Standard Brick & Tile Co. v. Macon, D. & S. R. Co.

86 F.2d 184, 1936 U.S. App. LEXIS 3688
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
DecidedNovember 10, 1936
DocketNo. 8094
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 86 F.2d 184 (Standard Brick & Tile Co. v. Macon, D. & S. R. Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Standard Brick & Tile Co. v. Macon, D. & S. R. Co., 86 F.2d 184, 1936 U.S. App. LEXIS 3688 (5th Cir. 1936).

Opinion

HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge.

Appellants in July and August, 1932, complained of rates on brick and tile from points in Georgia and Alabama to various Florida peninsula points. New rates were made effective January 13, 1933, and reparation was later awarded in a 'report1 dealing only with the prayer for reparation, including shipments moving pendente lite. Suing on this award, and submitting their case on jury waiver, appellants suffered a general adverse finding and judgment.

They appeal, asserting that the ground of the judgment against them was the erroneous view the court took that the assailed rates as to which reparation was awarded, were Commission-made within Arizona Wholesale Grocery Co. v. Atchison, T. & S. F. R. Co., 284 U.S. 370, 52 S. Ct. 183, 76 L.Ed. 348.

Appellees, insisting that the award was unauthorized because the rates were Commission-made, urge also that on the face of the report the award was arbitrary and based upon an illegal and invalid finding of unreasonableness.

The evidence consisted of various tariffs and findings, reports, and orders of the Interstate Commerce Commission in various proceedings. Nothing submitted by defendants in any manner impeached or overcame the prima facies of the reparation order, if there was jurisdiction to make it. The case stood at last for decision upon defendants’ contention urged before and rejected by the Commission, that reparation could not be awarded because the rates complained of were Commission-made.

Made effective by tariffs established April 16, 1930, after the report and order in the second hearing of the Southern Brick Case,2 had condemned rates exceeding 80 per cent, of the uniform brick list prescribed in the General Brick Case,3 they were constructed on the Jacksonville combination basis, that is, the sum of the rate to Jacksonville, less 3 cents and the rate from Jacksonville to destination less one cent. In the proceedings out of which the reparation order issued the use of the Jacksonville basis was condemned, the rates assailed were found unreasonable on and after November 1, 1930, to the extent that they exceeded rates, based upon the application of the distance scale prescribed in the Southern Brick Cases,4 to the entire distance, plus certain arbitraries set out in the Dann-Gerow Case.5

Appellees urge that to condemn the Jacksonville combination for the future was [185]*185one thing, to award reparation on the basis of its past use quite another. They insist that its use as a factor in tariffs made up to comply with the orders in the General Brick and the Southern Brick Cases had been specifically approved by the Commission, and the rates resulting from its use were therefore not carrier-made, but Commission-prescribed.

Appellants, on their part, insist that the orders in the General and Southern Brick Cases were not orders prescribing specific rates within the Arizona Wholesale Grocery Case, but merely general orders, like those in Texas & P. R. Co. v. Louisiana Oil Refining Corporation (C.C.A.) 76 F. (2d) 465, and therefore the rates under attack were not Commission, but carrier-made. They insist, further, that whatever might have been said on this score if the tariffs had been constructed on the distance scale actually prescribed in those cases, the use of the Jacksonville combination in making them up was the voluntary act of the carriers, and the rates resulting from its use were carrier-made and the proper subject of reparation award.

In support of this position appellants rely on the permissive, rather than mandatory nature of the reference to the use of the Jacksonville basis in the reports of those cases and of cases referring to them. They rely, too, on the vigorous and downright condemnation of its use in a number of later Commission cases; Southern Cement Rates, 132 I.C.C. 427; Fertilizers Between Southern Points, 113 I.C.C. 389; Rates on Chert, Clay, etc., 140 I.C.C. 85; Dann-Gerow v. Alabama G. D. R. Co., 161 I.C.C. 673; Yeates Co. v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 167 I.C.C. 463, 465; Dickey Clay Mfg. Co. v. Atlanta, B. & C. R. Co. (Columbus Brick & Tile Case), 185 I.C.C. 639.

Appellees, invoking Arizona Wholesale Grocery Co. v. Southern Pacific Co. (C.C. A.) 68 F.(2d) 601, El Paso & Southwestern R. Co. v. Phelps-Dodge Mercantile Co. (C.C.A.) 75 F.(2d) 873, argue that the failure of the Commission in the Southern Brick Case to disapprove the use of the Jacksonville basis and its approval of the tariffs made by its use was, within those cases, a finding of its reasonableness, and the rates constructed in accordance with it were therefore Commission-made. They point to the continuous use of the Jacksonville combination in the Brick Cases without disapproval by the Commission, the language of the Commission in the Southern Brick Case regarding that use, the interpretation the Commission put on that decision in subsequent cases,6 and the fact that though, in the cases appellants rely on, the Jacksonville combination was con-' demned for the future, in none of them except in the Columbus Case, 185 I.C.C. 639, and in the case at bar was reparation awarded. They insist that these considerations put beyond question that the assailed rates made up by the use of the Jacksonville combination are Commission-prescribed rates. These are the facts with regard to the brick case litigations.

In the General Brick Case, 68 I.C.C. 213, decided April 4, 1922, the Commission prescribed and required the establishment of distance rates in accordance with a uniform brick list. The carriers, including defendants, undertook to conform by publishing a general revision of interstate rates on articles included in this list to all points in the Southern territory; In the revision which was published and became effective August 15, 1923, the rates to and from points in the Florida peninsula were made on the Jacksonville combination by the publication in separate tariffs of proportional rates to and from Jacksonville for application on through traffic. The rates to Jacksonville for beyond7 on shipments destined to points in the Florida peninsula were made 3 cents less than the local rates on shipments destined for Jacksonville proper. The rates applicable to that part of the movement south of Jacksonville8 were made 1 cent lower than the local rates for like distances north of Jacksonville.

By its order of August 15, 1923, the Commission suspended the operation of both of these tariffs and entered upon a hearing as to the lawfulness of the proposed rates. On April 15, 1924, the Commission, in the first Southern Brick Case, 88 I.C.C. 543, issued its report and finding: “That the rates proposed in the suspended schedules have not been justified. [186]*186An order will be entered requiring the cancellation of the suspended schedules.

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Bluebook (online)
86 F.2d 184, 1936 U.S. App. LEXIS 3688, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/standard-brick-tile-co-v-macon-d-s-r-co-ca5-1936.