Court Opinion

ID: 9650743
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:50:48.307465+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:25.809540
License: Public Domain

HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
From the conclusion of the majority reaffirming the holding of Kennedy v. Mason, 5 Cir., 164 F.2d 1016, that there can be no commerce in war supplies and equipment for the use of the armed forces and that, therefore, the employer and his employees were not engaged in commerce for the production of goods for commerce under the Fair Labor Standards Act, I dissent, as I did in that case.
The holding of the majority, if correct, completely disposes of the case, leaving nothing for judicial determination. If incorrect, the judgment should be affirmed unless for other reasons then become important it should be reversed.
The majority, however, hypothesizing that the employer was engaged in commerce or the production of goods for commerce *264within the act, proceeds upon that hypothesis to determine the status and rights, under the Act, of the various plaintiffs. So proceeding it declares:
“Plaintiffs have wholly failed to discharge their burden of proving that they, as distinguished from their employer, were engaged in commerce or production of goods for commerce, or that a substantial part of their activities were so closely related to commerce as to admit of coverage by the Act.”
I think the reversal of the judgment on the authority of Kennedy v. Mason completely deprives these hypothetical conclusions of substance and authority. While, therefore, I am much impressed with the reasons advanced by the majority for some of them, I feel that I should neither concur in, nor dissent from, these conclusions but should withhold my decision on them until the authority and scope of Kennedy v.' Mason is determined in the Supreme Court where it now is on grant of certiorari.