Walling v. Sanders

48 F. Supp. 9, 1942 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2008
CourtDistrict Court, M.D. Tennessee
DecidedSeptember 1, 1942
DocketNo. 209
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 48 F. Supp. 9 (Walling v. Sanders) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, M.D. Tennessee primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Walling v. Sanders, 48 F. Supp. 9, 1942 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2008 (M.D. Tenn. 1942).

Opinion

DAVIES, District Judge.

The cause was heard upon the entire record of the cause, including the testimony of witnesses in open Court, and the introduction of certain documentary evidence, and after hearing argument of counsel, the Court makes and files the following Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law.

Findings of Fact.

1. The defendants are, and at all times since October 24, 1938, have been a co-partnership doing business under the name and style of G & S Distributing Company ; said partnership is composed of H. R. Sanders and C. E. Glasgow, and has its principal office and place of business in Nashville, Tennessee. It is engaged in two distinct and separate types of business; one phase of the business is the wholesale distribution and sale of several different brands of beer, and the other phase is the sale and distribution of automatic phonographs and vending machines.

2. As to defendants’ beer business, the Court finds that they purchased their beer [11]*11from breweries located in St. Louis, Missouri, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Evansville, Indiana, and send their own trucks to those breweries to obtain the beer and transport it to their warehouse in Nashville. The beer is purchased by the truck driver when he arrives at the brewery. He gives an order for the number of cases of beer wanted and it is loaded on the truck and checked and subsequently paid for. When the beer arrives in Nashville the truck is driven-into the warehouse owned by the defendant and is unloaded on the platform. It is then moved into the warehouse where it is stored for varying periods of time. In the summer when the demand is greater, the beer does not stay in the warehouse more than several days or a week, before it is loaded onto the route trucks and sold to the retailers. In the winter it remains on the !floor of the warehouse and in stock for a longer period of time.

3. The defendants’ brewery truck drivers take from twenty-four to thirty hours to make a round trip from Nashville to the out-of-state breweries and at the time defendants began the beer business, they paid the' drivers $7.00 a trip; this was later raised to $8.00 a trip, and they are now receiving $9.00 a trip. The drivers in the beginning helped unload the brewery trucks on their arrival at the warehouse, but the unloading is now done entirely by warehouse men and special delivery men.

One of these warehouse employees worked from 8:00 A. M. and 6:00 A. M. on alternate days until 8:00 P. M., and was off on alternate Sundays, at which time he employed a man to work in his place at his own expense. First he was paid $7.00 a week; then $8.00 a week; then $12.00 a week, and finally $15.00 a week. This is generally the situation relative to all warehouse employees, some working as many as eighty-four hours per week.

4. The defendants distribute their beer to retailers by trucks which have fixed routes and the defendants employ salesmen to go out with each route truck and sell the beer to the retailers. The drivers of the trucks help unload the beer when it is sold, and collect the empty bottles and cases in the same proportion as the beer sold. The empty bottles are not always the same ones originally delivered to the retail customers and many times are of different color. They are taken back to the warehouse and there sorted and all brown bottles placed in one case and all clear bottles placed in another and then loaded on the defendants’ trucks and returned to the breweries.

When defendants obtain a load of beer from the breweries they are required to make a deposit with the brewery for the cases and bottles, and on the return of the bottles and cases, they are given credit against the deposit. The deposit required to be made amounts to more than the profit realized on the sale of the beer. When the beer is purchased by defendants from the brewery in the first instance, there is a definite sale and transfer of title.

• 5. The usual course of business of defendants is to load their route trucks with beer taken from the floor of their warehouse, however, in a few isolated cases, when their stock was low, defendants have loaded beer directly on the route trucks from the brewery trucks.

Defendants also purchase beer from a concern located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that is shipped to them by freight cars and on its arrival in Nashville is switched onto a side track within a short distance of defendants’ place of business and is then unloaded and stored in defendants’ warehouse by their employees. Until the War Production Board banned the use of cans as beer containers a short time ago, about ninety (90%) per cent of the beer obtained from Milwaukee was contained in cans rather than bottles, and also a small percentage of the other brands handled by defendants was contained in cans.

6. The various breweries whose products are handled by defendants do all the mass-media advertising in the territory in which defendants sell their products and also maintain permanent representatives in the territory who work out of defendants’ office and render sales assistance to them, spending a large portion of their time accompanying the salesmen on the route trucks in an effort to boost sales. These representatives also make their own calls on the retail trade, occasionally take orders for deliveries of beer, which they turn over to defendants, and procure for defendants approximately half of the new accounts to whom defendants sell beer.

7. Defendants sell their beer to retailers, at wholesale prices for the purpose of resale to the ultimate consumer.

Defendants are engaged in the- distribution and sale of beer in about sixteen counties in Tennessee and their beer is sold ex[12]*12clusively in those counties of the State and none is sold in any other States.

8. As to the other phase of defendants’ business, i. e., the phonograph business, I find that defendants have the exclusive rights of sale and distribution of the Wurlitzer phonographs in Tennessee and parts of Kentucky and Alabama and that this type of phonograph machine is operated by placing a five (5‡) cent coin in a slot attached to the machine which causes the automatic playing of certain records contained in the machine. The Court finds that from ninety-eight (98%) per cent to ninety-nine (99%) per cent of these machines are sold to operators who sometimes purchase as many as from five to one hundred machines and that a small percentage of those machines are sold to owners of restaurants, drug stores, private homes, etc.

These machine operators place the machines in various amusement places and carry on the operation of the machines therein and receive a certain percentage of the coin intake by the machines. The balance of the coin intake goes to the proprietor of the establishment wherein they are placed. Defendants sell these machines directly to the operators at a standard price, varying according to the model and type of machine. These machines are not sold to the operators for resale, but are sold for use in their business as operators. The Court finds that the so-called operators of these machines are the ultimate consumers.

9. Defendants sell machines at only one price and an operator pays the same price as the purchaser of a machine for his own private use in his home would pay. Defendants maintain a display room for their machines and sell machines to anyone who desires to purchase one. Defendants also keep and sell spare parts which are of a standard make and can be used in repairing both their make of machines and other types of machines.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
48 F. Supp. 9, 1942 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2008, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/walling-v-sanders-tnmd-1942.