Armstrong v. Whitten

41 F.2d 241, 1930 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2122
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. Texas
DecidedMay 9, 1930
DocketNo. 40
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 41 F.2d 241 (Armstrong v. Whitten) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Armstrong v. Whitten, 41 F.2d 241, 1930 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2122 (S.D. Tex. 1930).

Opinion

HUTCHESON, District Judge.

This is a suit for injunction brought by plaintiff, joint owner with his brothers and sisters of property situated in Kennedy county, Tex., known as the “Armstrong Ranch,” against the defendants Whitten, Anderson, and Martin, constituting the livestock sanitary commission of the state of Texas, and against the county judge and county commissioners of Kennedy county, in which it is alleged that an act of the Legislature, known as House Bill No. 77 (chapter 53), Livestock Tick Eradication Act, passed by the First Called Session of the Forty-First Legislature of the state of Texas, to become effective August 20, 1929 (Vernon’s Ann. P. C. Tex. art. 1525c, §§ 1-37), is arbitrary, unreasonable, and violative of the Constitutions of the state of Texas and of the United States as it affects plaintiff, and in which the prayer is that the defendants be enjoined and restrained from proceeding under the act, in execution and enforcement of it. The substantial allegations of fact are:

That plaintiff is in the actual possession and in tho active management of the ranch property for himself and his co-owners. That the ranch, consisting of practically 50,-000 acres subdivided by ranch fences, is being, and has been, used for nearly fifty years, by ranch cattle bred and raised thereon, and sold therefrom profitably to its owners.

It is specifically alleged and firmly counted on as a ground for injunctive relief that plaintiff’s ranch is in the territory to which the fever carrying tick (to the eradication of which the act in question is directed) is in[242]*242digenous, and that cattle on his ranch, though tick infested, have acquired immunity from the cattle fever, and because thereof may be, without danger to them and with profit to the owners, bred, raised, and marketed from their pastures.

Plaintiff alleges, on the other hand, that if they should now be subjected to systematic dipping, and the ticks now on them be removed from them, they will soon lose their immunity from the fever, and, being in the territory to which the' ticks are indigenous, will become reinfested with the ticks, will take the fever, and many of them will die.

In this connection plaintiff alleges that the complete eradication of ticks in Kennedy county, and particularly on his ranch, is impossible, because of its contiguity to the republic of Mexico, and because of the brushy, tick-infested areas- abounding in deer and other wild animals, also tick-infested, and that the result of systematic dipping on his ranch will merely be to convert his cattle from immunized, and therefore healthy hosts for the ticks, to susceptible and therefore dead and dying hosts therefor. That this immunity or tolerance which his cattle have acquired is a property right which cannot be taken from him, as the statute proposes to do, without compensation.

Plaintiff further alleges that he has always complied, is, now'complying, and will continue to comply, with all federal regulations governing the shipment of cattle from tick-infested areas; that he does dip his cattle before shipment, as required, and will continue to do so, and that, notwithstanding the fact that plaintiff does comply with all the regulations affecting the movement and shipment of his cattle from his ranch, notwithstanding" that while plaintiff’s cattle are on his ranch they are confined by fences upon his land, -and are not allowed to move thereirom, or become a menace to the lands or cattle of others, and notwithstanding the valued and vested right which he has acquired in the practical immunity of his cattle from splenetic fever while on his ranch, the act authorizes and defendants propose a forcible entry upon plaintiff’s premises, to there put into effect a course of systematic dipping, which course, if applied to plaintiff’s cattle, will not only deprive him of the valued rights which he has in the immunity of his cattle as above alleged, but will further result in the taking of his property without compensation, in that the .use and application of the prescribed dip will not only subject him to great expense for the dipping, and great injury in the-management and conduct of his ranch while such dipping is going forward, but the use and application of the prescribed dip will cause injury and death to his cattle, and thus the whole course proposed will result in the taking of his property without adequate compensation and without due process of law, both of which he is guaranteed by the Constitutions of the state' of Texas and of the United States.

In addition to these general attacks upon the act as a whole as violative of due process, and as constituting a taking of his property for public use without compensation, and as operating as an unjust and unreasonablé interference with his right to control and manage his own business, plaintiff levels a further general attack upon the law, upon the ground that it contains provisions directing and controlling its operation and application which are in the&selves so unreasonable and violative of the constitutional rights of plaintiff, and are such integral and essential parts of the act itself, as that they permeate the whole act, so that the act cannot live without them, and, being themselves void, take life from the act.

Plaintiff presents that proposition in this way: “The tick eradication act is a single act, having a single purpose, and all its provisions are for the accomplishment thereof. Notwithstanding the provisions which undertake to save such parts of the law as are not specifically declared unconstitutional, the presence in the law of a large number of unreasonable, arbitrary and unconstitutional provisions assumed by the Legislature to be essential, and all having a single purpose, render the entire Act unconstitutional,” and' under it he presents many specific attacks upon the law.

First he declares that the act in three provisions, at least, confers upon the commis-' sion, the chairman of the commission, the supervising inspectors of the commission, arbitrary and unrestrained power to discriminate in the application of the compulsory provisions of the act, thus constituting a delegation of power to suspend or make effective a criminal law, the result qf which is not only to destroy the law, because of this unconstitutional delegation, but to destroy it because the suspensions as authorized make uncertain whether.and when the law is operative, and thereby invalidate it.

He declares that the law authorizes the commission to conclusively determine whether the systematic dipping shall be undertaken [243]*243on particular property; that it authorizes a supervising inspector “to excuse the dipping of live stock after the issuance of written instructions requiring, dipping”; that it authorizes the commission “for good canse to waive in writing the provisions of Sec. 26,” the section (Vernon’s Ann. P. C. art. 1525c, § 26) prohibiting the removal of cattle from pastures except under certain regulations and conditions.

He further complains of the provisions in the law which authorize peace officers to go upon plaintiff’s premises and seize and dip his cattle, in the event plaintiff refuses to dip. Tie attacks the act because, as be claims, the arsenical solution prescribed by law is of too uncertain a character for any one to undei’stand it, and that it leaves the law indefinite and invalid; that the law is unreasonable, in that it does not give persons the option of vacating their pastures for the time necessary for the ticks to die for want of hosts, rather than of dipping the cattle.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
41 F.2d 241, 1930 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2122, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/armstrong-v-whitten-txsd-1930.