Court Opinion

ID: 9450725
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:56:10.165264+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:25.922210
License: Public Domain

ALDRICH, Chief Judge
(concurring).
I prefer to dispose of the merits in a less comprehensive manner. Section 403 of the Federal Aviation Act requires payment for transportation to be made essentially in cash. See Fullerton Lumber Co. v. Chicago, M., St. P. & P. R. R., 1931, 282 U.S. 520, 521-522, 51 S.Ct. 227. If one assumes that the parties here did not enter into the questioned transportation arrangement until after the indebtedness had been finally settled on a monthly payment basis, the tickets clearly were not paid for in cash. A time note is not the equivalent of cash. Its value depends upon factors of credit, interest rate, etc., as any glance at the bond market, even for government bonds, must reveal. The arrangement does not become any less vulnerable if the extension of Northeast’s indebtedness and the undertaking to pay on demand only in transportation services were made in one integrated agreement. It must be that the indebtedness which the parties were compromising was not the equivalent of cash, or no compromise of this nature would have been necessary. Obviously, also, it was not a case of Sperry buying tickets in advance which it could redeem for cash at any time. Sperry did not have the equivalent of cash before it made the agreement, or afterwards. Consequently on no theory was the cash requirement of section 403 met by equivalence.