Opinion ID: 386004
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: the continued existence of the private cause of action

Text: 56 In deciding the issue here before us, we follow the analysis set forth in Cort v. Ash, 422 U.S. 66, 78, 95 S.Ct. 2080, 2087, 45 L.Ed.2d 26 (1975). 20 57 There is, however, one differentiating factor of such transcendent importance as to demand mention at the outset. As shown in Part IV of this opinion the decisions prior to the 1974 amendments had uniformly upheld the existence of a private cause of action under the provisions of the Commodity Exchange Act, and as will be shown in this part, the 1974 Congress was well aware of the existing state of the law. Even without more, the question thus would not be whether Congress intended to create a new private right of action in 1974, but rather whether it intended sub silentio to alter the significance that had long been given these provisions by making other changes in the Act. Beyond this, however, we do not need to assume, as the Court stated would be appropriate in upholding a private cause of action in Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U.S. 677, 696-97, 99 S.Ct. 1946, 1957, 60 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979), that our elected representatives, like other citizens, know the law or to presume that they were aware of the prior interpretation of a related statute. See Lorillard v. Pons, 434 U.S. 575, 580, 98 S.Ct. 866, 869, 55 L.Ed.2d 40 (1978) (Congress is presumed to be aware of an administrative or judicial interpretation of a statute). Here the existence of an implied right of action under the Commodity Exchange Act as it stood in 1974 was repeatedly called to the attention of and implicitly approved by Congress. This alone sufficiently answers appellees' claim that if the 1974 Congress wished to create a private cause of action, it would and should have said so and that it is implausible to suppose that Congress absentmindedly forgot to mention an intended private action. Cannon, supra, 441 U.S. at 742, 99 S.Ct. at 1981 (Powell, J., dissenting). Whether rightly or wrongly in light of recent Supreme Court jurisprudence, the courts had read a private cause of action into the statute, just as they had done with statutes of similar import in related fields, and Congress knew that they had done so. The burden thus lies on those who urge that the 1974 amendments demonstrate an intention to change prior law, or, paraphrasing the language from Mr. Justice Powell's Cannon dissent, supra, that, in making the changes that it did, Congress absentmindedly forgot to repeal the private cause of action. The silence of the 1974 Congress with respect to private causes of action for violations of the CEA, on which the dissent leans so heavily, is no more significant than the similar silence of the 1975 Congress which extensively amended the Securities Exchange Act, 89 Stat. 97. When a principle has become settled through court decisions, there is no occasion for Congress to speak unless it wishes a change. 21 58 1. Taking the first of the Cort factors, we have no difficulty in concluding, despite appellees' claims to the contrary, that the plaintiffs were among the class for whose especial benefit the statute was enacted, a phrase going back to Texas & Pacific R. Co. v. Rigsby, supra, 241 U.S. at 39, 36 S.Ct. at 484. Although Congressional committees and sponsors of the ill-fated 1921 legislation devoted most of their eloquence to injuries suffered by producers at the hands of wicked speculators, the Senate Report on the 1922 Act recognized that: 59 Transactions in grain futures are utilized by the public for speculation and by the grain trade for the purpose of eliminating or reducing, as far as practicable, the hazards in the merchandising of grain and its products and by-products due to price fluctuations. Public speculation helps to carry the risk for the producers, dealers, and millers who wish to hedge their cash grain transactions. S.Rep. No. 871, 67th Cong., 2d Sess. 3 (1922). 60 It is true that much of the debate on the floor of the House consisted of vituperative attacks on those gambling in the grain trade to the detriment of the producers and the consumer. However, these attacks were generally directed at big speculators, i. e., those in a position to manipulate the market, and there was always the recognition that legitimate trade was acceptable and indeed beneficial. 22 The emphasis on producers in § 3, the statement of purposes in the 1922 Act, was due to a desire to state a basis clearly within then existing notions of the commerce power rather than to risk invalidation by including classes whom the Supreme Court might not think to come within it; Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111, 63 S.Ct. 82, 87 L.Ed. 122 (1942), then lay twenty years in the future. 23 At that time, moreover, the importance of the speculator in the efficient functioning of the futures market had not yet been so fully recognized by Congress as it has now become. 61 It is plain in any event that by the time of the 1936 amendments, as was later to be stated in the House Report on the 1978 amendments, the community protected under federal commodities law was expanded to include speculators. H.R.Rep.No.95-1181, 95th Cong., 2d Sess. 84 (1978). As described in the 1935 House Report, The fundamental purpose of the measure is to insure fair practice and honest dealing on the commodity exchanges and to provide a measure of control over those forms of speculative activity which too often demoralize the markets to the injury of producers and consumers and the exchanges themselves. H.R.Rep.No.421, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. 1 (1935). Fair practice and honest dealing are, of course, beneficial not only to farmers but also to legitimate speculators using the market. The concern expressed in the last clause of the quotation, to avoid injury to the exchanges themselves, certainly encompassed protection for those using the exchanges. This was made clear in a later passage from the same report: (The bill) simply provides for honesty in the conduct of what are important public markets. This affects vitally the interests of the people, whether they be producers or consumers of the commodities covered by the bill or whether they belong to that class of citizens who have a fondness, and perhaps some aptitude for speculative investment in commodities and who like to test their judgment concerning values and price trends by occasional and moderate speculation therein. Id. at 2-3. While the debates in Congress, like those in 1922, did contain many attacks on speculative investors, again there was a recognition of the necessary role of speculators, and the focus of the attacks was on the big manipulator, whose activity was perceived to be detrimental not only to producers and consumers but also to those referred to as legitimate traders and dealers. 24 The clearest indication of Congress' concern to regulate the large-scale market operator is, of course, the authorization of trading limits in § 4a. 62 The legislative history of the 1968 amendments continued the recognition of the critical role played by speculative investors and the attack on big or powerful manipulators rather than speculators in general. Both the House and Senate reports explicitly recognized that most futures trading was done by speculators. H.R.Rep.No.743, 90th Cong., 1st Sess. 2 (1967); S.Rep.No.947, 90th Cong., 2d Sess. (1968), reprinted in 2 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News, pp. 1673, 1675 (1968). The House Report noted that such speculative activity carried with it the danger that on occasion powerful traders will attempt to influence prices, H.R.Rep.No.743, supra, at 2, but also recognized the necessary role of the legitimate speculator: This speculative activity provides a means of reducing price risks by persons handling the actual commodity and thus makes possible higher prices to producers and lower prices to consumers. Id. 63 Finally, and most important, the concern to protect the speculator as well as the hedger was clearly evident in the enactment of the 1974 amendments. The House Report noted the large influx of speculators into the commodity futures market as one of the specific situations mandat(ing) a comprehensive rewrite of futures trading regulation. H.R.Rep.No.93-975, supra, at 39. The beneficial, indeed indispensable, role of such speculators was recognized not only in the House Report, in the language quoted in Part I of this opinion, id. at 138, but also in the debate on the floor of the House. Introducing the bill, Chairman Poage of the Committee on Agriculture observed that speculators provide a very real service to the market and its users, by providing liquidity. 119 Cong.Rec. 41332 (Dec. 13, 1973). Representative Wampler, the ranking minority member of the House Committee and a supporter of the bill, stated that: 64 While the speculator has been much maligned to the point where critics of the present marketing system have tried to make speculator a dirty word, we must not forget that the speculator performs an important economic function in futures markets. He is, in effect, the risk bearer who assumes the risks which the hedger seeks to avoid. 120 Cong.Rec. 10739 (April 11, 1974). 65 The debates reveal that one problem prompting the amendments was the catastrophic losses suffered by futures traders, mostly speculators, who were dealing in commodities not regulated by the old act. See 119 Cong.Rec. 41332 (Dec. 13, 1973) (Remarks of Chairman Poage). In extending regulation to previously unregulated futures markets, the House Report specifically stated that (t)here is no reason why a person trading in one of the currently unregulated futures markets should not receive the same protection afforded to those trading in the currently regulated markets. H.R.Rep. No. 93-975, supra, at 76. In other words, the old act protected those trading in the markets-not merely producers or consumers of the commodity-and the new act would extend this protection of traders to new markets in which even fewer of the traders produced or consumed the actual commodity. 66 Senate consideration of the 1974 amendments reinforced the views evident in the House. The Senate Report opened with a quotation from Justice Holmes, Board of Trade v. Christie Grain & Stock Co., 198 U.S. 236, 247-48, 25 S.Ct. 637, 648-649, 49 L.Ed. 1031 (1905), recognizing the virtues of speculation: 67 People will endeavor to forecast the future and to make agreements according to their prophecy. Speculation of this kind by competent men is the self-adjustment of society to the probable. Its value is well known as a means of avoiding or mitigating catastrophes, equalizing prices and providing for periods of want. S.Rep.No.93-1131, supra, at iii. 68 Like the House Report, the Senate Report recognized the role of the competitive effect of many speculative buyers and sellers in the market in reducing merchandising price margins. Id. at 12, U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News, 974 at 5854. The Senate changed the House bill to provide for an independent CFTC, rather than one under the USDA, since it was concerned that the USDA's historic role as the spokesman for farm interests might affect its policing of commodity markets. See id. at 21-22. This clearly evinces a concern to protect those trading on the commodity futures markets, and not simply agricultural producers. Accord, 120 Cong.Rec. 30467 (Sept. 6, 1974) (Remarks of Sen. Taft). Senator Dole considered the purpose of the 1974 amendments to be to protect any individual who desires to participate in futures market trading, id. at 30466, and Chairman Talmadge of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry wrote that all of the members of the committee who worked on this legislation had one goal in mind-to develop a strong, but fair regulatory scheme that will protect investors, businessmen and consumers. 120 Cong.Rec. 34996 (Oct. 10, 1974) (emphasis supplied). 69 It is true, of course, that the CEA was enacted for the benefit of the entire public, as hopefully most regulatory legislation is. But, as is the case with respect to all such legislation, criminal as well as civil, some classes are more in need of protection than others. It is almost self-evident that legislation regulating future trading was for the especial benefit of futures traders. 25 Hence it is not surprising that the courts have thus been nearly unanimous in concluding that speculators, now long recognized to be legitimate investors, as well as hedgers, are within the class for whose especial benefit the CEA was enacted, see especially Smith v. Groover, 468 F.Supp. at 113; Gravois v. Fairchild, Arabatzis, et al., supra, CCH Com.Fut.L.Rep. P 20,706. Indeed, even those courts finding no implied right of action under the Act as amended in 1974, including the district court in this case, 470 F.Supp. at 1259, have generally concluded that the first prong of the Cort test was satisfied. See, e. g., Berman v. Bache, Halsey, Stuart, Shields, Inc., supra 467 F.Supp. at 322 (little question); cf. Fischer v. Rosenthal & Co., supra (assuming arguendo that plaintiff met the first Cort test, as indeed he may). More importantly, this court itself is on record to that effect. In Ames v. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, supra, 567 F.2d 1174, where we refused to grant a stay of plaintiff's private damage action and compel arbitration, the parties having agreed that an implied cause of action existed under the Act, Judge Gurfein wrote that (w)e have no doubt that the Act itself, enacted as it was for the protection of investors, prohibited a surrender of private remedies through an agreement to arbitrate which was not voluntary in the sense that the penalty for refusal was exclusion from the market. Id. at 1179 (emphasis supplied). 26 See also Silverman v. CFTC, 562 F.2d 432, 438 (7 Cir. 1977) (We must be mindful of a Congressional purpose, clearly evidenced at least since 1933, to protect the American investing and speculating public not only from fraud and fraudulent practices, but from those whose past actions indicate that they might be tempted to engage in such practices) (quoting Moore, J., in Savage v. CFTC, 548 F.2d 192, 197 (7 Cir. 1977). 27 70 2. We turn now to the second and evidently the most important, see Touche Ross & Co. v. Redington, supra, 442 U.S. at 575, 99 S.Ct. at 2489, of the Cort factors, is there any indication of legislative intent, explicit or implicit, either to create such a (private) remedy or to deny one? 422 U.S. at 78, 95 S.Ct. at 2088. This inquiry requires an intensive examination of the legislative history of the 1974 amendments. We conduct this, of course, with full awareness of the cautions in Ernst & Ernst v. Hochfelder, 425 U.S. 185, 204 n.24, 96 S.Ct. 1375, 1386 n.24, 47 L.Ed.2d 668 (1976) and Piper v. Chris-Craft Industries, Inc., 430 U.S. 1, 31-32, 97 S.Ct. 926, 944, 51 L.Ed.2d 124 (1977), against the dangers of undue reliance on passing references by others than the Congressional committees or sponsors or on general statements not directly relevant to the issue at hand. 71 In our view the legislative history amply demonstrates the 1974 Congress' awareness of the uniform judicial recognition of private rights of action under the Commodity Exchange Act and a desire to preserve them. We are not, as the dissent suggests, presuming that Congress was aware of these decisions; the evidence of its awareness is overwhelming. 72 We begin with the House Report. This noted that when exchange self-regulation first developed, (V)ery little thought was probably given to whether the failure to meet (stated) ideals would expose the exchanges to legal liability .... H.R.Rep.No.93-975, supra, at 45. The report stated that this view began to change early in the 1920's. Perhaps the adoption of federal regulatory legislation spurred this total reorientation of the relationship between exchanges and the public. Slowly, the courts began to look upon exchange regulation as a guarantee to the public that its members would not violate its code of conduct. Id. In 1968, the report continued, amendments to the CEA required exchanges to enforce their rules, § 5a(8). The existence of private rights of action was thought to have had a perverse effect on the effectiveness of this legislation which the report explicitly noted: 73 In the few years this provision has been in the present Commodity Exchange Act, there is growing evidence to indicate that, as opposed to strengthening the self-regulatory concept in present law, such a provision, coupled with only limited federal authority to require the exchanges to make and issue rules appropriate to enforcement of the Act-may have actually have worked to weaken it. With inadequate enforcement personnel the Committee was informed that attorneys to several boards of trade have been advising the boards to reduce -not expand exchange regulations designed to insure fair trading, since there is a growing body of opinion that failure to enforce the exchange rules is a violation of the Act which will support suits by private litigants. (emphasis in original). 74 Later in the Report the Committee noted that one of the specific problems brought to (its) attention was the: 75 Growing difficulties facing exchanges in self-regulatory actions as a result of private plaintiffs seeking damages against the markets. As examples, exchanges are sued for actions taken in emergency situations even when the action has been taken at the request (or order) of the CEA. Id. at 48 (emphasis supplied). 76 Nothing in the report, however, indicated dissatisfaction with the private right of action; the objective was to deal with the attendant reduction in exchange rulemaking. This was to be accomplished by empowering the CFTC to require exchanges to adopt rules, § 8a(7). 28 77 The existence of an implied private right of action was also clearly revealed to Congress in the debate on what became the 1974 amendments. Introducing the bill, Chairman Poage used the language quoted above, which eventually appeared in the House Report, about the change in the legal posture of exchange self-regulation. He then remarked that when the Commodity Exchange Act was enacted, courts implied a private remedy for individual litigants in the Commodity Exchange Act. 119 Cong.Rec. 41333 (Dec. 13, 1973). 28a He went on to note, as would the House report, that as the judgment of the board of directors of many of the exchanges in implementing decisions under self-regulatory functions is becoming increasingly a justiciable issue, attorneys were advising exchanges to prune out rules they might not be able to enforce in order to avoid the threat of liability in private actions. This threat was described as providing the exchanges with a solid reason for retrenching on self-regulatory efforts. Id. At the outset of consideration by the whole House, then, the legislators were informed by the Chairman of the Committee considering the bill that private rights of action were implied under the Act. 29 This was not a mere passing reference, but a critical statement of fact that was a necessary step in explaining why new legislation was needed. The 1974 amendments signaled a dramatic shift from the theory of exchange self-regulation to authorization of the CFTC to compel the exchanges to alter or adopt rules, § 8a(7), and the proponents of the amendments were at pains to explain the need for such a shift. This explanation centered on the existence of an implied private right of action. Amendments were required to force exchanges to adopt beneficial rules because the threat of the judicially implied private right of action had led them to shirk this responsibility. Congress could not have understood why it was changing the underlying theory from exchange self-regulation to compulsory regulation without recognizing that the private rights of action that had been judicially implied under the Act demanded this change. It opted to cure the problem that had developed not by abolishing the private right of action but by empowering the CFTC to require the exchanges to adopt appropriate rules. No amount of labored parsing can obscure the self-evident truth that Congress knew the courts were implying private rights of action and did nothing to alter this. It matters little whether this be called recognition or approval. 78 The House hearings are replete with references to the maintenance of private causes of action under the Act. A representative of various New York commodity exchanges informed the House Committee on Agriculture that the Chicago Board of Trade was at that very moment the target of a $200 million class action, 30 and urged Congress to take steps to insure that federally regulated exchanges are not exposed to this sort of astronomical civil liability suits ..., Hearings on Review of Commodity Exchange Act and Discussion of Possible Changes Before the House Committee on Agriculture, 93d Cong., 1st Sess. 121 (1973), something which Congress did not do. Another exchange representative and FCM, discussing the arbitration procedures to be required of contract markets, told the House Committee that In addition to these arbitration procedures, complainants of course have access to the courts. Hearings on H.R. 11955 Before the House Committee on Agriculture, 93d Cong., 2d Sess. 249 (1974) (emphasis supplied). A letter sent in the course of the just-cited hearings from Continental Grain Co. indicates that the cases cited in Part IV of this opinion may well have been only the tip of the iceberg-the cases where the private cause of action was challenged and was sustained in a published opinion. The letter calls to the committee's attention one recent class action settlement proceeding in court which required the mailing of 339,000 legal notices and resulted in legal fee claims of over $2,250,000. Id. at 321. The letter advocated requiring complainants to choose between arbitration or settlement procedures and resort to courts which have already held they have jurisdiction over private complaints based on violations of the present law. Id. 79 The existence of a private right of action also was repeatedly indicated during the Senate hearings on the four bills to amend the CEA. Hearings on S. 2485, S. 2578, S. 2837, and H.R. 13113 Before the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, 93d Cong., 2d Sess. (1974). Senator Clark and a commodities law expert, Professor Schotland of Georgetown University, expressed the view that private actions were available under the Act, id. at 205, 737, 746. A representative of the Minneapolis Grain Exchange objected to the settlement procedure contemplated for contract markets because the claims which exchanges would be required to adjudicate were not limited by any dollar amount and wished these to be confined to cases where the smallness of the claim entailed an economic impediment to Court litigation. Id. at 415. Such a limit appeared in the bill as enacted, § 5a(11)(ii). The President of the Kansas City Board of Trade urged the Senators to protect exchanges from unnecessary and costly defenses of lawsuits brought under the Act. Id. at 317. He had made the same request before the House, with similar lack of success. Hearings on H.R. 11955, supra, at 123. 31 We shall have more to say about Congress' awareness of the private cause of action and its desire to preserve it when we come to discuss the provision preserving the jurisdiction of the courts. However, what we have developed up to this point is alone sufficient to invoke the well-recognized canon of construction that the reenactment of a statute incorporates preceding judicial interpretations, Van Vranken v. Helvering, 115 F.2d 709, 710 (2 Cir. 1940) (L. Hand, J.), cert. denied, 313 U.S. 585, 61 S.Ct. 1095, 85 L.Ed. 1540 (1941)-a canon which, as shown by the Van Vranken case, is not limited to interpretations by the Supreme Court. See Electric Storage Battery Co. v. Shimadzu, 307 U.S. 5, 14, 59 S.Ct. 675, 684, 83 L.Ed. 1071 (1930); Lorillard v. Pons, 434 U.S. 575, 580-81, 98 S.Ct. 866, 871, 55 L.Ed.2d 40 (1978); Bennett v. Panama Canal Co., 475 F.2d 1280, 1282 (D.C.Cir.1973) (Wyzanski, J.) (the almost irrebuttable presumption which followed from reenactment with knowledge (of the Fifth Circuit's interpretation of may as permissive)). This canon applies with particular force to the instant case, where the 1974 amendments constituted the first complete overhaul of the Commodity Exchange Act since its inception, H.R.Rep. No. 93-975, supra, at 1, the relevant substantive provisions were left unchanged, and Congress had been made acutely aware of the prior judicial construction that these provisions gave rise to a private cause of action. 32 80 The Supreme Court has applied this principle on numerous occasions. In Lorillard v. Pons, 434 U.S. 575, 98 S.Ct. 866, 55 L.Ed.2d 40 (1978), Justice Marshall, writing for a unanimous Court, said that when Congress has passed a new statute incorporating sections of a previously construed statute, Congress is presumed to be aware of an administrative or judicial interpretation of a statute and to adopt that interpretation when it reenacts a statute without change-even though, as indicated above, the interpretations were by lower federal courts and not by the Supreme Court. It was considered significant that the judicial construction of the previous statute had been unanimous, id. at 580-81, 98 S.Ct. at 869-70, as was the judicial implication of private rights of action prior to 1974 in our case. In Georgia v. United States, 411 U.S. 526, 532-33, 93 S.Ct. 1702, 1706-07, 36 L.Ed.2d 472 (1973), the Court was confronted with a question concerning interpretation of the Voting Rights Act, enacted in 1965 and extended after extensive deliberations in 1970, with changes and additions in areas other than the section before the Court. The Court had reached a decision on a related question in the 1969 case of Allen v. State Board of Elections, 393 U.S. 544, 89 S.Ct. 817, 22 L.Ed.2d 1 (1969). Justice Stewart reasoned that (h)ad Congress disagreed with the interpretation of § 5 in Allen, it had ample opportunity to amend the statute. After extensive deliberations in 1970 on bills to extend the Voting Rights Act, during which the Allen case was repeatedly discussed, the Act was extended for five years, without any substantive modification of § 5. 411 U.S. at 533, 93 S.Ct. at 1707. A footnote to this quotation indicated that the repeated discussions were in Congressional hearings. Id. n.5. While we have here no Supreme Court decision of the stature of Allen construing the CEA, since the Court's opinion in Deaktor, 414 U.S. 113, 94 S.Ct. 466, 38 L.Ed.2d 344, was not an express holding of the existence of a private cause of action under the CEA, all the pre-1974 CEA cases, including the Seventh Circuit's decision under review in Deaktor, reached the same result in favor of implication, and decisions sustaining private rights of action were called to the attention of Congress not only in Congressional hearings as in Georgia v. United States but in the House report and in floor debates. 81 The presumption just referred to is, of course, rebuttable and appellees insist it has been rebutted by changes made in the CEA in 1974. Before taking these up in detail, we note certain circumstances in addition to those already discussed that require an exceedingly strong showing of an intention to abolish the private cause of action for fraud, manipulation and violations by exchanges that had been universally recognized in order to justify a conclusion that this was Congress' intent. The 1974 Congress repeatedly expressed its view that the changes were designed to strengthen commodity futures regulation, a goal that would be ill-served by abolishing the private right of action that everyone had thought to exist. The bill that became the 1974 amendments was described on its face as an act to amend the Commodity Exchange Act to strengthen the regulation of futures trading .... H.R. 13113, 93d Cong., 2d Sess. 1 (1974) (emphasis supplied). The original hearings in the House on the bill were called by the Committee on Agriculture with a view toward strengthening and revising the existing law. H.R.Rep. No. 93-975, supra, at 53-54. The remarks on the floor of the House by the Committee chairman and the ranking minority member repeated this theme. See 120 Cong.Rec. 10736 (April 11, 1974) (Remarks of Rep. Poage) (to strengthen the regulation of futures trading); id. at 10739 (Remarks of Rep. Wampler) (to inform and strengthen the laws). The goal in the Senate was the same. See, e. g., S.Rep.No.93-1131, supra at 18 (section entitled Need for Better and Extended Regulation). See also Curran v. Merrill Lynch, supra, note 1, 622 F.2d at 232 (the legislative history of the CFTC Act ... indicates that Congress intended to extend further protection to the exchange customer, rather than to extinguish existing forms of protection). Yet the appellees would have us take the forbidden course of ascribing to Congress an intent with respect to private sanctions completely at odds with this clear legislative purpose. See National Petroleum Refiners Association v. Federal Trade Commission, 482 F.2d 672, 690 (D.C.Cir.1973), cert. denied, 415 U.S. 951, 94 S.Ct. 1475, 39 L.Ed.2d 567 (1974) (Wright, J.) (where a statute is said to be susceptible of more than one meaning, we must not only consult its language; we must also relate the interpretation we provide to the felt and openly articulated concerns motivating the law's framers), and generally Cox, Judge Learned Hand and the Interpretation of Statutes, 60 Harv.L.Rev. 370 (1947). 82 In support of this endeavor to rebut the presumption that the 1974 Congress approved the previous interpretation of the CEA, the appellees point to the new reparations procedure of § 14. This authorizes any person complaining of any violation of the Act or any rule, regulation or order by any person registered or required to be so, 33 to apply to the CFTC. If the Commission thinks there are reasonable grounds for investigating the complaint, it shall do so. The Commission may, if in its opinion the facts warrant such action, serve the respondent, who is entitled to a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge except where the amount claimed does not exceed $5,000 in which event the Commission may proceed on the basis of depositions or verified statements of fact. A reparations order is enforceable by suit in a district court. However, this is subject to a right of the respondent to seek a prompt review of the reparations order in a court of appeals. 83 Quite apart from the provision explicitly preserving judicial remedies which we shall discuss later, the argument that Congress intended this to be the sole private remedy under the CEA is totally unconvincing for several reasons. The first and perhaps the most important reason is the limited scope of the reparations remedy. It is available only against persons who have or should have registered. On appellees' argument, the exchanges which, to the clear knowledge of Congress, had been held subject to private suits before the 1974 amendments, would be wholly relieved of private liability, although Congress failed to heed their repeated pleas for explicitly granting such relief. 34 So too would large unregistered operators, alleged to have committed the most flagrant kind of manipulation, like Simplot and Taggares in the instant case-the very type of persons whose activities had been the subject of particular Congressional concern from the outset. We find it unimaginable that after a half century's devotion to the regulation of futures trading, thirty years of exposure to the liberal implication of private causes of action under the related subject of securities regulation, and knowledge that the courts had consistently applied the same principle to the CEA, the 1974 Congress could have meant that the only federal remedies for persons claiming to have been wronged by such defendants to the extent of millions of dollars should be the small solace of having the Government collect civil fines and enforce administrative or criminal penalties. The dissent cannot paper over this gaping hole by saying, fn. 3, that such operators are not before us. They are defendants, probably the principal defendants, in these actions. While they have understandably chosen to stay in the background in the present argument, acceptance of the dissent's position would compel the district court to dismiss the CEA claims against them. Even with respect to registered persons, the one class of defendants to whom the reparations procedure applies, the remedy hinges upon the Commission's preliminary determination, apparently unreviewable, that the complainant has a prima facie case, and there is no assurance that this will afford the procedural benefits available in a civil trial. The case differs fundamentally from instances such as National Railroad Passenger Corp. v. National Ass'n of Railroad Passengers (Amtrak), 414 U.S. 453, 94 S.Ct. 690, 38 L.Ed.2d 646 (1974), and Touche Ross & Co. v. Redington, supra, 442 U.S. 560, 99 S.Ct. 2479, 61 L.Ed.2d 82, where Congress, operating on a tabula rasa, provided a new duty and certain express remedies to enforce that duty, and the Court applied the maxim expressio unius est exclusio alterius. When as here Congress adds a new remedy to enforce a preexisting duty, where other remedies had been clearly recognized, it would be expected to say so if it meant the new remedy to be exclusive. In fact, as will be seen, it said the opposite. It is just as much judicial legislation for a court to withdraw a remedy which Congress expected to be continued as to improvise one that Congress never had in mind. 84 These conclusions are strengthened by the legislative history of the reparations procedure. Chairman Poage, in an apparent reference to the reparations provisions, noted in the House that the Act sets up new customer protection features. 120 Cong.Rec. 10737 (April 11, 1974). This language suggests that the new features are in addition to the old ones, and certainly not that they are exclusive. In the Senate, Chairman Talmadge remarked: 85 The vesting in the Commission of the authority to have administrative law judges and apply a broad spectrum of civil and criminal penalties is likewise not intended to interfere with the courts in any way. It is hoped that giving the commission this authority will somewhat lighten the burden upon the courts, but the entire appeal process and the right of final determination by the courts are expressly preserved. 120 Cong.Rec. 30459 (Sept. 9, 1974). 86 The first sentence strongly suggests that Congress did not intend to repeal private rights of action by enacting the reparations procedure, and the second sentence is not to the contrary. If the reparations procedure was intended to be exclusive, then it certainly would lighten the burden on the courts, even with review of reparations orders by the courts of appeals. But the Senator spoke in terms of hope and lightening the burden somewhat-as if reparations were an alternative he hoped had been made attractive enough to sway some aggrieved traders away from the courts. The second clause relating to judicial review simply noted that even for those who elected reparations there could still be court involvement. Again the House Report describes the reparations procedures as intended as a separate remedy designed to supplement the informal 'settlement' procedures contemplated of the contract markets and registered futures associations which are required under other sections of the legislation .... H.R.Rep.No.93-975, supra, at 22. These last two types of settlement procedures, however, are expressly made voluntary by the Act. See §§ 5a(11), 17(b)(10). It can therefore be inferred that the reparations remedy is of the same character, and that the aggrieved trader is in no sense compelled to resort to reparations to obtain relief. Commentators have relied on this reasoning, and the savings clause in § 2(a)(1), in concluding that the victim of a CEA violation is free to ignore the reparations procedure and file a lawsuit. Bromberg & Lowenfels, supra, § 461 at 82.362 (1979). The CFTC is of the same view. See 41 F.R. 3994 (Jan. 27, 1976); id. at 18472 n.5 (May 4, 1976). 35 87 The argument that the reparations procedure was intended to be the exclusive private remedy is further negated and the case for the continuance of the private cause of action is enhanced by the jurisdictional savings clause, § 2(a)(1). 36 88 As passed by the House, the exclusive jurisdiction provision read as follows: 89 Provided, that the Commission shall have exclusive jurisdiction of transactions dealing in, resulting in, or relating to future delivery ... And provided further, that nothing herein contained shall supersede or limit the jurisdiction at any time conferred on the Securities Exchange Commission or other regulatory authorities under the laws of the United States .... 90 The purpose of this was to separate the functions of the new CFTC from those of the SEC and other regulators. As explained in the House Report, All commodities trading in futures will be brought within federal regulation under the aegis of the new Commission, however, provision is made for preservation of Securities Exchange Commission jurisdiction in those areas traditionally regulated by it. H.R.Rep.No.93-975, supra, at 3. See generally Johnson, The Commodity Futures Trading Commission Act: Preemption as Public Policy, 29 Vand.L.Rev. 1 (1976); Russo & Lyon, The Exclusive Jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, 6 Hofstra L.Rev. 57 (1977). The provision was not intended to limit the jurisdiction of the courts. See Jones v. B. C. Christopher & Co., supra, 466 F.Supp. at 218-19. 91 However, these was fear that it would do so and numerous objections were raised to the House provision in the Senate hearings. Admittedly some of these were not primarily concerned with the question of court jurisdiction to hear claims in private actions under the CEA. Chairman Rodino of the House Committee on the Judiciary was concerned that the House provision might be read as pre-empting state courts of their jurisdiction to enforce futures contracts under general commercial law and to oust even federal courts of jurisdiction. Testifying before the Senate Committee, he suggested an amendment to define the jurisdiction, including antitrust jurisdiction, of federal courts for commodity transactions. Hearings on S. 2485, S. 2578, S. 2837 and H.R. 13113 Before the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, supra, at 259-60. While Chairman Rodino's remarks were focused on antitrust jurisdiction, they were not limited to that. He argued generally that federal courts retained jurisdiction, and cited antitrust jurisdiction as an example supporting this view. Other objections to the exclusive jurisdiction provision of the House bill were explicitly addressed to the preservation of private rights of action. 37 Senator Clark noted that treble damages actions, provided in bills which he and Senator McGovern had introduced, were often the most effective enforcement tools. 38 Unfortunately, the House bill not only does not authorize them but section 201 of that bill may prohibit all court actions. The staff of the House Agriculture Committee has said that this was done inadvertently and they hope it can be corrected in the Senate. Id. at 205. Professor Schotland did not refer directly to the exclusive jurisdiction provision, but urged rather that the reparations provision, if retained at all, should be accompanied by explicit language in the statute that Federal and State courts are still open if a complainant prefers to go to trial there. Id. at 737, 747. 92 The upshot of these various objections was the addition by the Senate of the savings clause, now in § 2(a)(1): 93 nothing in this section shall supersede or limit the jurisdiction conferred on courts of the United States or of any State S.Rep. No. 93-1131, supra, at 54, U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News, 974 at 5870. 94 The purpose of this change was stated to be to make clear that ... Federal and State courts retain their jurisdiction. Id. at 6, U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News, 974 at 5848. The Conference accepted the Senate amendment, with the same stated purpose. S.Rep.No.93-1194, 93d Cong., 2d Sess. 35 (1974); H.R.Rep.No.93-1383, 93d Cong., 2d Sess. 35 (1974). The respective chairmen of the House and Senate committees reported that the conferees wished to make clear that nothing in the act would supersede or limit the jurisdiction presently conferred on courts of the United States or any State. This act is remedial legislation designed to correct certain abuses which Congress found to exist in areas that will now come within the jurisdiction of the CFTC. 120 Cong.Rec. 34997 (Oct. 10, 1974) (Senator Talmadge); 120 Cong.Rec. 34737 (Oct. 9, 1974) (Representative Poage). When we couple this with Congress' recognition that jurisdiction over private causes of action have been held to have been conferred, the conclusion that Congress desired their continued recognition is nigh irresistible. 95 Appellees' primary answer to the foregoing discussion is that the pre-1974 cases upholding a private cause of action under the CEA were wrongly decided under the new trend in Supreme Court jurisprudence with respect to implication and that, in consequence, if Congress desired to preserve such a cause of action the savings clause was insufficient and nothing short of express statement would do. This argument might be somewhat impressive if we were dealing with legislation passed by Congress today. But the law here before us was enacted on October 23, 1974 and the relevant inquiry is not whether Congress correctly perceived the then state of the law, but rather what its perception of the law was. Brown v. G.S.A., 425 U.S. 820, 82829, 96 S.Ct. 1961, 48 L.Ed.2d 402 (1976), quoted with approval by the majority in Cannon v. University of Chicago, supra, 441 U.S. at 710-11, 99 S.Ct. at 1964. Here not only did the 1974 Congress perceive the state of the law as allowing implied causes of action under the CEA but its perception was correct. As already developed, the related area of securities regulation was dominated by J.I. Case Co. v. Borak, supra, 377 U.S. 426, 84 S.Ct. 1555, 12 L.Ed.2d 423, which was cited with approval, subsequent to the 1974 amendments, in Cort v. Ash, supra, 422 U.S. at 78, 95 S.Ct. at 2087, and was distinguished but in no way disapproved in SIPC v. Barbour, 421 U.S. 412, 423-24, 95 S.Ct. 1733, 1740, 44 L.Ed.2d 263 (1975). While we of course follow the most recent pronouncements of the Supreme Court, those pronouncements focus our attention on the question of legislative intent, and our evaluation of congressional action ... must take into account its contemporary legal context. Cannon, supra, 441 U.S. at 698-99, 99 S.Ct. at 1958. 96 The sole decision preceding enactment of the 1974 amendments to which appellees point as evidencing the new trend is the Amtrak case, 414 U.S. 453, 94 S.Ct. 690, 38 L.Ed.2d 646, decided on January 9, 1974. Apart from the fact that Amtrak was decided when the amendments were well on the road to enactment and there is no evidence that those concerned with the amendments were aware of it, the decision would not in any event have been a warning flag to Congress to make its approval of a private right of action explicit. The clear language of the Amtrak Act and its legislative history manifested an intent to allow suit only by the Attorney General and affected employees, and not by others such as the plaintiff, a passenger association. The Secretary of Transportation had voiced this interpretation during the hearings and, as Justice Stewart reasoned, it is surely most unlikely that the members of the Committee would have stood mute if they had disagreed with it. Id. at 460, 94 S.Ct. at 494. Here the sponsor of the bill in the House expressed his view, both when introducing the bill and in the House Report, that private actions were available under the CEA. It is most unlikely that the legislators considering the amendments would have stood mute if they had disagreed with it. 97 Finally, Justice Stewart emphasized that allowing private suits would be inconsistent with the legislative purpose of the Amtrak Act, since Congress was deeply concerned with paring rail passenger routes efficiently and without time-consuming proceedings. Id. at 458, 94 S.Ct. at 493. This would have been reason enough not to imply a private cause of action even under Borak, 377 U.S. at 432, 84 S.Ct. at 1559. See also SIPC v. Barbour, 421 U.S. 412, 418, 421, 95 S.Ct. 1733, 1737, 1739, 44 L.Ed.2d 263 (1975) (Amtrak viewed as case where proposed right of action was inconsistent with legislative purpose). Here there is little dispute that the purposes of the CEA would be effectuated by private actions. 98 In light of this it is unnecessary to dwell on just how far the recent triad of Cannon, Redington and Transamerica, (Transamerica Mortgage Advisors, Inc. v. Lewis, 444 U.S. 11, 100 S.Ct. 242, 62 L.Ed.2d 146) may have gone in limiting the implied cause of action. We do think, however, that the rumors about the death of the implied cause of action which have been circulating in the wake of these decisions-an attitude strongly reflected in the dissent-are exaggerated, at least as far as previously enacted statutes are concerned, and that the effect of the decisions is simply to emphasize that the ultimate touchstone is congressional intent and not judicial notions of what would constitute wise policy. See Zeffiro v. First Pennsylvania Banking and Trust Company, 623 F.2d 290 (3 Cir., May 29, 1980) (No. 79-2259) (injured debenture holder can bring implied cause of action under Trust Indenture Act against indenture trustee who breaches agreement). Two of the decisions themselves recognized implied actions, Cannon under Title IX and Transamerica under § 215 of the Investment Advisers Act. Cannon is strong support for the result we have reached in this case, since the majority opinion recognized the earlier view on implying rights of action and expressly directed courts to consider Congressional action in light of this legal context. Both Redington, which found no implied right of action under § 17(a) of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act, and Transamerica, which found no implied action for damages under § 206 of the 1940 Investment Advisers Act, considered statutes which were enacted prior to the great explosion in judicial recognition of implied rights. Unlike the congressional action in 1974 involved in this case, or that in 1972 involved in Cannon, the congressional actions in 1934 and 1940 under review in Redington and Transamerica were not taken against a background of widespread judicial recognition of implied private causes of action for damages either as a general matter or with respect to the specific subject matter of those statutes. Further, the legislative history on private rights of action in both Redington and Transamerica was entirely silent, 442 U.S. at 571-72, 99 S.Ct. at 2485-87, 444 U.S. at 17, 100 S.Ct. at 246, 62 L.Ed.2d at 153-quite unlike the instant case. Redington involved a mere reporting provision, as to which there was no history of the implication of private causes of action and which was flanked by provisions expressly according such a right, and Transamerica turned largely on the express declaration that certain acts should make contracts void, which was taken to grant a right of rescission but not of damages, and the corresponding history of the jurisdictional clause of the Investment Advisers Act. Far from foreclosing implication of private rights of action, Transamerica explicitly noted that the intent to provide such actions may appear implicitly in the language or structure of the statute, or in the circumstances of its enactment. Id. 444 U.S. at 18, 100 S.Ct. at 246, 62 L.Ed.2d at 154. 99 Even if we were to accept arguendo that the Cannon-Redington-Transamerica triad would call for affirmance if they had been rendered before the 1974 amendments to the CEA were enacted, the legislative history demonstrates beyond fair doubt that Congress relied on and approved the unanimous course of decisions recognizing private causes of action under the CEA, which in turn, were solidly based on the Supreme Court's decision in Borak. Even if that decision were now to be regarded as an aberration, see Cannon, supra, 441 U.S. at 735-36, 99 S.Ct. at 1977-78 (Powell, J., dissenting); Redington, supra, 442 U.S. at 576-77, 99 S.Ct. at 2489-2490, this affords no basis for thinking that the 1974 Congress had any idea there would be such a drastic change in the Court's thinking. 100 Appellees also argue that the statutory provisions at issue cannot support a private cause of action because they merely proscribe certain conduct or prescribe duties, rather than explicitly creating rights (§§ 4a, 4b, 5(d), 5a(8)). It is true that the form in which Congress casts a statutory provision may serve as some indicator of the propriety of implication, see Cannon, supra, 441 U.S. at 690 n.13, 99 S.Ct. at 1954 n.13; Transamerica, supra, 444 U.S. at 18, 100 S.Ct. at 246, 62 L.Ed.2d at 154, but this is by no means determinative. When, as here, the legislative history and the circumstances of (a statute's) enactment evince a clear intent to preserve a private cause of action, the form in which this intent is expressed cannot be permitted to become an obstacle to its realization. The cases do not purport to establish a linguistic test for implication and, in any event, the securities cases are an exception to the right/duty dichotomy. Cannon, supra, 441 U.S. at 690-92 n.13, 99 S.Ct. at 1954. Even if Congress were aware of the perceived significance of this dichotomy in 1974, which it was not, there would have been no reason for it to suppose that the CEA would not fall under this same exception. 101 The same considerations refute the claim that a criminal provision such as § 9(b) cannot support a private cause of action. Prior to 1974 courts had implied a cause of action under this provision, see, e. g., Deaktor, supra, 479 F.2d at 534, and the Supreme Court had implied such actions from other penal provisions, see, e. g., Borak, supra. There was no reason for Congress in 1974 to suppose that this would not continue. In Cort v. Ash, supra, decided after passage of the 1974 amendments, Justice Brennan declined to imply a private cause of action in favor of a shareholder suing derivatively from a criminal statute prohibiting corporations from making certain specified political contributions. He was careful to note, however, that provision of a criminal penalty does not necessarily preclude implication of a private cause of action for damages, and he refused to go so far as to say that ... a bare criminal statute can never be deemed sufficiently protective of some special group so as to give rise to a private cause of action by a member of that group. 422 U.S. at 79-80, 95 S.Ct. at 2088 (emphasis in original). He rested the decision on the basis that the intent to protect corporate shareholders particularly was at best a subsidiary purpose of § 610, and the other relevant factors are all either not helpful or militate against implying a private cause of action. Id. In the case of the CEA we have found abundant evidence in the legislative history that the intent to protect traders in commodity futures was the dominant purpose and the other relevant factors also militate in favor of implying the cause of action. Moreover, the CEA cannot be characterized as a bare criminal statute. It is replete with civil remedies which involve the courts either directly or on review of CFTC action. See, e. g., § 6(b) (civil fines for, inter alia, manipulation); § 6b (cease and desist orders); § 6d (state actions for damages on behalf of residents); § 5b (suspension or revocation of contract market designation); § 14 (reparations). This is not at all a case where a court should be held back from implying a private cause of action because of a legitimate fear that Congress intended only criminal sanctions to apply to certain prohibited conduct. 102 As previously noted, see note 38, supra, appellees and the dissent also argue that no right of action should be implied because Congress did not enact proposals containing explicit rights of action which were before it. Indeed, the dissent repeatedly refers to one house or another of Congress having rejected amendments, when it merely failed to act upon them. The effect of such a failure is quite different from the voting down of an amendment, something that the word rejection inevitably calls to mind. A house of Congress may have failed to act on an amendment for any number of reasons other than opposition to it-belief that the point was already covered by existing law, see Diamond Crystal Salt Co. v. P. J. Ritter Co., 419 F.2d 147, 148 (1 Cir. 1969); Burlington Truck Lines v. Iowa Employment Security Comm'n, 239 Iowa 752, 32 N.W.2d 792, 797 (1949); objection to the particular terms and inertia in the way of correction, see note 38, supra ; or just plain loss in the legislative shuffle. The language of United States v. United Mine Workers, 330 U.S. 258, 283, 67 S.Ct. 677, 691, 91 L.Ed. 884 (1947), with regard to the failure of the House to enact a bill specifically providing for the injunctive relief there sought by the United States is peculiarly apt-the fact that the House version did not provide for the issuance of injunctions to aid in the operation of seized plants is not the issue here. Rather it is whether the House expressed any intent to restrict the existing authority of the courts. See also Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367, 381-82 n.11, 89 S.Ct. 1794, 1801-1802, 23 L.Ed.2d 371 (1969) (... unsuccessful attempts at legislation are not the best guides to legislative intent). 39 103 Although the Supreme Court has very recently warned in Consumer Product Safety Comm'n v. GTE Sylvania, Inc., 447 U.S. 117, 102, 100 S.Ct. 2051, 2060, 64 L.Ed.2d 766 (1980), quoting from United States v. Price, 361 U.S. 304, 313, 80 S.Ct. 326, 331, 4 L.Ed.2d 334 (1960), which, in turn, was quoted in United States v. Philadelphia National Bank, 374 U.S. 321, 348-49, 83 S.Ct. 1715, 1722, 10 L.Ed.2d 915 (1963), that the views of a subsequent Congress form a hazardous basis for inferring the intent of an earlier one, see also the discussion at 447 U.S. at 118, n. 13, 100 S.Ct. at 2061, NYME, the opinion below and the dissent rely heavily on a 1978 amendment adding § 6d, which authorizes state officials to bring suits in federal courts to enjoin violations of the Act and to obtain monetary redress for their residents against violators other than exchanges. NYME asserts that the exception demonstrates a congressional desire that no private actions should exist against exchanges; the dissent takes broader grounds. 104 In fact, the evolution of § 6d actually supports rather than undermines the implication of a private cause of action against the exchanges. Section 6d was added during the reauthorization of the CFTC pursuant to the sunset provision in the 1974 amendments, 88 Stat. 1391. The period between 1974 and 1978 had seen the rise of widespread fraud off the regulated and supervised contract markets, particularly in the form of commodity options and leverage contracts. The CFTC was severely criticized for its failure to protect investors in this area, and the states were eager to take matters into their own hands and protect their residents. See generally Lower, State Enforcement of the Commodity Exchange Act, 27 Emory L. J. 1057 (1978); Young, A Test of Federal Sunset: Congressional Reauthorization of the CFTC, 27 Emory L. J. 853 (1978). Some had, see, e. g., Kelley v. Carr, supra, 442 F.Supp. 346 (W.D.Mich.1977), but others were hamstrung by perceived limitations in the parens patriae doctrine. H.R.Rep.No.95-1181, supra, at 14. The addition of § 6d was designed to remove these doubts and to enlist the prosecutorial and enforcement tools of the states to aid the CFTC in correcting abuses primarily off the contract markets. See id. at 15 (§ 6d is intended, among other things, to provide the several states with the power ... to protect their citizens from persons, such as London options firms, vendors of dealer options and merchants of so-called leverage contracts who perpetuate fraudulent and other practices made unlawful by the Federal law). See also Curran v. Merrill Lynch, supra, note 1, 622 F.2d at 232 n.24. Since this concern was largely with off-market abuses, contract markets, clearinghouses, and floor brokers were exempted from the coverage of § 6d. See S.Rep.No.95-850, 95th Cong., 2d Sess. 25-26 (1978) (activities of these persons generally of the character of 'pit trading' rather than customer contact); 124 Cong.Rec. S.10561 (July 12, 1978) (Remarks of Sen. Bellmon). 105 Indeed, the legislative history indicates that the perceived existence of an implied private cause of action against exchanges was actually one of the reasons for their exemption from § 6d. Explaining the exemption, Senator Leahy of the responsible committee noted that: 106 The exemption from State suits provided to contract markets is justified due to the deterrent effect on contract markets caused by Commission regulation, institution of Commission enforcement proceedings, and the implied private rights of action that may be brought against those contract markets that fail to discharge their duties under the Commodity Exchange Act. 124 Cong.Rec. S.16527 (Sept. 28, 1978) (emphasis supplied). 107 Since Congress explicitly relied on judicially implied rights of action in fashioning the exemption in § 6d, that exemption can hardly be cited as evidence of a desire to insulate exchanges from such actions. See also Smith v. Groover, supra, 468 F.Supp. at 117 (We fail to see how an apparent congressional unwillingness to extend the liability of contract markets suggests an intention to abolish such liability altogether). 40 108 This analysis is enough to answer NYME's major contention, namely, that the exemption of contract markets from the parens patriae actions newly authorized in 1978 is evidence that Congress did not mean them to be subject to private actions of any sort. The dissent adds two broader arguments. The first is that the 1978 amendment offered Congress an opportunity expressly to affirm the private right of action in the face of a few district court decisions that this no longer existed in the light of the 1974 legislation and what the dissent calls the Supreme Court's recent but well-publicized adoption of somewhat stricter principles governing the implication of private causes of action. There are several answers. The first is that in 1978 Congress was concentrating on parens patriae suits; it was not considering a general revision of the CEA. The logic of defendants' argument would be to require federal courts to prohibit private actions with respect to any statute amended in any way after the mid-1970's if Congress did not explicitly create a private right of action. Navigator Group Funds, supra, at 424 note 19. The second is that while Senator Huddleston cited two district court decisions which had denied a private right of action under the 1974 amendments, these were regarded as unfortunate and contrary to the many others he listed that had recognized the continued existence of such actions. 124 Cong.Rec. S.10537 (July 12, 1978). Indeed the Senator expected additional causes of action to be recognized under other provisions of the CEA in the future, a view that hardly comports with fear of a new restrictive trend in implication jurisprudence. The third is that the asserted new trend in Supreme Court decisions had not yet begun, let alone been well-publicized. Cort, which cited with approval both Rigsby and Borak, 422 U.S. at 78, 95 S.Ct. at 2087, merely disallowed a private cause of action in the case sub judice. It did not indicate any new trend, and the courts have not so regarded it. As Mr. Justice Powell noted in his Cannon dissent of 1979, 441 U.S. at 741, 99 S.Ct. at 1980, In the four years since we decided Cort, no less than 20 decisions by the Courts of Appeals have implied private actions from federal statutes. Piper v. Chris-Craft Industries, 430 U.S. 1, 97 S.Ct. 926, 51 L.Ed.2d 124 (1977), paid respectful attention to Borak, supra, 377 U.S. 426, 84 S.Ct. 1555, 12 L.Ed.2d 423 as Blue Chip Stamps v. Manor Drug Stores, 421 U.S. 723, 730, 95 S.Ct. 1917, 1922, 44 L.Ed.2d 539 (1975) had also done, and to Superintendent of Insurance, supra, 404 U.S. 6, 92 S.Ct. 165, 30 L.Ed.2d 128. The issue decided adversely to the plaintiffs in these cases was not whether an implied cause of action existed generally but whether the particular plaintiffs came within the protected class. The other cases cited are even less to the point. The first indication of a changed attitude that could be detected by anyone reading the Court's opinions without an exceedingly high powered magnifying glass, not possessed even by the courts of appeals, much less by the Congress, was the 1979 opinion in Cannon -and there not in the decision, which was favorable to the plaintiff, but in footnote 6 to Mr. Justice Stevens' opinion, and especially in the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Powell. 109 The dissent argues finally that the express conferring of a right of action upon the states in 1978 shows that Congress thought such action to be necessary before any private cause of action could exist. The assertion is belied by the very passage from the House Report from which the dissent quotes. There was no history of recognition of causes of action by the states on behalf of their residents; indeed the very existence of parens patriae actions for other than a state's own financial loss had been called into most serious question by Hawaii v. Standard Oil Co. of California, 405 U.S. 251, 92 S.Ct. 885, 31 L.Ed.2d 184 (1972). The fact that only express legislation could overcome that decision does not at all suggest that Congress meant to destroy an implied cause of action by victims of proscribed practices which the courts had upheld since 1967 and Congress had recognized in 1974. 41 110 3. Our answer to the second question posed by Cort largely determines that to the third, is it consistent with the underlying purposes of the legislative scheme to imply such a remedy for the plaintiff? Indeed, the question need hardly be asked in a case where, as we have found here, there is abundant evidence that Congress affirmatively intended the private remedy to continue. If Congress clearly thought the remedy to be consistent, it would be of no moment that a court should have doubts about this. Moreover, we have been pointed to nothing that would show how maintenance of suits such as these can impede the functioning of the CEA. If questions should arise in which a court would be aided by consideration by the CFTC, the procedure of a stay pending Commission consideration, which the Court directed in Deaktor, supra, 414 U.S. at 115, 94 S.Ct. at 467 is available. The Commission sees no inconsistency. To the contrary, it tells us in its amicus brief (p. 15) that: 111 private damage suits under the Act are consistent and may coexist with the forums expressly provided by Congress for the adjudication of complaints of futures traders-Commission reparation proceedings and contract market arbitration proceedings. The Commission has carefully harmonized these three rights that, in its view, have offered a commodity trader an election of remedies since 1974. (footnotes omitted). 112 The Commission also notes that it is an agency with limited resources which are insufficient to permit it to police all commodity-related transactions (p. 34), and that the private damage remedy, in the words of Cannon, is necessary or at least helpful to the accomplishment of the statutory purpose, 441 U.S. at 703, 99 S.Ct. at 1961. Such expressions by the agency charged with the administration of the statute are entitled to substantial weight. Cannon, supra, 441 U.S. 706-08 & n.42, 99 S.Ct. 1962-63 n.42. 113 4. Fortunately, little space needs to be devoted to the fourth Cort factor, is the cause of action one traditionally relegated to state law, so that it would be inappropriate to infer a cause of action based solely on federal law?, 422 U.S. at 78, 95 S.Ct. at 2088. The answer is clearly in the negative. The federal government has been vitally concerned with trading in futures since 1922; indeed, the courts have held that § 2(a)(1) of the CEA preempts the application of state law. See International Trading, Ltd. v. Bell, 262 Ark. 244, 566 S.W.2d 420 (1977); Bromberg & Lowenfels, supra, at § 4.6 (471); Johnson, supra. 114 Having answered the first and third Cort questions in the affirmative and the fourth in the negative, and having found as to the second that there is ample evidence of legislative intent to preserve a private remedy, we conclude, in accordance with the Sixth Circuit's decision in Curran v. Merrill Lynch, see note 1 supra, that the district court was in error in holding that no private cause of action in damages for violation of the CEA existed. Since the district court struck all the claims under the CEA, we need not now consider which claims, if any, were within the antifraud provision, § 4b, as distinguished from the antimanipulation provision, § 9(b), relied on as to all defendants; § 4a, relied on as to the conspirators and their brokers; and §§ 5(d) and 5a(8), relied on as to the NYME. Although the other provisions are fairly straight-forward and clearly cover the activities alleged in the complaint, § 4b, to put it mildly, is not an easy provision to construe. Commentators have said of it that While the intent to outlaw fraud is clear from the (A)-(C) subparagraphs, the syntactical mess which precedes them makes it difficult to answer some basic questions about coverage. Bromberg & Lowenfels, supra, § 452, at 82.286. Appellees are wrong in saying that § 4b by its terms only prohibits any person from defrauding any other person in connection with the making of a futures contract for or on behalf of that other person. Thus, if A defrauds broker B, who was making a futures contract for C, A would have defrauded C in connection with a futures contract made for C, although C is not A's customer. 42 The applicability of § 4b may well extend even further, since it could be argued that one trading for his own account makes a contract for himself, thus bringing fraud between two principals within the confused language of § 4b. The legislative history of the provision contains some statements which indicate an intent to protect customers, see H.R.Rep.No.1522, 73d Cong., 2d Sess. 5 (1934), although this is never suggested as the limit of coverage, and other statements which suggest a broad construction, see H.R.Rep.No.1551, 72d Cong., 1st Sess. 1 (1932); 80 Cong.Rec. 6162 (April 27, 1936) (Remarks of Sen. Pope); id. at 7853 (May 25, 1936); H.R.Rep.No.743, 90th Cong., 1st Sess. 3 (1967); S.Rep.No.947, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., reprinted in 2 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News pp. 1673, 1678 (1968). When clarification of the section was suggested in 1974, Senator Clark read § 4b as an example of archaic language, but took it as simply try(ing) to convey the idea that it is unlawful for any person to cheat or defraud another person. Hearings on S. 2485, S. 2578, S. 2837, and H.R. 13113 Before the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, supra, at 687 (Sen. Clark). Senator Clark was echoing the views of a predecessor considering the section when it was proposed: (T)he object of the legislation is, or should be, to prevent deceptive or fraudulent transactions. Any language which accomplished that end is worthy of consideration. 80 Cong.Rec. 7871 (May 25, 1936) (Remarks of Sen. Robinson). None of the cases recognizing an implied right of action under § 4b suggest limitation to the broker-customer relation. Their reasoning is broader, and they frequently cite non-s 4b cases such as Deaktor. In Hirk v. Agri-Research Council, Inc., supra, 561 F.2d at 104, the court suggested that, in line with Superintendent of Insurance v. Bankers Life & Casualty Co., supra, 404 U.S. at 12, 92 S.Ct. at 168, the language of § 4b must be read flexibly, not technically and restrictively. The dissent is thus seriously mistaken in assuming that § 4b will necessarily be limited to cases coming within its crabbed language. We deem it inadvisable to rule on the applicability of § 4b without the benefit of evidence of the exact relations among the various parties; indeed plaintiffs may find it unnecessary to rely on this section. It is enough for present purposes that the CEA counts stricken from the complaints clearly charged a gross violation of the prohibition of manipulation, § 9(b), of the very type against which Congress had been legislating for half a century, as well as §§ 5(d) and 5a(8). 115 The order of the District Court is reversed.