Court Opinion

ID: 9418843
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:41:14.029031+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:11.816020
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stone,
dissenting.
I think the judgment should be affirmed.
The Interstate Commerce Commission found that the stockyards are the live stock terminals of the carriers; that a “yardage charge” per animal is assessed on all shipments of live stock delivered by the carriers at the stock yards; that the charge is imposed whether the live stock is taken by the consignee directly from the unloading pens or from the holding pens, to which the animals are taken if not immediately removed by the consignee upon arrival; and that appellee removes about 15% of all shipments consigned to it directly from the unloading pens. Upon the basis of these findings the Commission concluded that the yardage charge upon live stock removed from the holding pens is proper, but that the charge is improper and unlawful when made upon live stock received by the consignee and removed immediately upon arrival from the unloading pens and the yards.
These findings are thus the complete and obvious equivalent of a finding that a charge in addition to the scheduled tariff rate is imposed on consignees, including appellee, for the bare privilege of access to the unloaded live stock for the purpose of its immediate removal from the carriers' terminal. They are ample to raise the questions of law decided below and presented here, whether *203the charge is lawful and whether the Commission has jurisdiction to forbid it. The precise point in space at which delivery is complete, or where transportation ends, is immaterial. For whether it ends when the cattle are placed in the unloading pens or only when the consignee removes the live stock from the terminal, the questions remain whether a charge levied upon the privilege of removal from the carriers’ terminal is lawful and whether, in any case, the Commission has jurisdiction.
It appears that appellee drives the live stock to its place of business, in part over a viaduct, belonging to the stock yards, and in part through a tunnel, the ownership of which does not appear. But the order of the Commission does not require the use of either the viaduct or the tunnel for that purpose, or forbid a charge for their use. It only forbids yardage charges “where delivery was or is taken at the unloading pens.” Appellants are thus left free, after removing the condemned charge, to provide any reasonable means of free access to the stock yards terminal for the purpose of proper removal of the live stock from the unloading pens. See Merchants Warehouse Co. v. United States, 283 U. S. 501, 513; Chicago, I. & L. Ry. Co. v. United States, 270 U. S. 287, 292, 293.
In thus declaring that it is a part of the duty of a common carrier of live stock by rail to provide costless facilities for its delivery and immediate removal by the consignee on arrival at its destination, the Interstate Commerce Commission did not announce any novel rule of law. A carrier can no more lawfully add such a charge to the scheduled rate for the transportation service than it could demand a toll of a passenger, who had paid his fare, for alighting at or passing through its railway station upon arrival, or for removal of his. hand bag delivered to him from its baggage car. This was specifically stated by this Court in Covington Stock-Yards Co. v. Keith, 139 *204U. S. 128, 135, in declaring unreasonable and unlawful any charge for delivery and prompt receipt of the live stock, made by a company whose stock yards had been designated by the rail carrier as its delivery station.
Section 1 of the Act to Regulate Commerce, as originally enacted in 1887, c. 104, 24 Stat. 379, continued this duty of common carriers by rail by providing that the charges for the transportation of passengers or property “or for the receiving, delivering, storage, or handling of such property, shall be reasonable and just.” The Act, as amended, amplifies this duty by providing in § 6 (1) of the Interstate Commerce Act that rate schedules shall “state separately all terminal charges,” and by § 6 (7) which prohibits rail carriers from receiving any greater or different compensation for transportation of passengers or property “or for any service in connection therewith, between the points named in such tariffs than the rates” which are specified in the filed tariff. Section 1 (3) of the Act gives to the Commission jurisdiction over “terminal facilities of every kind used or necessary in the transportation of persons or property . . . including all freight depots, yards and grounds, used or necessary in the transportation or delivery of any such property,” and further provides that the term “ transportation” as used in the Act shall include “all instrumentalities and facilities of shipment or carriage, irrespective of ownership or of any contract, express or implied, for the use thereof, and all services in connection with the receipt, delivery . . . and handling of property transported.” The Commission is thus given jurisdiction over the terminal services of each carrier incidental to the transportation and delivery of freight which could in any wise affect the charges or rates for the transportation service which they undertake to render. Even storage of goods at destination is a part of the transportation service, in the sense of the federal act, *205and subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission. Southern Ry. Co. v. Prescott, 240 U. S. 632, 637; Cleveland, C., C. & St. L. Ry. Co. v. Dettlebach, 239 U. S. 588.
When Congress enacted the Packers and Stock Yards Act of 1921, c. 64, 42 Stat. 159, it gave to the Secretary of Agriculture regulatory jurisdiction over public stockyards, including specified stock yard services, but it was provided by § 406 (a) that “ nothing in this Act shall affect the power or jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission, nor confer upon the Secretary concurrent power or jurisdiction over any matter within the power or jurisdiction of such Commission.”
This duty of the carrier, and the jurisdiction of the Commission to compel the performance of it, were recently recognized and reaffirmed by this Court in Adams v. Mills, 286 U. S. 397, 409-415, upholding a reparation award by the Commission against the carrier and the Chicago Stock Yards for an unloading charge not absorbed by the carrier or included in its schedule of tariffs. It was held that the yards used by the carrier as a place of delivery were terminals of the railroad company regardless of their ownership, see Merchants Warehouse Co. v. United States, supra, 513, that unloading the live stock was a transportation service for which no charge could be made which was not designated in the filed tariffs, and that the Commission had jurisdiction to forbid the unlawful practice and to order reparations for the overcharge. See also Cleveland, C., C. & St. L. Ry. Co. v. Dettlebach, supra; Southern Ry. Co. v. Prescott, supra.
To avoid these plain provisions of the statutes of the United States, and the unambiguous definition by this Court of the duty of a rail carrier of live stock, appellants rely on an ingenious interpretation of § 15 (5) of the Interstate Commerce Act. This section, so far as now material, provides that transportation by railroad of ordinary *206live stock in carloads, received at public stockyards, shall include “ all necessary service of unloading and . . . delivery at public stock yards of inbound shipments into suitable pens . . . without extra charge therefor to the shipper, consignee or owner. . . .” It is said that this legislation, by requiring the carrier to deliver the live stock into suitable pens and by prohibiting any extra charge for all necessary service of unloading the live stock, has left the carriers and the stock yards company, acting together or independently, free to charge the consignee or owner a toll for the privilege of removing his live stock from the stock yard terminal of the carriers.
In view of the consistent policy of the law, and the persistent but unsuccessful efforts of carriers and stock yards to impose forbidden charges for carrier service attending the unloading and delivery of the live stock, it would seem that the words, “all necessary service of unloading and . . . delivery” of live stock at a stock yard might fairly be taken to include all those incidental services at a terminal which the carrier is bound to render for its scheduled tariff and that “suitable pens” to which the carrier must make the delivery must at least be taken to mean pens to which the consignees may gain unimpeded access for the purpose of removing their stock. But if such is not the meaning of its language, and the statute speaks only of delivery of the live stock into the pens capable of holding them, it is difficult to see upon what principle of statutory construction it can be said that the section, by forbidding one unlawful practice, sanctions another which it does not mention. Its purpose was remedial, to remove an old evil, and not to sanction a crop of new ones by giving stock yards and rail carriers of live stock carte blanche to impose vexatious charges which for more than thirty years had been condemned by this Court as unlawful.
*207The section was added by way of amendment to the bill which became the Transportation Act of 1920, c. 91, 41 Stat. 456, in consequence of representations made to the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce of the House in behalf of the American National Live Stock Association and the National Live Stock Shippers League. See 59 Cong. Rec. 674. Their representative made bitter complaint of the practices of carriers and stock yards, in adding terminal charges to the scheduled carrier rates, so that shippers could not know in advance the cost of the complete transportation service involved in taking live stock from the point of shipment into the hands of the consignee ready to receive it at point of delivery. The resolution of the Associations asked the enactment, as a part of the Interstate Commerce Act, of the rule of the Covington Stock-Yards case, and specifically “that there be one through rate on live stock for the whole services from point of origin to the destination at public stockyards . . . which shall include unloading into suitable pens and delivery therein at such stock yards ... including such facilities as are necessary or in use for making such delivery.” See Hearings before the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce on H. R. 4378, House of Representatives, 66th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 139, 141, 874, 875, 881.
In introducing the amendment in the Senate, Senator Cummins, Chairman of the Interstate Commerce Committee, referred to the request of the Live Stock Association in emphasizing the purpose of the amendment, which he stated was to require the séries of services rendered in connection with the transportation to be performed for a single scheduled rate. 59 Cong. Rec. 674. On the coming in of the conference report on the bill recommending it in its final form, the House Managers made a statement that the purpose of the amendment was to provide that *208the “ through rates on live stock should include unloading and other incidental charges.” 59 Cong. Rec. 3264. The legislative history from beginning to end indicates unmistakably the single purpose to give the Commission authority to remove the very abuses described and forbidden by the Court in the Covington Stock-Yards case. It would be an incongruous result of this legislation if, by forbidding an unlawful charge for putting the live stock into the unloading pens, it had made lawful the same charge for taking it out, and had thus condemned the aggrieved shippers and consignees to the limbo from which they were earnestly striving to escape. An interpretation of a statute leading to an absurd result is to be avoided where reasonably possible, as it plainly is here. See United States v. Katz, 271 U. S. 354, 357; Hawaii v. Mankichi, 190 U. S. 197, 212.
It is true that yardage charges have been imposed by the appellant stock yard for many years. But, as already indicated, the Commission found that the charge is lawful when the live stock is removed from the unloading to the holding pens, as is done with most shipments. It does not appear how long and how extensively the charge has been applied to live stock immediately removed from the unloading pens by the consignees. In any case, long continuance of an unlawful practice can neither excuse nor sanction it. See Merchants Warehouse Co. v. United States, supra, 511; Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v. United States, 282 U. S. 740, 759; American Express Co. v. United States, 212 U. S. 522; Los Angeles Switching Case, 234 U. S. 294, 312, 313. I think that the'Commission was right in forbidding the yardage charge as applied to live stock taken by the consignee from the unloading pens, and that its order should be left undisturbed.
In the present state of the case it is unnecessary to consider whether the reparations part of the order was rightly *209directed to both the stock yards and the carriers, or should have been directed to the carriers alone.
Mr. Justice Brandéis and Mr. Justice Cardozo join in this opinion.