United States v. Dotterweich

320 U.S. 277, 64 S. Ct. 134, 88 L. Ed. 48, 1943 U.S. LEXIS 1100

Opinions

Mr. Justice Frankfurter

delivered the opinion of the Court.

This was a prosecution begun by two informations, consolidated for trial, charging Buffalo Pharmacal Company, Inc., and Dotterweich, its president and general,manager, with violations of the Act of Congress of June 25, 1938, c. 675, 52 Stat. 1040, 21 U. S. C. §§ 301-392, known as the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The Company, a jobber in drugs, purchased them from their manufacturers and shipped them, repacked under its own label, in interstate commerce. (No question is raised in this case regarding the implications that may properly arise when, although the manufacturer gives the jobber a guaranty, the latter through his own label makes representations.) The informations were based on § 301 of that Act (21 U. S. C. §331), paragraph (a) of which prohibits “The introduction or delivery for introduction into interstate commerce of any . . . drug . . . that is adulterated or misbranded.” “Any person” violating this provision is, by paragraph (a) of § 303 (21 U. S. C. § 333), made “guilty of a misdemeanor.” Three counts went to the jury — two, for shipping misbranded drugs in interstate commerce, and a third, for so shipping an adulterated drug. The jury disagreed as to the corporation and found Dotterweich guilty on all three counts. We start with the finding of the Circuit Court of Appeals that the evidence was adequate to support the verdict of adulteration and misbranding. 131 F. 2d 500, 502.

Two other questions which the Circuit Court of Appeals decided against Dotterweich call only for summary disposition to clear the path for the main question before us. He invoked § 305 of the Act requiring the Administrator, before reporting a violation for prosecution by a United States attorney, to give the suspect an “opportunity to present his views.” We agree with the Circuit Court of Appeals that the giving of such an opportunity, which was not accorded to Dotterweich, is not a prerequisite to prosecution. This Court so held in United States v. Morgan, 222 U. S. 274, in construing the Food and Drugs Act of 1906, 34 Stat. 768, and the legislative history to which the court below called attention abundantly proves that Congress, in the changed phraseology of 1938, did not intend to introduce a change of substance. 83 Cong. Rec. 7792-94. Equally baseless is the claim of Dotterweich that, having failed to find the corporation guilty, the jury could not find him guilty. Whether the jury’s verdict was the result of carelessness or compromise or a belief that the responsible individual should suffer the penalty instead of merely increasing, as it were, the cost of running the business of the corporation, is immaterial. Juries may indulge in precisely such motives or vagaries. Dunn v. United States, 284 U. S. 390.

And so we are brought to our real problem. The Circuit Court of Appeals, one judge dissenting, reversed the conviction on the ground that only the corporation was the “person” subject to prosecution unless, perchance, Buffalo Pharmacal was a counterfeit corporation serving as a screen for Dotterweich. On that issue, after rehearing, it remanded the cause for a new trial. We then brought the case here, on the Government’s petition for certiorari, 318 U. S. 753, because this construction raised questions of importance in the enforcement of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

The court below drew its conclusion not from the provisions defining the offenses on which this prosecution was based (§§ 301 (a) and 303 (a)), but from the terms of § 303 (c). That section affords immunity from prosecution if certain conditions are satisfied. The condition relevant to this case is a guaranty from the seller of the innocence of his product. So far as here relevant, the provision for an immunizing guaranty is as follows:

“No person shall be subject to the penalties of subsection (a) of this section ... (2) for having violated section 301 (a) or (d), if he establishes a guaranty or undertaking signed by, and containing the name and address of, the person residing in the United States from whom he received in good faith the article, to the effect, in case of an alleged violation of section 301 (a), that such article is not adulterated or misbranded, within the meaning of this Act, designating this Act . . .”

The Circuit Court of Appeals found it “difficult to believe that Congress expected anyone except the principal to get such a guaranty, or to make the guilt of an agent depend upon whether his employer had gotten one.” 131 F. 2d 500, 503. And so it cut down the scope of the penalizing provisions of the Act to the restrictive view, as a matter of language and policy, it took of the relieving effect of a guaranty.

The guaranty clause cannot be read in isolation. The Food and Drugs Act of 1906 was an exertion by Congress of its power to keep impure and adulterated food and drugs out of the channels of commerce. By the Act of 1938, Congress extended the range of its control over illicit and noxious articles and stiffened the penalties for disobedience. The purposes of this legislation thus touch phases of the lives and health of people which, in the circumstances of modern industrialism, are largely beyond self-protection. Regard for these purposes should infuse construction of the legislation if it is to be treated as a working instrument of government and not merely as a collection of English words. See Hipolite Egg Co. v. United States, 220 U. S. 45, 57, and McDermott v. Wisconsin, 228 U. S. 115, 128. The prosecution to which Dot-terweich was subjected is based on a now familiar type of legislation whereby penalties serve as effective means of regulation. Such legislation dispenses with the conventional requirement for criminal conduct — awareness of some wrongdoing. In the interest of the larger good it puts the burden of acting at hazard upon a person otherwise innocent but standing in responsible relation to a public danger. United States v. Balint, 258 U. S. 250. And so it is clear that shipments like those now in issue are "punished by the statute if the article is misbranded [or adulterated], and that the article may be misbranded [or adulterated] without any conscious fraud at all. It was natural enough to throw this risk on shippers with regard to the identity of their wares . . United States v. Johnson, 221 U. S. 488, 497-98.

The statute makes “any person” who violates § 301 (a) guilty of a “misdemeanor.” It specifically defines “person” to include “corporation.” § 201 (e). But the only way in which a corporation can act is through the individuals who act on its behalf. New York Central & H. R. R. Co. v. United States, 212 U. S. 481. And the historic conception of a “misdemeanor” makes all those responsible for it equally guilty, United States v. Mills, 7 Pet. 138, 141, a doctrine given general application in § 332 of the Penal Code (18 U. S. C. §550). If, then, Dotter-weich is not subject to the Act, it must be solely on the ground that individuals are immune when the “person” who violates § 301 (a) is a corporation, although from the point of view of action the individuals are the corporation. As a matter of legal development, it has taken time to establish criminal liability also for a corporation and not merely for its agents. See New York Central & H. R. R. Co. v. United States, supra. The history of federal food and drug legislation is a good illustration of the elaborate phrasing that was in earlier days deemed necessary to fasten criminal liability on corporations. Section 12 of the Food and Drugs Act of 1906 provided that, “the act, omission, or failure of any officer, agent, or other person acting for or employed by any corporation, company, society, or association, within the scope of his employment or office, shall in every case be also deemed to be the act, omission, or failure of such corporation, company, society, or association as well as that of the person.” By 1938, legal understanding and practice had rendered such statement of the obvious superfluous. Deletion of words — in the interest of brevity and good draftsmanship¹ — superfluous for holding a corporation criminally liable can hardly be found ground for relieving from such liability the individual agents of the corporation. To hold that the Act of 1938 freed all individuals, except when proprietors, from the culpability under which the earlier legislation had placed them is to defeat the very object of the new Act. Nothing is clearer than that the later legislation was designed to enlarge and stiffen the penal net and not to narrow and loosen it. This purpose was unequivocally avowed by the two committees which reported the bills to the Congress. The House Committee reported that the Act “seeks to set up effective provisions against abuses of consumer welfare growing out of inadequacies in the Food and Drugs Act of June 30,1906.” (H. Rep. No. 2139,75th Cong., 3d Sess., p. 1.) And the Senate Committee explicitly pointed out that the new legislation “must not weaken the existing laws,” but on the contrary “it must strengthen and extend that law’s protection of the consumer.” (S. Rep. No. 152, 75th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 1.) If the 1938 Act were construed as it was below, the penalties of the law could be imposed only in the rare case where the corporation is merely an individual’s alter ego. Corporations carrying on an illicit trade would be subject only to what the House Committee described as a “license fee for the conduct of an illegitimate business.”² A corporate officer, who even with “intent to defraud or mislead” (§ 303b), introduced adulterated or misbranded drugs into interstate commerce could not be held culpable for conduct which was indubitably outlawed by the 1906 Act. See, e. g., United States v. Mayfield, 177 F. 765. This argument proves too much. It is not credible that Congress should by implication have exonerated what is probably a preponderant number of persons involved in acts of disobedience — for the number of non-corporate proprietors is relatively small. Congress, of course, could reverse the process and hold only the corporation and allow its agents to escape. In very exceptional circumstances it may have required this result. See Sherman v. United States, 282 U. S. 25. But the history of the present Act, its purposes, its terms, and extended practical construction lead away from such a result once “we free our minds from the notion that criminal statutes must be construed by some artificial and conventional rule.” United States v. Union Supply Co., 215 U. S. 50, 55.

The Act is concerned not with the proprietory relation to a misbranded or an adulterated drug but with its distribution. In the case of a corporation such distribution must be accomplished, and may be furthered, by persons standing in various relations to the incorporeal proprietor. If a guaranty immunizes shipments of course it immunizes all involved in the shipment. But simply because if there had been a guaranty it would have been received by the proprietor, whether corporate or individual, as a safeguard for the enterprise, the want of a guaranty does not cut down the scope of responsibility of all who are concerned with transactions forbidden by § 301. To be sure, that casts the risk that there is no guaranty upon all who according to settled doctrines of criminal law are responsible for the commission of a misdemeanor. To read the guaranty section, as did the court below, so as to restrict liability for penalties to the only person who normally would receive a guaranty — the proprietor — disregards the admonition that “the meaning of a sentence is to be felt rather than to be proved.” United States v. Johnson, 221 U. S. 488, 496. It also reads an exception to an important provision safeguarding the public welfare with a liberality which more appropriately belongs to enforcement of the central purpose of the Act.

The Circuit Court of Appeals was evidently tempted to make such a devitalizing use of the guaranty provision through fear that an enforcement of § 301 (a) as written might operate too harshly by sweeping within its condemnation any person however remotely entangled in the proscribed shipment. But that is not the way to read legislation. Literalism and evisceration are equally to be avoided. To speak with technical accuracy, under § 301 a corporation may commit an offense and all persons who aid and abet its commission are equally guilty. Whether an accused shares responsibility in the business process resulting in unlawful distribution depends on the evidence produced at the trial and its submission — assuming the evidence warrants it — to the jury under appropriate guidance. The offense is committed, unless the enterprise which they are serving enjoys the immunity of a guaranty, by all who do have such a responsible share in the furtherance of the transaction which the statute outlaws, namely, to put into the stream of interstate commerce adulterated or misbranded drugs. Hardship there doubtless may be under a statute which thus penalizes the transaction though consciousness of wrongdoing be totally wanting. Balancing relative hardships, Congress has preferred to place it upon those who have at least the opportunity of informing themselves of the existence of conditions imposed for the protection of consumers before sharing in illicit commerce, rather than to throw the hazard on the innocent public who are wholly helpless.

It would be too treacherous to define or even to indicate by way of illustration the class of employees which stands in such a responsible relation. To attempt a formula embracing the variety of conduct whereby persons may responsibly contribute in furthering a transaction forbidden by an Act of Congress, to wit, to send illicit goods across state lines, would be mischievous futility. In such matters the good sense of prosecutors, the wise guidance of trial judges, and the ultimate judgment of juries must be trusted. Our system of criminal justice necessarily depends on “conscience and circumspection in prosecuting officers,” Nash v. United States, 229 U. S. 373, 378, even when the consequences are far more drastic than they are under the provision of law before us. See United States v. Balint, supra (involving a maximum sentence of five years). Eor present purpose it suffices to say that in what the defense characterized as “a very fair charge” the District Court properly left the question of the responsibility of Dotterweich for the shipment to the jury, and there was sufficient evidence to support its verdict.

Reversed.

1 “The bill has been made shorter and less verbose than previous bills. That has been done without deleting any effective provisions.” S. Rep. No. 152, 75th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 2.

2 In describing the penalty provisions of § 303, tbe House Committee reported that the Bill “increases substantially the criminal penalties . . . which some manufacturers have regarded as substantially a license fee for the conduct of an illegitimate business.” H. Rep. No. 2139,75th Cong., 3d Sess., p. 4.