Court Opinion

ID: 9419291
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:48:29.118662+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:17.266340
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Jackson,
dissenting:
I am constrained to dissent from the second division of the opinion and from the conclusion it supports.
I cannot deny that on a literal reading the statute says what the Court’s opinion renders it to say. That being *557the case, one cannot be critical of those who stay close to the words of the statute because guiding principles as to where to' depart and in what direction to depart and how far to depart from the literal words of a statute are so conflicting.
But that we have in these matters considerable, although ill-defined, freedom is certain. I could not better state my attitude toward the present statute as applied to this case than in the language of the present Chief Justice in United States v. Katz, 271 U. S. 354, 357:
“All laws are to be given a sensible construction; and a literal application of a statute, which would lead to absurd consequences, should be avoided whenever a reasonable application can be given to it, consistent with the legislative purpose.”
Nor was he announcing unorthodox or unconventional doctrine. In American Tobacco Co. v. Werckmeister, 207 U. S. 284, 293, Mr. Justice Day said:
“But in construing a statute we are not always confined to a literal reading, and may consider its object and purpose, the things with which it is dealing, and the condition of affairs which led to its enactment so as to effectuate rather than destroy the spirit and force of the law which the legislature intended to enact.
“It is true, and the plaintiff in error cites authorities to the proposition, that where the words of an act are clear and unambiguous they will control. But while seeking to gain the legislative intent primarily from the language used we must remember the objects and purposes sought to be attained.”1
If ever we are justified in reading a statute, not narrowly as through a keyhole, but in the broad light of the evils it aimed at and the good it hoped for, it is here. The *558only disadvantage therefrom falls on one who sues, not to be made whole for injuries he has sustained, or to recover for goods he has delivered, or services he has performed, but solely to make profitable to himself the wrong done by others. We should, of course, fully sustain informers in proceedings where Congress has utilized their self-interest as an aid to law enforcement. Informers who disclose law violations even for the worst of motives play an important part in making many laws effective. But there is nothing in the text or history of this statute which indicates to me that Congress intended to enrich a mere busybody who copies a Government’s indictment as his own complaint and who brings to light no frauds not already disclosed and no injury to the Treasury not already in process of vindication.
In this case the Government investigated respondents and on November 3, 1939, indicted them for conspiracy to defraud. On January 5 and February 6, 1940, the de[post, p. 562] the Government indicted and pleas of nolo contendere, and fines were imposed. While the criminal case was still pending, and on January 25, 1940, petitioner commenced his informer proceeding, the averments in his complaint being substantially a copy of the indictment. It is not shown that he had any original information, that he had added anything by investigations of his own, or that his recovery is based on any fact not disclosed by the Government itself. In the companion case [post, p. 562] the Government indicted and pleas of nolo contendere were entered on January 15, 1940, and two weeks thereafter Ostrager filed his complaint alleging facts substantially identical with those in the indictment, some of the paragraphs being almost verbatim copies. We are informed that these cases have already stimulated a number of other private individuals to intervene with similar action after Government criminal proceedings had disclosed frauds.
*559I am sure it was never in the mind of Congress to authorize this misuse of the statute. If ever there was a case where the letter killeth but the spirit giveth life, it is this. Construed to the letter as the Court does, it becomes an instrument of abuse and corruption which can orily be stopped by the timely intervention of Congress. If it were construed according to its spirit to reward those who disclose frauds otherwise concealed or who prosecute frauds otherwise unpunished, it would serve a useful purpose in the enforcement of the law and protection of the Treasury.
Since 1863 this law has been upon the statute books. Never until now has the bar dreamed that it permitted such use. When once it was attempted to commence an informer action under a similar statute after the Government had brought a civil action, this Court promptly limited the statute to preclude that sort of abuse. Francis v. United States, 5 Wall. 338. There was no specific language in the statute to support that court-made limitation, and although I find no specific language in this statute to support another, I should now say that the same limitation exists where the Government has already possessed itself of the facts and disclosed them in criminal proceedings. This is what I think the profession has generally assumed this statute to mean. If the statute has all these eighty years authorized this sort of proceeding, the legal profession of the United States has been strangely unresponsive to a Congressional proffer of windfall income.
We are justified in determining whether we will accept a new interpretation not before sustained in the history of this statute by reference to the condition of our own times rather than to those of former ones. Nothing better illustrates the difference between the conditions of 1863 and the present than the statement quoted by the Court, made by the Senate sponsor of the Informer Act, “Even *560the district attorney, who is required to be vigilant in the prosecution of such cases, may be also the informer, and entitle himself to one half the forfeiture under the qui tarn clause, and to one half of the double damages which may be recovered against the persons committing the act.” I do not understand the Court to hold that a prosecuting attorney may now sue, but in construing the statute as applied to the plaintiff now before us we must not forget that the Senator was then speaking of law-enforcement in a nation which had not yet established a Federal Department of Justice, which did not then have a Federal Bureau of Investigation, or a Treasury investigating force, and in which the activities of the Federal Government were so circumscribed that they had not been found necessary. To accept the view of 1863 to mean that today law-enforcement officials could use information gleaned in their investigations to sue as informers for their own profit, would make the law a downright vicious and corrupting one. Fortunately no one in the executive department has ever suspected that such an interpretation as the Court now indulges could be placed upon this statute. If we were to add motives of personal avarice to other prompters of official zeal the time might come when the scandals of law-enforcement would exceed the scandals of its violation.
But even as to non-officials, to permit the informer to recover when he has not actually informed seems to me an evil result unintended by the Act. The Court’s interpretation means that the Government cannot institute a criminal action that is not subject to seizure of some interloper who thereby wrests control of its course from the Government itself. As lawyers not without experience in the practicalities of law-enforcement, we know that the trial of a criminal case can be wrecked by pre-trial of the issues on the civil side of the court, particularly if the civil trial is conducted by those not interested in the criminal *561prosecution. By trial, by taking of depositions, by other devices, the informer may force the premature disclosure of the Government’s case, and it is certain that by collusion between one who acts as an informer and the party guilty of fraud the latter could obtain a disclosure of the case against him. We know, too, that the chance of conviction may well be prejudiced if the defendant may go before the jury and point to pending proceedings in which adequate reparations will be made. Every person prosecuted for crime, as a part of the strategy of defeating conviction, wants civil actions brought against him, and oftentimes wants to confess them or settle them in order to plead that he has squared his accounts with the law.
Moreover, we know that the assets of men engaged in criminal activities are rarely equal to the discharge of their obligations and in that event by sharing the available assets with an informer, the Government’s financial recovery is diminished.
Also it has been found necessary to vest in someone the power to compromise claims of the Government, either where they are of doubtful collectibility or where the claim itself is of questionable validity. What becomes of the Attorney General’s control over litigation in this respect if an informer may be admitted to share in the control of the case and may act in collusion with the guilty party? May he no longer make a compromise of a case that will withstand subsequent attack by an informer?
It must be borne in mind that this is not a case where we are adhering to a construction of a statute which has been continuously applied over its long fife. In such event I should not unlikely join with my colleagues. This, however, is the case of a new construction upon an eighty-year-old statute, one so farfetched that no member of the bar has ever before ventured to offer it in any reported case.2 *562I would hold that the rich rewards of this kind of proceeding are reserved for those who actually and in good faith have contributed something to the enforcement of the law and the protection of the United States.

 See, also, Ozawa v. United States, 260 U. S. 178, 194; Helvering v. New York Trust Co., 292 U. S. 455, 464-5; United States v. Cooper Corp., 312 U. S. 600.

 Cf. United States v. Cooper Corp., 312 U. S. 600, 613-614.