Nichols & Cox Lumber Co. v. United States

212 F. 588, 129 C.C.A. 124, 1914 U.S. App. LEXIS 2100
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedApril 7, 1914
DocketNo. 2409
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 212 F. 588 (Nichols & Cox Lumber Co. v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Nichols & Cox Lumber Co. v. United States, 212 F. 588, 129 C.C.A. 124, 1914 U.S. App. LEXIS 2100 (6th Cir. 1914).

Opinion

WARRINGTON, Circuit judge.

The defendant below was indicted and convicted upon three counts, in each of which it was alleged that the defendant did “knowingly and willfully solicit, accept, and receive,” from the Grand Rapids & Indiana Railway Company, “a rebate,” in a sum stated “in respect to the transportation” of property in interstate commerce, “whereby such property was transported * * * at a rate and charge less” by the sum so stated “than the rate * * * named in the schedules and tariffs * * * published and filed and posted” by the certain common carriers named in the indictment. The( three counts describe three car .loads of lumber shipped from Grand Rapids to destinations, as follows:. The first count, a car load of hard wood flooring to New Orleans; the second, a car load of dressed lumber to Binghamton, N. Y.; and the third, a car load of rough lumber to Milwaukee. These shipments are the same as those described in counts 6, 7, and 8 of the indictment against the Grand Rapids & Indiana Railway Company, involved in the decision this day rendered in No. 2393 -(212 Fed. 577); and, since the shipper is forbidden knowingly to “solicit, [590]*590accept, or receive,” just as the carrier is to “offer, grant, or give” rebates, and such acts are alike declared to be misdemeanors and punishable with the same penalties, the questions decided in the railroad cáse are determinative of this case, except as otherwise stated herein.

[1] 1. It is claimed 'that the provisions of the statute upon which the indictment and prosecution were based “have been repealed as a necessary result of the subsequent legislation on the same subject.” Counsel’s argument comes to be an assertion of conflict between section 10 of the original act to regulate commerce,-as amended June 18, 1910 (36 Stat. E. 549, 550), and section 1 of the Elkins Act, as amended by the Hepburn Act of June 29, 1906 (34 Stat. E. 587, 588). The theory is that this conflict is such as to work an implied repeal; but the settled rule that repeals by implication are not favored is admitted. The principle sought to be' applied is that the later act embraces the whole subject, and so supplants the earlier act. This does not, however, avoid the rule concerning repeals by implication; for, as Mr. Justice Harlan said in Frost v. Wenie, 157 U. S. 46, 58, 15 Sup. Ct. 532, 537 (39 L. Ed. 614):

“Where two statutes cover, in whole or in part, the same matter, and are not absolutely irreconcilable, the duty of the court — no purpose to repeal being clearly expressed or indicated — is, if possible, to give effect to both.”

[2] Comparison of the two sections in dispute shows that they^are aimed at different evils, and that they define and denounce the acts constituting such evils as separate and distinct offenses. Broadly speaking, these evils and the consequent offenses are described and known as “rebating” and “false billing”; the former usually succeeding and the latter preceding payments of freight charges. It is true that the results sought to be attained by the perpetrators of such offenses are the same, in the sense that they operate to reduce the established rates; it results that the language found in each of the enactments is in some respects necessarily similar to that of the other; and yet the dominant features of each act point to a distinction that cannot be misunderstood. In the earlier act, for example, it is made unlawful “to offer, grant or give, or to solicit, accept or receive a rebate;” while in the later act “false billing, false classification, false weighing or false report of weight” are denounced against the carrier, and “false billing, false classification, false weighing, false representation of the contents of the package or the substance of the property, false report of weight, false statement” against the shipper.1 This is enough, we think, at once to differentiate the two enactments and reconcile the legislative objects of preserving both,.as also of providing a different penalty for the violation of each. Hence, unless we. [591]*591are mistaken in our interpretation of the main purposes of these two acts, there can be no' escape from the decision in Frost v. Wenie, supra.

[3] 2. It is not conceded here, as it was in the railroad case, that there was no transit privilege of the railway company which could be rightfully applied to the three inbound shipments that were made the basis of the transit rates accorded to the three.(outbound) shipments described- in the present indictment. In the course of the charge, when defining a “transit or stop-off privilege,” the court said:

“As applied to shipments of lumber the privilege consists in the right to stop a car in transit for certain purposes, for the purpose of dressing, manufacturing, sorting, storing, reconsigning, partly unloading, or to complete loading, and the reforwarding under a through rate from point of origin to destination; in other words, the tariffs then in force entitled a shipper of lumber to stop a car at Grand Rapids for the purpose of dressing, or sorting, or partially unloading, or manufacturing, and then reshipping or reconsigning that, or some other lumber, or the product of that lumber.
“It appears from the evidence in this case and is undisputed that under the transit tariff then in force, neither of the inbound shipments of lumber was entitled to a transit privilege nor a stop-off charge.’’

Error is specially assigned to.this latter paragraph. After describing the three inbound shipments that were used with the three outbound shipments for the purpose of applying the transit rates, the court ruled (and exception thereto was taken though error is not assigned) :

“So that as a matter of law none of the inbound shipments specified in the proofs in this case could’ constitute or did constitute the basis of a transit privilege, and the defendant had no right to claim a transit privilege, upon any of those shipments.”

Now, if -we assume that the assignment reaches all these portions of the charge, it is unávailing. In the first place, _ under the transit privilege given by the railway tariff — in part quoted in the margin2[592]*592a through movement is contemplated, with suspension at the transit point for one or more specified purposes, and later a reconsignment to destination. In the next place, considering all the tariff provisions pointed out, we may, in deference to counsel’s argument, assume, though the facts do not call upon us to decide, and we do not decide, either that an inbound shipment of lumber may be stopped at the transit point and piled (say in defendant’s yard) and then replaced by and the movement' continued with other similar lumber, or that the inbound movement may, through reconsignment alone, be continued with the same lumber; but it will be noticed that upon this theory at least constructive relation, and identity between such piled and substituted lumber, and actual relation in the other instance, may be shown to exist between the inbound and outbound shipments. Still, upon this view, or even on the most liberal theory of interpreting the transit tariff, the lumber involved in the instant case was not entitled to a transit rate. The facts concerning the three inbound shipments are not in dispute.

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Bluebook (online)
212 F. 588, 129 C.C.A. 124, 1914 U.S. App. LEXIS 2100, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/nichols-cox-lumber-co-v-united-states-ca6-1914.