Court Opinion

ID: 9463097
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:57:58.097326+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:55.868032
License: Public Domain

GOODWIN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I would affirm the Secretary’s order.
In order to facilitate market regulation, Congress has invested certain executive agencies with broad powers. For example, Congress intended that the Federal Trade Commission be accorded wide latitude in its assessment of unfair trade practices. FTC v. Brown Shoe Co., 384 U.S. 316, 86 S.Ct. 1501, 16 L.Ed.2d 587 (1966). The FTC can “define and proscribe an unfair competitive practice, even though the practice does not infringe either the letter or the spirit of the antitrust laws.” FTC v. Sperry & Hutchinson Co., 405 U.S. 233, 239, 92 S.Ct. 898, 903, 31 L.Ed.2d 170 (1972).
Significantly, the prohibitions of sections 202(a) and 312(a) of the Packers and Stockyards Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 192(a) & 213(a), were intended to be as rigorous, if not more rigorous, that those imposed under § 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, § 2 of the Clayton Act, and the various sections of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Wilson & Co. v. Benson, 286 F.2d 891 (7th Cir. 1961). See also, 61 Cong.Rec. 1805. The Packers and Stockyards Act is remedial legislation. Stafford v. Wallace, 258 U.S. 495, 521, 42 S.Ct. 397, 66 L.Ed. 735 (1922). It should be liberally construed in order to fully carry out its public purpose: protection of producers and consumers from economic harm at the hands of middlemen. Bruhn’s Freezer Meats v. United States Department of Agriculture, 438 F.2d 1332, 1336 (8th Cir. 1971).
In deciding what level of proof is required under the Act to characterize an activity as “unfair”, the courts have inquired whether the questioned conduct necessarily offends a central purpose of the Act. See Armour & Co. v. United States, 402 F.2d 712, 717 (7th Cir. 1968). The Seventh Circuit has suggested that the Secretary has broad powers of prohibition with regard to trade practices that conflict with the basic policies of the various antitrust statutes, “even though the practices may not actually violate those statutes * * *. (Citation omitted.)” Armour & Co. v. United States, 402 F.2d at 717. This is fully consistent with the powers recognized in the FJCC. In the instant case, the department had ample evidence that packer-dealer coownership does potentially threaten a central purpose of the statute.
I find no implied authorization in the section governing dealers, 7 U.S.C. § 213, for a dealer to act as a packer; but there is a bar on “unfair practices” which mirrors *1329subsection (a) of 7 U.S.C. § 192, the packer statute. Coownership here must be tested for compliance with both the dealer and packer statutes.
Subsections (c) and (d) of 7 U.S.C. § 192 speak not to packer-dealer identity but to dealer-like activities by an entity plainly identifiable as a packer. I see no inconsistency between absolute prohibition of coownership under § 192(a) (or § 213(a)) and a prohibition under § 192(e) or (d) conditioned on proof of anticompetitive purpose or effect. Distinctions of this type are not unusual in a regulatory scheme as broadly endowed by Congress as this one is.
If I were Secretary, I might not have considered the anticompetitive potential in this case to be as grave as the incumbent apparently has considered it, but I am content to leave the decision in his hands.