Court Opinion

ID: 9442466
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 18:49:14.26983+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:06.407443
License: Public Domain

EDGERTON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The court is holding that a corporation which alleges grave and irreparable financial injury caused by a permanent government regulation has no standing to litigate the question whether its constitutional rights are denied, though the regulation was adopted without a hearing and the complaint alleges that it is factually untrue. I think this erroneous for the reasons stated in my dissent in joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. Clark.1 In addition to the cases there cited, La Crosse Telephone Corp. v. Wisconsin, 336 U.S. 18, 69 S.Ct. 379, shows that the appellant corporation has standing to sue. Its standing is, I think, even clearer than that of the appellant in the Joint Anti-Fascist case. I think it immaterial that the regulation here attacked as unconstitutional deals immediately with public business. The Lukens case, 310 U.S. 113, 60 S.Ct. 869, 84 L.Ed. 1108, is irrelevant because no regulation was there attacked as unconstitutional.
In my opinion the District Court erred in denying the motion of appellant Drayton to intervene. Disloyalty proceedings had been brought against him solely because of his membership and activity in the appellant corporation.2 As he says in his motion, “(1) applicant’s claim and the main action have questions of law and fact in common, and (2) there is asserted against the proposed defendants a right of relief arising out of the same transaction, occurrence or series of actions and occurrences.” As he says in his proposed complaint, “Plaintiff has no administrative remedy since all of the defendants hold that the designation of the Order is final and conclusive with respect to the status, character and rights of the Order not only as to them but as to plaintiff as well and that plaintiff *374may not at any state of the administrative process be heard with respect thereto.” The Attorney General’s ruling that the corporation is subversive concludes that question in loyalty proceedings against its members.3 It was unlikely that the corporation could represent Drayton’s interest adequately, for this court held in the Joint Anti-Fascist case' that no organization designated by the Attorney General as subversive can assert a claim in behalf of its members; “only the members themselves are entitled to complain of any personal-injuries they may suffer.” 4
“The permissive nature of * * * intervention necessarily implies that, if intervention is denied, the applicant is not legally bound or prejudiced by any judgment that might be entered in the case. He is at liberty to assert and protect his interests in some more appropriate proceeding.” 5 No other “appropriate proceeding” was available to Drayton, and no showing was made that his intervention would “delay or prejudice the adjudication of the rights of the original parties.” 6 I think the District Court’s refusal to permit him to intervene was an abuse of discretion.

. 85 U.S.App.D.C. 255, 177 F.2d 79; certiorari granted 339 U.S. 910, 70 S.Ct. 573.

. After this appeal was argued, and in response to an inquiry from the bench during the argument of Washington et al. v. McGrath, No. 10413, the Department of Justice informed us that a finding of “reasonable grounds for belief” that Drayton is disloyal has been made by the Post Office Department Loyalty Board and affirmed by the Postmaster General.

. Loyalty Review Board, Memorandum No. 2, March 9, 1948.

. 85 U.S.App.D.C. 255, 259, 177 F.2d 79, 83.

. Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen v. Baltimore & Ohio R. R., 331 U.S. 519, 524, 67 S.Ct. 1387, 1390, 91 L.Ed. 1646.

. Rule 24(b), Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.