Milk Maid Dairy Products, Inc. v. Pennsylvania Milk Control Commission

35 Pa. D. & C.2d 286, 1964 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 214
CourtPennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Dauphin County
DecidedOctober 30, 1964
DocketCommonwealth dkt., 1964, no. 192
StatusPublished

This text of 35 Pa. D. & C.2d 286 (Milk Maid Dairy Products, Inc. v. Pennsylvania Milk Control Commission) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Dauphin County primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Milk Maid Dairy Products, Inc. v. Pennsylvania Milk Control Commission, 35 Pa. D. & C.2d 286, 1964 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 214 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1964).

Opinion

Kreider, J.,

This matter comes before the court on an “Amended Petition Sur Appeal” filed by Milk Maid Dairy Products (hereinafter called “Milk Maid”), from certain sections and provisions of Official General Order No. A-632, effective April 1, 1964, of the Milk Control Commission of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (hereinafter called the “Commission” ). This appeal is taken under the Act of April 28, 1937, P. L. 417, art. IX, sec. 901, 31 PS §700j-901. Specifically, Milk Maid complains that it is aggrieved by section E, provisions 3, 5 and 7 of the order and the schedules of minimum prices made a part thereof. The parties have stipulated, however, that “no appeal is taken from that part of the Order fixing prices charged or paid to producers by and from milk dealers.”

It appears from the pleadings and from the record made before the commission that Milk Maid is a licensed distributor of milk in the City of Philadelphia in an area designated by the Commission as Milk Marketing Area No. 1. It is not a producer or processor of milk as such, but confines its operations to the purchase and distribution of already packaged fluid milk. Milk Maid provides its own distribution facilities in the sale at wholesale of this milk to stores and other wholesale customers. Milk Maid does not sell milk at retail or make home delivery of milk.

[288]*288In count I of its amended petition sur appeal, Milk Maid avers:

“(e) The quantity of milk upon which the Commission sets a price and upon which all other prices are based is the one-half gallon container of milk.
“(f) The type or class of milk of which the greatest volume of sales is made is Standard Milk, Plain, Homogenized and/or Vitamin D added.
“(g) The schedules made part of Official General Order No. A-632, fixing wholesale prices, provide that for the periods indicated, ‘half gallons of standard milk, plain, homo or vit. D.’ shall be; for milk sold to stores, or the minimum wholesale prices, without discount is:
I. II.
“January Thru March April, May and June July Thru December
47.5?S 45.5«5”

Section E, provision 7 of the order provides that the minimum prices charged by or paid to processing milk dealers by other milk dealers, e.g., Milk Maid “shall be 15 per cent less than the appropriate wholesale prices without discount as set forth in schedules 1 and 2 of the Section.” In other words, Milk Maid is given a gross profit of 15 per cent on the milk which it purchases from the processor dealers and resells at wholesale. From April through June this amounts to 6.825 cents per half-gallon, 15 percent of 45.5 cents. Milk Maid does not contest this portion of the order.

Provision 5 of section E of the order, however, directs that any wholesale purchaser of milk is entitled to a per unit, half-gallon, discount from the minimum wholesale prices established in schedules 1 and 2 in the amount of 5 Cents per half-gallon for a 250-299 half-gallon unit delivery and 6 cents per half-[289]*289gallon for a 300 or over half-gallon delivery. Milk Maid claims that when it makes a delivery in the 250 to 299 category, its gross profit is cut from 6.825 to 1.825 cents per half-gallon unit and in the 300 or over category from 6.825 to’ 0.825 cents per half-gallon.

The thrust of Milk Maid’s appeal is directed at this last provision. It is contended that such a narrow gross margin of profit is insufficient to meet employes’ wages, officers’ salaries, plant and delivery expenses and other operating and general expenses, to say nothing of a profit for stockholders. Milk Maid, though represented at the hearing before the commission, offered no testimony but now alleges that it had a fixed minimum cost of 14 percent of the sales price of the unit for delivery alone. Milk Maid contends that under all the evidence the order as applied to it is confiscatory, arbitrary and unlawful.

In the second count of its petition sur appeal, Milk Maid challenges that portion of the order, provision 3 of section 3, which raises the minimum retail prices for milk purchased at stores from 45.5 cents to 48 cents per half-gallon and for home delivery from 48 cents to 52 cents per half-gallon. Milk Maid maintains that while the new differential between store-bought and home-delivered milk represents an increase from 2.5 cents to 4 cents, nevertheless, the differential in fact has been decreased. This novel situation results, Milk Maid says, from the fact that in actual practice, home delivered milk previously had been sold at a price higher than the former official minimum price of 48 cents per half-gallon, viz., for 52 cents, while the stores continued to sell at the official minimum price of 48 cents per half-gallon. Consequently appellant contends that the former differential between home delivered and store-sold milk actually had been 6.5 cents but is now only 4 cents officially. This new official differential, Milk Maid argues, gives undue protection to [290]*290dealers delivering milk to the home of the consumer and thereby unjustly restricts competition by wholesale milk dealers who sell only to stores. Appellant’s theory seems to be that the consumer now will have less incentive to purchase milk at the store where formerly he could buy it for 6.5 cents less than if delivered to his home and that since appellant sells only to stores it is entitled to be protected from an alleged impending loss of business due to a decrease in store sales.

As above stated, the thrust of Milk Maid’s argument in this appeal is that the commission’s order is arbitrary, unreasonable and confiscatory and constitutes a deprivation of property without due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and the Constitution of Pennsylvania. This broadside attack is substantially modified, however, by the argument in appellant’s brief which emphasizes principally the insufficiency of the evidence and the lack of opportunity to cross examine witnesses on certain items of evidence. Appellant enumerates the “Questions Involved” as follows:

“1. When the Milk Control Commission determines that labor contracts are the best evidence of increased labor costs, and over the objection that to so do would deny the parties the right to cross-examination, the Commission directs that such contracts be submitted to the Commission after the close of the hearing, and then utilizes them as evidence upon which to base its Findings and Order, is not the appellant deprived of due process of law and may an order so written be permitted to stand?
“2. When milk dealers recommend that prices be fixed as between dealers and sub-dealers, but produce no evidence to support the recommendation, and the Commission, adopts the recommendation of the dealers even in the absence of evidence, but utilizes the recom[291]*291mendation to fix prices for all dealers, rather than just sub-dealers as recommended, is not such a price-order void and illegal?
“3. May the Commission fix wholesale quantity discounts in the absence of evidence of the cost of such discounts to the dealers; and fix prices for products generally and prices for cream in particular without any evidence in the record to support such prices?”

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Related

Morgan v. United States
298 U.S. 468 (Supreme Court, 1936)
Colteryahn Sanitary Dairy v. Milk Control Commission
1 A.2d 775 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1938)

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Bluebook (online)
35 Pa. D. & C.2d 286, 1964 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 214, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/milk-maid-dairy-products-inc-v-pennsylvania-milk-control-commission-pactcompldauphi-1964.