Court Opinion

ID: 9789806
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:41:39.848771+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:24.479384
License: Public Domain

VAN DYKE, P. J.
I dissent from that portion of the majority opinion which holds invalid the provisions of the marketing order requiring that a processor who fails to divert shall pay for the peaches he unlawfully processes and sells'by *470paying to the hoard a sum based upon the number of tons of peaches which he failed to divert, computed at the rate per ton represented by the price paid by the processor to producers for Number 1 Cling Peaches.
The majority hold that this provision is invalid because it is a penalty beyond the power of the board to declare and because it is not within the legislative permission of what a marketing order may provide. In my view, it is neither a penalty nor without the legislative permission. Section 1300.15 of the Agricultural Code provides that any marketing order issued by the director may contain, among other things, provisions for “equalizing the burden of such surplus elimination or control among the producers, processors, distributors or other handlers affected.” I believe the provisions of the marketing order under attack come squarely within the legislative permission thus granted. It is part and parcel of the entire scheme for controlling the amount of any agricultural commodity which shall reach the market and it may well have been considered by the director, and those in the industry who approved it, as the most effective means of protecting the industry from the unlawful marketing of surpluses. Under the provisions of the Marketing Act, the cost of eliminating surpluses and off-grade produce is borne by the industry being regulated. Assessments are levied upon producers and processors and the funds so obtained are paid into an administrative fund to defray the cost of enforcing the provisions of the act and of the marketing orders adopted thereunder. In the instant ease the provision attacked provides an additional source of funds for such enforcement which, when collected and placed in the administrative fund, redounds to the benefit of the industry as a whole, just as do the assessments and any other funds collected for that purpose. A processor who violates the provisions of the order forbidding the canning and disposal into the market of off-grade peaches has paid nothing for the fruit he thus illegally commits to the market. He cannot pay the producers from whom he obtained the off-grade fruit and it is, therefore, in no sense a penalty that he be compelled, if he violates the order and processes and sells off-grade fruit, to pay into the admininstrative fund for the benefit of the industry he has thus injured the same price per ton as all other processors have had to pay for the fruit they lawfully processed and marketed. The offending processor has received full consideration for the fund he is required to pay. He is in no sense penalized. *471Such payment directly tends to equalize the burden of surplus elimination and control in the industry. I think that we have here nothing that smacks of penalty; that we have a provision coming squarely within the legislative authorization which permits the order to contain provisions which equalize the burden of control.
I agree with what the majority say concerning the lack of estoppel, hut I would affirm the judgment for the reasons hereinbefore stated.
Respondent’s petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court "was denied July 9, 1958. Traynor, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted.