Samuel v. Donovan

512 F. Supp. 375, 1981 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11865, 92 Lab. Cas. (CCH) 34,090
CourtDistrict Court, M.D. North Carolina
DecidedApril 27, 1981
DocketNo. C-80-20-G
StatusPublished

This text of 512 F. Supp. 375 (Samuel v. Donovan) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, M.D. North Carolina primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Samuel v. Donovan, 512 F. Supp. 375, 1981 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11865, 92 Lab. Cas. (CCH) 34,090 (M.D.N.C. 1981).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION

WARD, District Judge.

This matter is before the Court on appeal from a decision by the Secretary of Labor (Secretary) imposing civil penalties against each plaintiff for violations of the Farm Labor Contractor Registration Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 2041-2055 (the Act). After investigation, the Secretary’s Wage and Hour Division notified the plaintiffs of the assessment of penalties on October 30 and November 20,1978. The plaintiffs timely filed a request for a hearing to challenge the penalties, and an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) conducted a hearing on June 29, 1979. The plaintiffs were represented by counsel at the hearing and had the opportunity to cross-examine witnesses and introduce evidence.

In a lengthy written decision, the ALJ reduced the penalties and ordered them enforced as modified. Notice of Appeal Exhibit A (January 17, 1980). The plaintiffs timely appealed to this Court to review the AU’s decision pursuant to the Act’s provisions, 7 U.S.C. § 2048(b)(3). The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment on May 6, 1980 and May 20, 1980. On July 2 & 17,1980, the Court granted leave to the National Council of Agricultural Employers and Agricultural Producers (NCAE) and the National Food Processors Association (NFPA) to file briefs as amici curiae. They have done so. (July 17 & 25, 1980). The Court conducted a hearing on this matter on April 21, 1981, at which counsel for plaintiffs and defendant appeared and argued.

The standard of review in this Court is prescribed by 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(E) which provides:

To the extent necessary to decision and when presented, the reviewing court shall decide all relevant questions of law, interpret constitutional and statutory provisions, and determine the meaning or applicability of the terms of an agency action. The reviewing court shall—
(2) hold unlawful and set aside agency action, findings, and conclusions found to be—
(E) unsupported by substantial evidence in a case subject to sections 556 and 557 of this title or otherwise reviewed on the record of an agency hearing provided by statute....

[377]*377Under this limited review, the Court must determine if the ALJ’s decision is supported by substantial evidence and if it applies the correct legal standards, consistent with the Act. Cf. Frady v. Harris, - F.2d -, - (4th Cir. 1981) (review of final decisions of the Secretary of Health and Human Services is “extremely limited”).

The parties do not dispute the ALJ’s findings of fact. The record contains substantial uncontested evidence that the plaintiffs were engaged in the tobacco hauling business. Their business involved loading and transporting leaf tobacco from the auction warehouses to various tobacco companies’ prizing rooms. Plaintiffs recruited, hired and transported workers from different towns and housed them in various hotels in tobacco marketing areas. The workers, inter alia, moved piles of leaf tobacco after purchase by tobacco companies from the auction warehouse floor to the warehouse loading docks or bays, loaded the tobacco onto the plaintiffs’ trucks and drove the trucks to various tobacco companies’ facilities called prizing rooms. There, tobacco company employees weighed, cleaned and graded the tobacco and then transported it from the prizing rooms to stemmeries. At the stemmeries, tobacco company employees stemmed and shredded the tobacco, packed it in large containers and transported it to other warehouses for lengthy storage for aging. The plaintiffs received a fee for the work they and their employees performed computed as a certain rate per quantity of tobacco transported.

The parties frame the issues before the court as follows:

[T]he [Farm Labor Contractor Registration] Act simply does not apply to the activities engaged in by plaintiffs and their employees. Specifically, error is claimed in the findings of the Secretary of Labor that plaintiffs are “farm labor contractors” and that plaintiffs hire “migrant workers” for “agricultural employment”, these words being terms of art and specifically defined in the Act.2

Plaintiffs’ Brief p. 1 (April 28, 1980). The Act defines “farm labor contractor” to mean “any person, who, for a fee, either for himself or on behalf of another person, recruits, solicits, hires, furnishes, or transports migrant workers (excluding members of his immediate family) for agricultural employment.” 7 U.S.C. § 2042(b). At issue is the ALJ’s determination that the plaintiffs’ employees are “migrant workers” engaged in “agricultural employment” within the meaning of the Act.

When Congress passed the Act in 1963, it defined the term “agricultural employment” as follows:

The term “interstate agricultural employment” means employment in any service or activity included within the provisions of section 203(f) of Title 29, or section 3121(g) of Title 26, when such service or activity is performed by an individual worker who has been transported from one State to another or from any place outside of a State to any place within a State.

7 U.S.C. § 2042(d). Congress defined the term “migrant worker” at § 2042(g) to mean “an individual whose primary employment is in agriculture, as defined in section 203(f) of Title 29, or who performs agricultural labor, as defined in section 3121(g) of Title 26, on a seasonal or other temporary basis.” Thus, Congress defined the terms “agricultural employment” or “employment ... in agriculture” in §§ 2042(d) & (g) by reference to the same statutory language. No one disputes that the Act’s 1963 definition of “migrant worker,” based on the then current definition of “agricultural employ[378]*378ment” incorporating by reference 29 U.S.C. § 203(f) and 26 U.S.C. § 3121(g), did not include the plaintiffs’ employees.

However, in 1974 Congress amended the Act and expanded the definition of agricultural employment contained in § 2042(d). Now,

[t]he term “agricultural employment” means employment in any service or activity included within the provisions of section 203(f) of Title 29, or section 3121(g) of Title 26 and the handling, planting, drying, packing, packaging, processing, freezing, or grading prior to delivery for storage of any agricultural or horticultural commodity in its unmanufactured state.

(emphasis added to highlight the amendment, Pub.L.No. 93-518 § 3, 88 Stat. 1652 (1974)). The plaintiffs wish the Court to construe the term “migrant worker” using the preamendment definition of “agricultural employment,” thus excluding plaintiffs from coverage under the Act. Alternatively, plaintiffs argue that their employees are not “migrant worker[s]” engaged in “agricultural employment” even under the defendant’s construction of those terms.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
512 F. Supp. 375, 1981 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11865, 92 Lab. Cas. (CCH) 34,090, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/samuel-v-donovan-ncmd-1981.