Porter v. Barrett

89 F. Supp. 35, 1946 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2960
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Pennsylvania
DecidedAugust 20, 1946
DocketCiv. A. No. 5431
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 89 F. Supp. 35 (Porter v. Barrett) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Porter v. Barrett, 89 F. Supp. 35, 1946 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2960 (E.D. Pa. 1946).

Opinion

GANEY, District Judge.

This is an action by the Price Administrator of the Office of Price Administration to enjoin the defendants, individually and as copartners, trading as Chandler Laboratories and as Beverage Products Division, from engaging in acts which violate the sugar regulations of the Second Revised Ration Order 31 and of General Ration Order No. 82 and thereby violate Section 2(a) of the Second War Powers Act of 1942, as amended.3

Jurisdiction of this action is conferred on this court by virtue of Sec. 2(a) (6) of the Act, 50 U.S.C.A.Appendix, § 633.

This action was begun on November 26, 1945 and on the same day, until a hearing for a preliminary or final injunction could be had, a temporary restraining order was entered, restraining the defendants from using as industrial users of sugar more sugar in any allotment period than their allotment for that period, from purchasing, receiving or using any sugar until they registered their four industrial user establishments with the OPA, and from transferring sugar or using sugar manufactured by them in the production or processing of any sugar containing product or 'syrup except upon receiving and surrendering to OPA authorities ration evidences equivalent in weight value to the sugar so transferred or used by them, as provided in the Ration Orders.

The complaint, as amended, alleged that in December of 1943, the defendants had registered as industrial users of sugar with the OPA under the ration orders then in force and had in the year of 1944 and again in 1945 received from OPA sugar certificates which represented the “weight value” or the amount of sugar to which the defendants were entitled to buy in any quarterly period of the year; that these allotments were based on the amount (46,791 pounds) of sugar used by the defendants’ predecessor during the quarterly periods of the year of 1941; that on or [38]*38about October 25, 1945, the defendants leased four sugar mills and their accompanying facilities for the sugar-cane ¡harvesting season beginning October 19, 1945 and ending January 31, 1946 for total rentals of One Million Two Hundred Thousand Dollars ($1,200,000), but in the event of interruption or termination of the leases through the issuance of- any State or Federal Regulations or Orders, the rentals were to be settled on the basis of five dollars per ton for all 'sugar-cane actually milled and processed by the leased facilities during the period of the lease; that these mills were located in the State of Louisiana and that they had a capacity of processing approximately two hundred forty thousand (240,000) tons of sugar-cane during the lease period; that the defendants failed to register these four establishments with the OPA; that the defendants operated the four mills for the processing and manufacturing of the juice of sugar-cane into sugar at the rate of approximately five hundred thousand (500,000) pounds of sugar per day and that until the time of this suit had manufactured approximately fifteen million pounds of sugar; that they used all this sugar in the manufacture o-f a product which is sugar as defined by the ration Order; that they called this product “pure cane flavored ■ syrup” which was made by adding hot water to the sugar and, on some occasions, an almost imperceptively minute quantity of flavoring matter which did not interfere with its use as sugar, thus exceeding their sugar quota or allotment byi a mere fifteen million pounds; that the defendants have held themselves out to the OPA and to the public as industrial users of sugar and that they have advertised their product as a non-rationed product throughout the country and that they have collected advance payments aggregating over two million dollars for orders for hundreds of thousands of gallons of the product from bottlers of soft-drinks and other industrial users of sugar, and that they have shipped their product to their customers without requesting or accepting 'ration evidences as required by the Ration Orders.

Thus in the amended complaint filed March 21, 1946, the original complaint became Count One, and the supplemental complaint became Count Two. The basis of Count One is that the defendants as “primary distributors” (manufacturers of sugar) delivered Sugar to itself as an “industrial user” without the surrendering of any ration evidences and that they used more sugar in an allotment period than their allotment provided. The basis of Count Two is that the defendants represented to the OPA and to the public that they were “industrial users” of sugar when in fact they were “primary distributors”, selling a product which was sugar within the meaning of the ration regulations, to others without obtaining ration evidences.

While this action was pending in this court, Edward F. LeBlanc, who managed the. operations of the four sugar mills for the defendants, filed in the State Courts oí Louisiana on or about November 29, 1945, attachment proceedings against the defendants’ product then on hand and in various stages of production at the mills for the ostensible purpose of collecting wages due him from the defendants. (It appears that the real purpose of the proceeding was to use the courts as a means of transferring to others the very product which the defendants, by an injunction of this court, were restrained from transferring.)

On December 3, 1945, the case came up in this court for a hearing upon a motion for a preliminary injunction, and defendants agreed to the issuing of said injunction without a hearing because as stated they wished to defend the attachment proceeding brought against them in the Louisiana State Court. This court set February 11, 1946, as the date for a final hearing on the motion for a permanent injunction.

The defendants removed the attachment proceeding pending in the Louisiana State Courts in the Opelousas Division of the Western District of the United States District Court of Louisiana and there implead-ed other parties to whom they were indebted as the result of contracts concerning the res which was then in the jurisdiction of that court. The Administrator of OPA, who was also impleaded, exercised his option as a representative of the sovereign [39]*39and requested to be dismissed as a party to the proceedings. After hearing the testimony of defendants’ expert witness, Judge Porterie, in the LeBlanc v. Chandler Laboratories et al., D.C.W.D.La., 89 F.Supp. 32, found that the product or res which was in the jurisdiction of the court was of a perishable nature, and that in order to bring the highest price, it would be necessary to sell the product immediately, and that the operation that went on in the four sugar mills was a syrup-making operation and not a sugar-making operation, and that, therefore, the end product of the operation was syrup and not sugar, and ordered that the product or res be sold at public auction without being subject to OPA regulations as to sales price or rationing currency. The same Judge on February 19, 1946, in a motion Ex Proprio Motu, warned that the OPA was not relieving buyers from compliance with Sec. 8.5(c) of the Third Revised Ration Order 3, issued December 29, 1945; and also that the Department of Agriculture was not exempting buyers, sellers, or users of edible molasses from the force and effect of War Food Order 51.

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Bluebook (online)
89 F. Supp. 35, 1946 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2960, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/porter-v-barrett-paed-1946.