MGM, seeing the build-up and hype from the novel to the stage play, helped them decide to go forward with the purchase of the rights that would lead to their movie that would end up costing them around $4,000,000.  And as mentioned in this bibliography, Ben-Hur led to a series of first in US popular culture.  The epic proportions of the chariot race scene are no exception, and because of this case we got to see the 1925 version, the 1959 version, and all of the grandeur of the imitators that followed.