Source: https://openjurist.org/307/us/183/united-states-v-morgan
Timestamp: 2018-08-21 22:32:54
Document Index: 288781097

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 181', '§ 181', '§ 310', '§ 211', '§ 316', '§ 217', '§ 217', '§ 47', '§ 47', '§ 238', '§ 345', '§ 345', '§ 309', '§ 309', '§ 308']

307 US 183 United States v. Morgan | OpenJurist
307 U.S. 183 - United States v. Morgan
307 US 183 United States v. Morgan
59 S.Ct. 795
83 L.Ed. 1211
On June 14, 1933, the Secretary of Agriculture promulgated an order under the Packers and Stockyards Act, 1921, 42 Stat. 159, 7 U.S.C. §§ 181—229, 7 U.S.C.A. §§ 181—229, setting aside a schedule of maximum rates to be charged for stockyard services, filed by market agencies at the Kansas City stockyards, and prescribing a new and lower rate schedule for the future. In a suit brought in the District Court for Western Missouri by appellees, 24 F.Supp. 214, conducting market agencies at the Kansas City stockyards, to set aside the order as confiscatory and as having been rendered without procedural due process, the court on July 22, 1933, entered a temporary restraining order enjoining enforcement of the Secretary's order upon condition that appellees should 'deposit with the Clerk of this Court on Monday of each and every week thereafter while this order, or any extension thereof, may remain in force and effect and pending final disposition of this cause, the full amount by which the charges collected under the Schedule of Rates in effect exceeds the amount which would have been collected under the rates prescribed in the Order of the Secretary, together with a verified statement of the names and addresses of all persons upon whose behalf such amounts are collected by petitioner.' After two appeals we reversed the final decree of the district court, which had sustained the order of the Secretary. This Court held that he had not accorded to appellees the 'full hearing' which § 310 of the Act, 7 U.S.C.A. § 211, requires, and, without considering the merits, it remanded the cause for further proceedings. Morgan v. United States, 298 U.S. 468, 56 S.Ct. 906, 80 L.Ed. 1288; Id., 304 U.S. 1, 58 S.Ct. 773, 999, 82 L.Ed. 1129. A petition for rehearing, in part on the ground that the mandate of this Court had made no provision for the distribution of the fund paid into the district court pursuant to its restraining order, was denied in a memorandum opinion stating that the questions raised were appropriately for the district court, to which the cause had been remanded for further proceedings. The opinion added: 'We remand the case to the District Court for further proceedings in conformity with our opinion. What further proceedings the Secretary may see fit to take in the light of our decision, or what determinations may be made by the District Court in relation to any such proceedings, are not matters which we should attempt to forecast or hypothetically to decide.' 304 U.S. pages 23, 26, 58 S.Ct. page 1001, 82 L.Ed. 1129. By this remand the Secretary was left free to take such further proceedings as the statute permits. Texas & Pacific Ry. Co. v. Interstate Commerce Commission, 162 U.S. 197, 238, 239, 16 S.Ct. 666, 682, 40 L.Ed. 940; Southern Railway Co. v. St. Louis Hay & Grain Co., 214 U.S. 297, 302, 29 S.Ct. 678, 680, 53 L.Ed. 1004; State of Florida v. United States, 292 U.S. 1, 9, 54 S.Ct. 603, 606, 78 L.Ed. 1077.
The Secretary thereupon, by order of June 2, 1938, reopened the original proceedings which had resulted in the challenged order of June 14, 1933. He directed that the 'Proceedings, Findings of Fact, Conclusion, and Order' of June 14, 1933, be served upon the appellee market agencies as his tentative findings and order, with an opportunity for appellees to file exceptions to them and to make oral argument upon the exceptions This action was followed, June 11, 1938, by the present proceeding, begun by motion of appellants in the district court to stay further proceedings there and to direct the clerk of the court to retain the impounded funds until such time as the Secretary, proceeding with due expedition, should have entered a final order in the proceedings reopened by him. This motion was denied, and from the order of the district court granting a counter-motion by appellees to distribute the fund among them, the case comes here on appeal.1 § 316 of the Packers and Stock yards Act, 42 Stat. 168, 7 U.S.C. § 217, 7 U.S.C.A. § 217; 38 Stat. 220, 28 U.S.C. §§ 47, 47a, 28 U.S.C.A. § 47, 47a; § 238(5) of the Judicial Code, 28 U.S.C. § 345(5), 28 U.S.C.A. § 345(5). This Court has stayed and superseded the order of the district court pending appeal. 305 U.S. 562, 59 S.Ct. 85, 83 L.Ed. —-. October 10, 1938.
In answering these questions there are two cardinal principles which must guide us to our conclusion. The one is that in construing a statute setting up an administrative agency and providing for judicial review of its action, court and agency are not to be regarded as wholly independent and unrelated instrumentalities of justice, each acting in the performance of its prescribed statutory duty without regard to the appropriate function of the other in securing the plainly indicated objects of the statute. Court and agency are the means adopted to attain the prescribed end, and so far as their duties are defined by the words of the statute, those words should be construed so as to attain that end through co-ordinated action. Neither body should repeat in this day the mistake made by the courts of law when equity was struggling for recognition as an ameliorating system of justice;2 neither can rightly be regarded by the other as an alien intruder, to be tolerated if must be, but never to be encouraged or aided by the other in the attainment of the common aim. The other guiding principle is that in reviewing the action of the Secretary and in similarly reviewing the action of the Interstate Commerce Commission in conformity with the provisions of the Urgent Deficiencies Act, the district court sits as a court of equity, see Ford Motor Co. v. National Labor Relations Board, 305 U.S. 364, 373, 59 S.Ct. 301, 83 L.Ed. 221; Inland Steel Co. v. United States, 306 U.S. 153, 59 S.Ct. 415, 83 L.Ed. 557; and in exerting its extraordinary powers to stay execution of a rate order, and in directing payment into court of so much of the rate as has been found administratively to be excessive, it assumes the duty of making disposition of the fund in conformity to equitable principles.
Assuming, as appellees contend, that after the Secretary's order of June, 1933, was set aside he could, in the reopened proceeding, neither promulgate a rate order as of that date nor make an order for the payment of money, he was still not without authority in the premises under the statute and the mandate of this Court. He was free to make an order fixing rates for the future, and for that purpose or any other within the purview of the Act he is now free to determine a reasonable rate for the period antedating any order he may now make. See Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. v. Florida, 295 U.S. 301, 312, 55 S.Ct. 713, 717, 79 L.Ed. 1451. No prior decision of the Secretary stands in the way of his making the determination now. Cf. Arizona Grocery Co. v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Co., 284 U.S. 370, 52 S.Ct. 183, 76 L.Ed. 348. The sole limitation upon his power, prescribed by § 309(c), is that upon an inquiry instituted by him he may not order the payment of money. In other respects his power to investigate and decide is unaffected.3 He may make inquiry 'as to any matter or thing concerning which a complaint is authorized to be made' to him, 'or concerning which any question may arise under any of the provisions' of the Act, 'or relating to the enforcement of any' provision. He is given 'the same power and authority to proceed with any inquiry instituted upon his own motion as though he had been appealed to by petition, including the power to make and enforce any order or orders in the case or relating to the matter or thing concerning which the inquiry is had, except orders for the payment of money.' § 309(c).
It is familiar doctrine that the extent to which a court of equity may grant or withhold its aid, and the manner of moulding its remedies, may be affected by the public interest involved. Central Kentucky Gas Co. v. Railroad Commission, 290 U.S. 264, 271, 54 S.Ct. 154, 157, 78 L.Ed. 307; Pennsylvania v. Williams, 294 U.S. 176, 185, 55 S.Ct. 380, 385, 79 L.Ed. 841, 96 A.L.R. 1166; Virginia Railway Co. v. Federation, 300 U.S. 515, 552 et seq., 57 S.Ct. 592, 601, 81 L.Ed. 789. Congress having by the Packers and Stockyards Act established the public policy of maintaining reasonable rates for stockyard services, and having prohibited and declared unlawful any unjust or unreasonable rate, a court of equity should be astute to avoid the use of its process to effectuate the collection of unlawful rates, and equally so to direct it to the restitution of rates which it has taken into its own custody, once they are shown to have been unlawful. If such a determination had already been made by the Secretary in the proceeding before him, after full hearing, and if it were found by the district court to be supported by evidence, the duty of the court to make restitution forthwith would seem evident, notwithstanding the absence of any order of the Secretary directing the payment. Inland Steel Co. v. United States, supra.4 The Secretary, as we have seen, is authorized to make the determination. Section 305 denounces unreasonable rates as unlawful. The statute, as declared by § 308(b), saves to the court authority to give any remedy which in the present circumstances it might otherwise afford.
It is said that the distinction between this and the Atlantic Coast Line case is the distinction between judicial inaction and judicial action; that there the court, upon settled equitable principles, was free to refrain from compelling restitution if satisfied that no injustice had been done, see Tiffany v. Boatman's Institution, 18 Wall. 375, 385, 21 L.Ed. 868; Mississippi & M.R. Co. v. Cromwell, 91 U.S. 643, 645, 23 L.Ed. 367; Deweese v. Reinhard, 165 U.S. 386, 390, 17 S.Ct. 340, 341, 41 L.Ed. 757, but that here the court is called on by appellants to act by withholding from appellees rates which are still lawfully in force because the filed schedule has not been set aside by a valid order of the Secretary. While at the moment appellants are content with inaction, and it is appellees who are demanding action—the payment to them of rates whose lawfulness is challenged and not yet determined—the actual posture of the case is such that the court is under a self-imposed duty to act by virtue of having taken the fund into its possession, and in acting to dispose of the fund it must conform to controlling legal principles. Reasonableness of the rates was not established by the filed schedules. Had the rates collected been paid to appellees instead of to the clerk of the court, the Secretary could have ordered reparation upon proper findings that they were unreasonable. And the question is whether the court must now, in the face of a proceeding by the Secretary to determine the reasonableness of the challenged rates, use its power to complete their collection at the risk of obstructing reparation, or whether it should itself remain inactive until their lawfulness is determined and then act accordingly.
See Y.B. 22 Ed. IV Mich. pl. 21; Heath v. Rydley, (1614) Cro.Jac. 335; 1 Holdsworth, History of English Law, 459—465.