Case ID: f_150/html/0238-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "WHEERER, District Judge.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

SCHMIDT v. UNITED STATES.
    (Circuit Court, S. D. New York.
    January 8, 1892.)
    No. 47.
    Customs Duties — Classification—“Periodicals”—Serial Publications.
    The provision for “periodicals” in Tariff Act March 3, 1883, c. 121, § 6, Schedule M, 22 Stat. 510, held to include a periodical publication not devoted at ail to current events, but made up of serial stories supplemented by a small quantity of miscellaneous matter.
    On Application for Review of a Decision of the Board of United States General Appraisers.
    Affirmed, without opinion. 89 Fed. 1020, 33 C. C. A. 687.
    The decision below (G. A. 108, T. D. 10,417) affirmed the assessment of duty by the collector of customs at the port of New York on an importation by Oscar Schmidt. The merchandise in controversy was classified as dutiable as “printed matter” under Tariff Act March 3, 1883, c. 121, § 6, Schedule M, 22 Stat. 510, and was claimed by the importer to be free of duty under the provision Schedule M, 22 Stat. 510, for “newspapers and periodicals.” It consisted of a German publication known as “Das Kleine Buch für üns Alie.”
    The following extract from the opinion of the Board of General Appraisers contains a further description of the publication and a statement of the Board’s conclusions:
    “Somerville, General Appraiser. It is published weekly and forwarded as soon as published, Each number includes several serial or continued stories, to which are appended several short articles on other subjects of a miscellaneous character, including a few humorous anecdotes. There is no mention made of current events or topics. The sample copy before us contains 64 pages. Parts of the serial stories occupy 54 pages, or six-sevenths of the space. The other 8 pages are taken up with a short essay, a short story, some poetical matter, a few anecdotes, and a table of contents. * * * It is our opinion that where the predominant feature of printed matter is one or more serial stories, without any mention or discussion of contemporary topics or events, and its subsidiary feature, as in the present cases, is miscellaneous matter embraced in relatively few pages, such matter is not a periodical within the meaning of the tariff law, although issued at stated intervals.”
    Stanley, Clarke & Smith, for importer.
    James T. Van Rensselaer, Asst; U. S. Atty.
   WHEERER, District Judge.

In the matter of the appeal of Oscar Schmidt the question is whether this German publication is a periodical or a book. If it is a book, to be issued in parts until the book is com-pieted, one part issued at one time and another part at another time, so that when all the parts were brought together it would make one book, although there would be periodicity in the coming out of the parts, 1 do not think that would make it a book. This is a periodical publication, one number being sent out one week and another number in another week, and so on, and with continuous stories running from one week to another, and these, with some other little articles, one thing and another, making up a number, and then another number, and so on, each one being a continuation of the preceding one, and so to be continued indefinitely. It cannot be considered a “book” unless each one is a complete book. It is incomplete as a book, and is a periodical publication, and I think it comes in under the head of “newspapers and periodicals,”, and free.

The appeal is sustained, and the decision of the Appraisers is reversed.