Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/318/73
Timestamp: 2016-05-06 22:20:05
Document Index: 520521023

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 309', '§ 303', '§ 47', '§ 238', '§ 345', '§ 205', '§ 305', '§ 310']

ZIFFRIN, Inc., v. UNITED STATES et al. | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
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318 U.S. 73 (63 S.Ct. 465, 87 L.Ed. 621)
ZIFFRIN, Inc., v. UNITED STATES et al.
This appeal brings here for review a judgment of a statutory three judge court denying a petition for an interlocutory and a final injunction setting aside and annulling an order of the Interstate Commerce Commission.
The order attacked denied an application of appellant, an Indiana corporation, filed February 4, 1936, for a permit to continue designated contract carrier operations under the grandfather clause of Section 209(a) of the Interstate Commerce Act, 49 U.S.C.A. § 309(a).
Section 210 of the Motor Carrier Act was amended between the filing of the application and the entry of the order denying it. The two forms of Section 210 appear in the note below.
It is appellant's contention that whatever may have been the effect of the earlier form, with the passage of the amendment after the hearing the applicant should now have an opportunity to show the absence of common control of it and Ziffrin Truck Lines, Incorporated. As Section 210 stood when appellant requested its permit and at the hearing, a certificate as a common carrier and a permit as a contract carrier were not to be held by the same person without special finding of consistency with the public interest by the Commission. The amendment provided that without a similar special finding no person should hold a contract carrier permit who was under common control with a person holding a common carrier certificate. Person, of course, included a corporation. 49 U.S.C. 303(a)(1), 49 U.S.C.A. § 303(a)(1).
Obviously the fear of possible evasion led to the change in language. Indeed, the Commission had disregarded the corporate fiction and interpreted the earlier form as covering persons under common control.
This was called to applicant's attention by an order of June 23, 1938, setting the date for hearing the application.
The interpretation was discussed in the examiner's report, in the Commission's report, and applied, adversely to appellant, by the findings. 28 M.C.C. 683, 692-99.
When the Transportation Act of 1940 was before the Senate, the draftsmen added a sentence to the earlier form of Section 210, reading as follows: 'This section shall apply to dual operations by affiliated carriers.' When the bill, S. 2009, in the two forms in which it was enacted in the Senate and the House of Representatives, was examined by the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Chairman of its legislative committee transmitted a report on the provisions of the bill to the Chairman of the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee and the Chairman of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce.
In the report (at page 62) this comment was made as to the present Section 210:
'Desirable.(a) After the new section 22 which we have proposed above, add a new section 23 (with appropriate renumbering of subsequent sections) reading as follows:
At the conference of the committee for the two Houses of Congress, the form of Section 210 was changed to the present reading. The report contains this explanation:
Urgent Deficiencies Act, 38 Stat. 208, 220, 28 U.S.C. 47, 47a, 28 U.S.C.A. §§ 47, 47a; Judicial Code § 238, 43 Stat. 936, 938, 28 U.S.C. 345, 28 U.S.C.A. § 345; § 205(h) Interstate Commerce Act, Part II, 49 Stat. 543, 550, 49 U.S.C. 305(h), 49 U.S.C.A. § 305(h).
49 Stat. 554), as originally enacted in the Motor Carrier Act, 1935, provided:
Section 210, as amended (
49 U.S.C. 310, 49 U.S.C.A. § 310) by Section 21(a) of the Transportation Act of 1940 provides:
'Unless, for good cause shown, the Commission shall find, or shall have found, that both a certificate and a permit may be so held consistently with the public interest and with the national transportation policy declared in this Act (the Interstate Commerce Act)
In re New York & New Brunswick Auto Exp. Co., Inc., Common Carrier Application, 23 M.C.C. 663, 671. Cf. In re Bigley Brothers, Inc., Contract Carrier Application, 4 M.C.C. 711; Universal Service, Inc.,PurchaseW. R. Arthur & Co., Inc., 15 M.C.C. 247.