Arthur v. Lahey

96 U.S. 112, 24 L. Ed. 766, 1877 U.S. LEXIS 1634
CourtSupreme Court of the United States
DecidedApril 15, 1878
Docket518
StatusPublished
Cited by53 cases

This text of 96 U.S. 112 (Arthur v. Lahey) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of the United States primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Arthur v. Lahey, 96 U.S. 112, 24 L. Ed. 766, 1877 U.S. LEXIS 1634 (1878).

Opinion

Me. Justice Hunt

delivered the opinion of the court.

Referring to the cáse of Arthur v. Morrison (supra, p. 108) for a fuller explanation of the views of the court, we assume, at this point, as established, the following propositions. A citation and exaihination of some of the authorities are given hereafter..

1. The commercial designation of an article among traders and importers, where such designation is clearly established, fixes its character for the purpose of the tariff laws.

2. When Congress has designated an article by a specific' name-, and by such name imposed a duty upon it, general terms in a subsequent act, or in a later part of the same act, although sufficiently broad to comprehend such article, are not applicable to it. Homer v. The Collector, 1 Wall. 486; Reiche v. Smythe, 13 id. 162; Smythe v. Fiske, 23 id. 374; Movius v. Arthur, 95 U. S. 144.

The section of the act is fully set forth in the preceding case.

The government now contends that this section of the tariff act of June, 1864, was intended to embrace every article made of silk; that the concluding clause, laying a duty of fifty per cent upon all manufactures of silk not otherwise provided for, means not otherwise provided for in this section ; and that every article of which silk was the component of chief value was intended to be covered by the section. Hence it is.argued that recourse cannot be had to preceding statutes to determine *114 the duty payable upon lace made of silk, however it might be commercially designated.

Under the authorities to which we have referred, this view cannot be maintained. A specific designation eo nomine must prevail over general words, and a commercial designation is the .standard by which the dutiable character of the article is fixed.

It was proved by the witnesses, and found by the jury, that, although made of silk, the laces in question were commercially known as thread laces. Whether an article is thread lace, it was shown, depended upon the mode of its manufacture, —: as upon a- cushion, from thread wound on bobbins moved by hand; and that it was equally thread lace whether made of cotton or silk, and whether white or black; and that there are also articles commercially known as silk laces, and articles commercially known1 as cotton laces ; and that thread lace made o’f linen had been practically unknown for many years.

These distinctions are also well known and recognized in the tariff laws of the country, of which the following is an illustration. In the years mentioned, acts were passed in which the articles were named as here stated, with the different duties upon each.

July 30, 1846.

Cotton laces.............. 25 per cent.

Thread laces.....■.........20 „

9 Stat. 46, 47.

' March 3, 1857.

Cotton laces........... 19 per cent.

Thread laces........... 15 »

11 id. 192.

March 2, [861. •

Silk laces........'..... 30 per cent.

Cotton laces ! ..... U ... . 20 >5

Thread laces ...... 20

Cotton lacé, colored....... . . 30

12 id. 186, 189, 190, 191.

Aug. 5, 1861.

Silk laces 40 per cent.

id. 293.

*115 July 14, 1862.

............30 per cent. Thread laces

............25 „ Cotton laces

Id. 550, 556, sects. 6, 13.

June 30, 1864.

Silk lace............ 60 per cent.

Cotton lace........... 35 „

13 id. 209, 210.

Rev. Stat.

Cotton lace, colored........ 35 per cent.

Thread lace........' . . . 30- „

Silk laces ............ 60 „

Rev. Stat., pp. 464, 466, 472.

Feb. 8, 1875.

18 Stat. 307.

Congress here plainly recognizes the distinction made by the importers and traders, and establishes one rate of duty for silk laces and another for thread laces. The distinctions have run through the acts of Congress for more than thirty years ; and we do not see how the judge at the trial could have adopted any other rule than the one complained of, to leave it to the jury whether the article Avas thread lace, a known commercial article, liable to duty as such, eo nomine.

The same reasoning will, settle the question as to the application of the fifty per cent duty under the residuary clause of the act of 1864.

The case of Smythe v. Fiske (supra) is relied upon by the appellant. That case was not intended to overrule Homer v. The Collector or Reiche v. Smythe (supra), or the cases referred to in those authorities, nor was Movius v. Arthur (supra) under- • stood tó be in conflict with it. Smythe v. Fiske simply decided that silk ties, not being specifically enumerated in any of the acts, either of 1864 or of preceding years, the rate fixed by the act of 1864 was the correct rate for their assessment. To this we how hold.

*116 It is not necessary to the correctness of that decision to hold that the act of 1864 forbids a reference to any previous acts to determine the duty upon articles mentioned’ in such acts eo nomine, and not specifically named in the act of 1864.

That such reference is proper was held in Homer v. The Collector, sup ra. The tariff act of 1840 had imposed a duty of forty per cent upon the articles enumerated in the schedule referred to, among which were “ almonds,” by name. By the first section of the tariff act of 1857, these duties were reduced to thirty per cent. The second section made “ fruits, green,ripe, or dried,” liable to a duty of eight per cent only. In holding that almonds were liable to the duty of thirty per cent, and were not embraced in the general terms of the second section, Mr. Justice Nelson says: “ The argument is, that almonds are dried fruit, and hence are provided for in the second section of the act of 1857; and evidence was offered to show that such was the commercial sense of the term. But this inquiry had nothing to do with it, . . . for certainly such proof could not exist or be found, in the sense of commercial usage, under any of the tariff acts, as duty had been imposed on almonds eo nomine almost immemorially, at least since the duty act of 1804, and continued in the duty acts of 1816,1832,1842, 1846. . . .

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96 U.S. 112, 24 L. Ed. 766, 1877 U.S. LEXIS 1634, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/arthur-v-lahey-scotus-1878.