United States v. Camden Iron Works

150 F. 214, 1907 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 409
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Pennsylvania
DecidedJanuary 24, 1907
DocketNo. 31
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 150 F. 214 (United States v. Camden Iron Works) 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
United States v. Camden Iron Works, 150 F. 214, 1907 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 409 (E.D. Pa. 1907).

Opinion

HOLIvAND, District Judge.

This is a motion in arrest of judgment and for a new trial on an information charging the defendant with having received a rebate in violation of the provisions of the act of Congress approved February 4, 1887 (24 Stat. 379, c. 104 [U. S. Comp. St. 1901, p. 3154]), entitled “An act to regulate commerce,” and the acts amendatory thereto.

First. Ijhe case was properly prosecuted by information. Rev. St. § 1022 [U. S. Comp. St. 1901, p. 720], provides:

“All crimes and offenses committed against the provisions of chapter seven, title ‘Crimes,’ which are not Infamous, may be prosecuted either by indictment or by information filed by a district attorney.”

[216]*216This section does not preclude the prosecutions by information of other offenses not infamous (Ex parte Wilson, 114 U. S. 417, 5 Sup. Ct. 935, 29 L. Ed. 89), and infamous crimes referred to in the fifth amendment to the Constitution, in which a presentment or indictment of a grand jury must first be had, are such crimes as may be punished by imprisonment in a state prison or penitentiary. Other offenses, punishable only by fine or by imprisonment not in a state prison or penitentiary, are not infamous crimes, within the meaning o'f the Constitution and statutes of the United States. Ansbro v. United States, 159 U. S. 695, 16 Sup. Ct. 187, 40 L. Ed. 310; Fitzpatrick v. United States, 178 U. S. 304, 20 Sup. Ct. 944, 44 L. Ed. 1078.

Second. It is urged the information is defective because the Mutual Transit Company is described as a “common carrier by water route to the town of West Superior, in the state of Wisconsin”; but it is not alleged, as is necessary, that the Mutual Transit -Company, being a water carrier, is “used under a common control, management, or arrangement for a continuous carriage,” etc. While it is true the information does not aver the Mutual Transit Company is used under a common control, management, or arrangement in these words, it does set forth facts which show this water carrier is used under a common arrangement with the railroads, the other common carriers in the transportation of this property; and this is sufficient.

Third. It is incumbent upon the government to show that the Mutual Transit Company, being a water carrier, is a common carrier within the act as to the transportation of this property, and that it carried this property and carried it in accordance with an arrangement with the railroad companies; and in order to do so the prosecuting attorney was permitted to offer in evidence the Mutual Transit Company’s station agent’s abstract of through freight received from the Baltimore & Ohio Railway Company, those received from the Philadelphia & Reading Railway Company, the account sheets showing a settlement for this freight between the Mutual Transit Company and the railroads showing settlements in accordance with the tariff of rates filed by the railroads, and proofs of payment by the Mutual Transit Company to the railroad companies for the amount of their respective shares of this freight charged in accordance with the joint tariff rates published-Some of these papers involved other accounts between the Mutual Transit Company and the railroad companies; but they were admitted for the purpose of showing the fact that the Mutual Transit Company shipped this freight, and in accordance with an arrangement with the railroad companies for a continuous carriage or shipment.

It has been determined by the Supreme Court that when goods are shipped under a through bill of lading from one point in one state to a point in another, and when such goods are received in transit by a state common carrier under a conventional division of charges, such carrier must be deemed to have subjected its road to an arrangement for a continuous carriage or shipment within the meaning of the act to regulate commerce; and any evidence which tended to prove tjhese goods were shipped on a through bill of lading, or any other through document or writing, from any place in the United States to an ad[217]*217jacent foreign country, upon a contract of continuous shipment by this water company, partly over railroads and partly over its own water route, and such goods were received in transit on this through rating under a conventional division of charges, such water company must be deemed to have subjected its road to an arrangement for a continuous carriage or shipment within the meaning of the act to regulate commerce. For this purpose the evidence was competent, and we do not think that the objections to it raised in the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and eleventh reasons for a new trial are well taken. Cincinnati, etc., Railway Co. v. Interstate Commerce Commission, 162 U. S. 184, 16 Sup. Ct. 700, 40 L. Ed. 935.

. Fourth. The information chárges that this defendant received—

“A rebate and concession of and from the full and lawful rates and charges then and before then established and published by the said common carriers, as aforesaid, and filed with the Interstate Commerce Commission, as aforesaid, by the said Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company, the said Philadelphia & Reading Railway Company, the said Mutual Transit Company, and the said Great Northern Railway Company, and being then and there and at the time aforesaid in full force and effect, to wit, the aggregate rate and charge of forty-nine and oñe-half cents per hundred pounds.”

In order to prove the established and published rate which had been filed with the Interstate Commerce Commission, the government was permitted to offer in evidence the tariff filed by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company and the supplements and amendments thereto, the tariff filed by the Great Northern Railway Company, and the tariff and supplements filed by the Reading Railway Company. It was necessary under the act to prove these allegations, and the evidence offered and admitted was competent for that purpose. The fifth reason, therefore, for a new trial, is overruled.

Fifth. The remaining reasons for a new trial, being 18 in number, are all taken to the charge of the court. They bring practically the entire charge to the jury' upon the record. They raise the following questions:

(1) That these iron pipes having been shipped from Camden, in the state of New Jersey, the defendant could not be charged with having taken a rebate on joint tariffs filed and published from Philadelphia, as the initial point, to Winnipeg, as alleged. The information, however, charges Philadelphia as the initial point, and that the pipes were lightered over the river to the point of shipment, which, as the government contends, would he analogous to carting or any method of local transportation from the works'to the place of loading on the railway, which I think is the correct view.,

(2) All the other questions raised, we think, are fully answered by the charge as a whole, which, after a somewhat patient examination of the law, we think is a correct statement as applied to the facts in this case.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
150 F. 214, 1907 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 409, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-camden-iron-works-paed-1907.