Moretti v. State Board of Pharmacy

277 A.2d 516, 2 Pa. Commw. 121, 1971 Pa. Commw. LEXIS 426
CourtCommonwealth Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedMay 10, 1971
StatusPublished
Cited by22 cases

This text of 277 A.2d 516 (Moretti v. State Board of Pharmacy) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Moretti v. State Board of Pharmacy, 277 A.2d 516, 2 Pa. Commw. 121, 1971 Pa. Commw. LEXIS 426 (Pa. Ct. App. 1971).

Opinions

Opinion by

Judge Mencer,

This is an appeal by Dante Moretti from an adjudication and order of the State Board of Pharmacy suspending appellant’s registered pharmacist’s license and pharmacy permit. Pursuant to a citation issued by the Board, a hearing was held on October 21, 1969, at [123]*123which appellant appeared with counsel. An adjudication and order were evidently composed on February 25, 1970, suspending for fifteen days appellant’s personal pharmacy license and his pharmacy permit. The chairman of the Board did not sign and date the order until April 10, 1970, so the above suspensions, which were “to become effective ten (10) days after service hereof,” evidently did not take effect until at least April 20, 1970. Accordingly, appellant filed this appeal together with exceptions to the adjudication and order on or about April 21, 1970, and a supersedeas was granted him on April 22, 1970.

Among its Findings of Fact, the Board found “That on the 30th day of December, 1968, the Respondent pleaded guilty to two (2) counts of willfully attempting to evade and defeat income tax due the United States, in violation of 26 U.S.O. Section 7201 in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania,”1 and on that basis made Conclusions of Law that appellant had violated Sections 5(a) (2) and 5(b) (2) of the Pharmacy Act, the Act of September 27, 1961, P. L. 1700, as'amended, 63 P.S. §§390-5(a) (2) and 390-5(b) (2).2

[124]*124Appellant contends, inter alia, that a conviction of willful evasion of payment of income tax is not in itself determinative of conviction of a crime involving moral turpitude.

The scope of our review was well stated by Chief Justice Stern in Blumenschein v. Housing Authority of Pittsburgh, 379 Pa. 566, 572-573, 109 A. 2d 331, 334-335 (1954) : “By a host of authorities in our own and other jurisdictions it has been established as an elementary principle of law that courts will not review the actions of governmental bodies or administrative tribunals involving acts of discretion, in the absence of bad faith, fraud, capricious action or abuse of power; they will not inquire into the wisdom of such actions or into the details of the manner adopted to carry them into execution. It is true that the mere possession of discretionary power by an administrative body does not make it wholly immune from judicial review, but the scope of that review is limited to the determination of whether there has been a manifest and flagrant abuse of discretion or a purely arbitrary execution of the agency’s duties or functions. That the court might have a different opinion or judgment in regard to the action of the agency is not a sufficient ground for interference; judicial discretion may not be substituted for administrative discretion.” (Emphasis in original)

This appeal can be decided by dividing it into two parts: (1) whether under Section 5(a) appellant’s pharmacist’s license was validly suspended for 15 days; and (2) whether under Section 5(b) the permit of appellant’s pharmacy was validly suspended for 15 days.

[125]*125(1) The pharmacist’s license. Did Dante Moretti, by willfully attempting to evade and defeat income tax due the United States, in violation of 26 U.S.C. §7201, commit a crime “involving moral turpitude” in contravention of Section 5(a)(2) of the Pharmacy Act? We think he did.

“Moral turpitude” is not a new term, but, rather, it is a term which is old in the law, and which has been used in the law for centuries. It is a term which has been the subject of many decisions and which has been much defined by the courts; but its definition does not gain in clarity by prolixity of statement. 58 C.J.S. Moral (1948). Various conflicting statements have been made concerning the term, but In re Schill’s License, 9 Pa. D. & C. 202, 203 (1927) (which involved the question of whether a violation of the Federal Prohibition Law was a crime involving moral turpitude), has held that the term “moral turpitude” had a positive meaning at common law — “An act of baseness, vileness or depravity in the private or social duties which a man owes to his fellow-men or to society in general.” The most frequent definition of the term seems to be, “An act of baseness, vileness, or depravity in the private and social duties which a man owes to his fellow man, or to society in general, contrary to the accepted and customary rule of right and duty between man and man.”

As a general rule, all crimes of which fraud is an element are looked on as involving moral turpitude. Jordan v. DeGeorge, 341 U.S. 223, 71 S. Ct. 703, 95 L. Ed. 886 (1951) ; In re Mann, 151 W. Va. 644, 154 S.E. 2d 860 (1967); In re Tietelbaum, 13 Ill. 2d 586, 150 N.E. 2d 873 (1958); In re Madden, 184 A. 2d 204 (D.C. Mun. App. 1962). But there is at least one discordant note in United States v. Garrollo, 30 F. Supp. 3, 7 (D.C, Mo, 1939) : “We are not prepared to rule [126]*126that an attempt to evade the payment of a tax due the nation, or the commonwealth, or the city, or the school district, wrong as it is, unlawful as it is, immoral as it is, is an act evidencing baseness, vileness, or depravity of moral character. The number of men who have at some time sought to evade the payment of a tax or some part of a tax to some taxing authority is legion. Any man who does that should be punished civilly or by criminal sentence, but to say that he is base or vile or depraved is to misuse words.”3

However, “moral turpitude” has also been frequently defined as “anything done knowingly contrary to justice, honesty, or good morals” (emphasis added), and we note the sixth footnote in Chanan Din Khan v. Barber, 147 F. Supp. 771, 775 (D.C. Cal. 1957), aff’d, 253 F. 2d 547 (9th Cir. 1958), cert, denied, 357 U.S. 920, 78 S. Ct. 1361, 2 L. Ed. 2d 1364: “The Court does not find the case of United States v. Carrollo, D.C., 30 F. Supp. 3, persuasive on this point in view of the conclusion reached by the Supreme Court in Jordan v. De George, supra. The question of fraud as an element of moral turpitude was not reached in the Carrollo case, and the holding that income tax evasion did not involve moral turpitude was no more than a dictum.”4

[127]*127The only case cited by appellant that a conviction of willful evasion of payment of income tax is not in itself determinative of conviction of a crime involving moral turpitude is Brodstein Disbarment Case, 408 Pa. 84, 182 A. 2d 181 (1962), and then only Justice Musmanno’s dissent therein which was an impassioned plea in behalf of an aged attorney who had been disbarred because of income tax evasion. Besides stating mitigating circumstances, Justice Mttsmanno cited In re Hallinan, 43 Cal. 2d 243, 272 P. 2d 768 (1954), for the proposition that federal income tax evasion does not necessarily involve moral turpitude and does not justify such a harsh penalty as summary disbarment.5

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Bluebook (online)
277 A.2d 516, 2 Pa. Commw. 121, 1971 Pa. Commw. LEXIS 426, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/moretti-v-state-board-of-pharmacy-pacommwct-1971.