Court Opinion

ID: 9475439
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:27:34.203723+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:43.466350
License: Public Domain

NOONAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
The court uses two measures of value to uphold the convictions. It holds that each bond had “a printed face value of $50, 000.” But an incomplete instrument has no face value. The numbers on the incompleted form do not proclaim anything until the instrument is signed and appears to be in due form. On its face an incomplete instrument proclaims its lack of value.
One of the two approaches to value taken in United States v. Bell, 742 F.2d 509 (9th Cir.1984) is to the contrary. The part of that opinion finding face value in a blank money order is not in agreement with several other cases using only street value, that is the value established by a thieves’ market, to determine the value of blank instruments. United States v. Tyers, 487 F.2d 828 (2d Cir.1973); Churder v. United States, 387 F.2d 825 (8th Cir.1968).
The latter decisions seem to me to be correct. The jury in the instant case was given no instructions as to how it should determine value other than a repetition of the words of the statute that value “means the face, par or market value, whichever is greatest” and an instruction on market value that “when a seller of securities willingly agrees to a sales price with a willing buyer the market value is thus set. This applies to either the legal or illegal market place.” No objection was made by the defendants to this instruction. The problem that a market created by a government agent may be an artificial market was not brought to the trial court’s attention. But it was not plain error to omit an instruction pointing to the government’s part in creating the market. On the facts of this case, it was reasonable for the jury to conclude that the price of $110,000 agreed to by Pinto and Agent Burkes was the market value of the securities.