Court Opinion

ID: 9532127
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:18:24.699381+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:40.973782
License: Public Domain

On Petition eor Rehearing
Before Brand, Chief Justice, and Hay, Rossman, Lusk, Latourette and Warner, Justices.
Petition denied.
WARNER, J.
The appellant has filed a petition for rehearing.
The basic reason asserted in justification for the petition seems to spring from a fallacious premise that our previous opinion appears to endow livestock, which have been imported into Oregon, with a continuing immunity from the operation of the brand inspection law. This thought is reflected by several different statements found in the petition but perhaps more succinctly in petitioner’s question: “Does livestock not become part of the mass of property within this state, as do *138other subjects of commerce, when the interstate shipment thereof is ended and the animals come into the possession of Oregon owners?”
We do not think that the reasons assigned for that query, nor the query itself, are warranted by any language found in the original opinion.
It is not always easy to determine the exact moment when any given shipment in interstate transport comes to an end or its final place of rest. It is, nevertheless, a matter of common knowledge that all interstate shipments eventually reach a terminal point, that is, a place where their interstate character and incident immunities from state interference and control are immediately and completely lost and where the shipment, by the same token, becomes immediately and completely responsive and liable to any nondiseriminatory local laws appropriately relating to it. Such is true of any livestock coming into this state from without its boundaries by any means of transport. When we use the term “final place of rest,” we have no reference to that type of temporary rest or momentary interruption in the continued flow of commerce which sometimes gives the commodity a temporary situs sufficient to make it liable to assessment for taxation under local tax laws. See Stebco Inc. v. Gillmouthe, 189 Or. 427, 221 P. 2d 914; Binderup v. Pathe Exchange Inc., 263 U.S. 291, 311, 68 L. Ed. 308, 44 S. Ct. 96.
Concerning § 7 of the Act, we said in our previous opinion: “All of the occasions and circumstances demanding brand inspection are comprehended within its terms.” We there demonstrated that the livestock vulnerable to brand inspection are those which are part of any shipment originating in Oregon. We also said: “In .them [the provisions mandating the use of transporta*139tion certificates] is found the emphasis on the origin of the shipment in Oregon which is the key that opens the door to our understanding and also becomes the crucial test of the right to make a brand inspection under the Act.”
If livestock previously imported into this state are later to become a part of any shipment originating in the state of Oregon (§7, Act of 1949), it necessarily implies that at some prior time, subsequent to their entry into the state, they had ceased to be in the flow of interstate commerce and had become a “part of the mass of property within this state.” They cannot become a part of a new or original shipment beginning in Oregon and at the same time be in the stream of the interstate commerce movement which brought them to this state.
The concept of a shipment originating in this state is incompatible with the concept of the continuity of a previous status in interstate commerce. It is the character of the movement in transport, i.e., a movement from a place in Oregon, which exposes the livestock moved to brand inspection under the Act of 1949 and not any peculiar classification of the animals so moved, i.e., as to whether they were raised in Oregon or had been previously shipped or brought into Oregon from other states. Therefore, in any of our phrases reading in substance, “the only livestock amenable to brand inspection under the Act of 1949 are those which are a part of shipments originating in the state of Oregon,” it becomes unnecessary to emphasize an obvious corollary by an irrelevant phrase such as “including those which had previously come into this state from points outside of Oregon. ’ ’ This is especially true when nothing within the Act nor in our previous opinion *140suggests that an immunity from brand inspection can be successfully claimed for imported animals which later become a part of a shipment or transportation originating in this state. Their immunity from inspection under the Act continues only so long as they are still in the flow of interstate commerce movement which brought them into this state.
It is the protection of Oregon-owned cattle that has commanded the interest of the legislature regardless of how or where such ownership was acquired. The over-all objective of the Act is to prevent by brand inspection shipments of stolen cattle from this state to places beyond its borders and to intercept before slaughter the transportation of such cattle from places within Oregon to slaughterhouses and like institutions in the state.
Once an imported animal has come to a place of final rest in the state of Oregon, in the sense that the flow of interstate commerce has ceased, and thereafter becomes a part of a new shipment or transportation which originates in this state, it is liable to brand inspection under the Act. A brand inspector exercising such authority has only to be sure that the first movement, i.e., the interstate movement into the state, has ended and that the second movement, i.e., one contemplated by § 7 of the Act, has begun. Once that determination has been correctly made, brand inspection is in order; and this can be done as to such cattle, if not previously inspected under the Act, at any Oregon slaughterhouse, stockyard, packing plant, livestock auction market or similar establishment before such livestock are sold or slaughtered.
As we have hereinbefore suggested, the determination of when a movement in interstate commerce *141ends is not always an easy matter. It has been stated that ‘ ‘ each ease mnst be decided npon the facts as they appear in the case.” Chicago & Eastern Illinois Ry. v. Public Service Commission of Indiana, 205 Ind. 253, 186 N.E. 330 (writ of certiorari denied in 290 U.S. 688, 78 L. Ed. 592, 54 S. Ct. 123). Also see Public Utilities Commission v. Landon et al., 249 U.S. 236, 245, 63 L. Ed. 577, 39 S. Ct. 268, where it is said: “Interstate commerce is a practical conception and what falls within it must be determined upon consideration of established facts and known commercial methods.” One reason for this is probably found in the fact that the intent of those engaged in interstate commerce largely determines where the commerce ends. Baltimore & O. S. W. R. v. Settle et al., 260 U.S. 166, 67 L. Ed. 189, 43 S. Ct. 28; 15 C.J.S., Commerce, 296, § 25, and annotations to note 64. Also see Binderup v. Pathe Exchange Inc., supra, 263 U.S. 309, reading:
“ * * * The general rule is that where transportation has acquired an interstate character, ‘it continues at least until the load reaches the point where the parties origmally intended that the movement should finally end.’ Illinois C. R. Co. v. De Fuentes, 236 U.S. 157, 163, 59 L. ed. 517, 519, P.U.R. 1915A, 840, 35 Sup. Ct. Rep. 275 * * *.'' (Italics ours.)
The petitioner claims some confusion because we have frequently employed the word “shipment” and “shipment of livestock” in our previous opinion and suggests that the word “transportation,” as defined by the Act, would be a better substitute. In support, he categorically asserts “we do not find the word ‘shipment’ appearing anywhere in the Act.” We, however, have no misgiving that others will experience the same confusion or fail to recognize that “shipment,” as used by us in this and in our previous *142opinion, includes within the comprehensive ambit of its meaning all methods of movement contemplated by the Act of 1949, i. e., by common carrier, contract carrier, private carrier or on the hoof (§ 2, subsection 17). The word ‘ ‘ shipment ’ ’ as thus applied by us finds justification in the Act itself where, notwithstanding petitioner’s statement to the contrary, it appears many times and as a part of phrases reading “for sale or shipment” (§2, subsection 10); “shipment or movement” (§7, subsection 1); “out-of-state shipment of such livestock” (§ 8, subsection 2); and “the county wherein such shipment originated” (§ 10). Also see § 20 wherein we find “livestock originating in or shipped from,” and § 12, subsection 2, reading, “owner or shipper of said livestock.”
The petition is denied.