Court Opinion

ID: 9447237
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:29:39.628072+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:57.422099
License: Public Domain

MOORE, Circuit Judge
(concurring in the result).
Were this case to come before me de novo my views would be entitled “dissenting” and not “concurring.” However, to follow, and be consistent with, the decisions on the subject in this circuit,1 I concur in the result. Nevertheless, although I am apparently a “voice of one crying in the wilderness” (to use —also for the purpose of consistency— the same prophet (Isaiah)) as we have-quoted before in this circuit (General Motors Corp. v. Federal Trade Commission, 2 Cir., 1940, 114 F.2d 33, 36, certiorari denied 1941, 312 U.S. 682, 61 S.Ct. 550, 85 L.Ed. 1120), I cannot accept the conclusion that the words “in clear, conspicuous type” convey a sufficiently clear-standard as to what constitutes adequate-disclosure so as to enable a publisher to understand what it is to do to comply *684either with the laws or the Commission’s orders. Nor can I agree that a single trial examiner of the Commission without the aid of any testimony, expert or otherwise, is the one person in the entire judicial and quasi-judicial system best able to comprehend .the approach of that non-existent character, the “average” reader, in his purchase of a “pocket” book.
Flattered momentarily by the majority’s suggestion that judges may be more intelligent and experienced but quickfy reduced in scale by the conclusion that it is “of no moment that we might think the legends sufficient for ourselves,” I find myself trying to cope with the answer to “clear and conspicuous” to whom ? Certainly they are to us because the majority concedes that the legends on the covers were “easy to read,” were not “illegible” and “in no wise unreadable.” These findings would naturally lead to the conclusion that the Commission’s order has been adequately complied with. But how is the publisher to know? No standards for compliance have ever been suggested. No size of type is specified, no special colors are required, no particular location on the cover or inside pages is directed. Why should a trial examiner decide for or against compliance merely because he concludes that the publishers in printing their books should cater to “the one or two minute purchaser”? What intellectual level is the Commission serving or protecting ? What physical impairments are to be honored ? A 20-20 vision reader may well observe legends which those of us burdened with trifocal lenses would never see.2 If full and complete understanding is to be the test, how does the Commission know that a “substantial portion” of readers comprehend the meaning of “unabridged” even if in one inch letters? Furthermore, if prevention of deception is the goal, how is it possible to reconcile with the contents the lurid3 chromo covers depicting an attractive young woman scantily attired about to meet her death, or suggestively “worse than.” Disappointed purchasers will seldom discover their unfulfilled hopes in a one or two minutes riffling of a book at a newsstand or drug store.
The Commission argues that it is not “required to specify in detail 'what constitutes adequate disclosure of abridgment or of a change of title.’ ” I find this a rather cavalier attitude for a public agency to assume. In many fields it is difficult, in fact often impossible, to specify standards of unfair or deceptive acts or practices. These words frequently “do[es] not admit of precise definition” (Federal Trade Commission v. Raladam Co., 1931, 283 U.S. 643, 648, 51 S.Ct. 587, 590, 75 L.Ed. 1324). Where this be the ease, broad discretion should be granted to the Commission whose deservedly praiseworthy efforts act as an effectual protective buffer between an often misinformed and gullible public and merchants who for their own commercial advantage would exploit these characteristics by extravagant and unfounded representations. On the other hand where, as here, “clear and conspicuous” can be given more finite measurements, standards of type and print should not be kept vague and indefinite so as to make conformity with the Commission’s orders a matter of guesswork by the publisher and possible whim and personal opinion by individual trial examiners.
Publishers about to print thousands of copies at considerable cost should not be put in this predicament of uncertain*685ty. It matters little what the rules are so long as they are decreed with sufficient clarity that they may be followed. The same principle of consistency, however, applies here. For many years the position of this circuit has been made known to publishers by our decisions.4 The lav/ has been stated and should be followed. Whether publishers should be forced with hat in hand to wait upon the Commission in advance of every publication and secure their approval of the format of each book is, in my opinion, highly questionable. But, as previously indicated, we have decided that these so-called standards (vague as I believe they are) are adequate; the law at least in this field is sufficiently definite and requires affirmance of the Commission’s order.

. Hillman Periodicals, Inc. v. Federal Trade Commission, 2 Cir., 1949, 174 F. 2d 122; New American Library of World Literature, Inc. v. Federal Trade Cornmission, 2 Cir., 1954, 213 F.2d 143.

. The trial examiner apparently sets his standard of clarity so that “he who runs may read.” Is not our present pace of life sufficiently rapid that we do not have to add to it by forcing publishers' of books to gear themselves to the running reader? If ever there is-to he a moment for quiet reflection it. might well be spent with a book reflectively selected and not snatched like a mail sack by a speeding mail train.

. Where the majority obtained “the impression of subtle underplaying, at least on some covers,” I am at a loss to understand.

. See footnote 1, supra.