Court Opinion

ID: 9643427
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:29:02.32137+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:00.461127
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
Though I agree with what is said in the opinion, I should have preferred to rest decision upon the broader ground that even as to the cleaning of those garments owned by the people who wore them, defendant-appellant was within the Act, i.e., that the limitation of “goods” in § 3(i) to exclude those delivered into “the actual physical possession of the ultimate consumer” does not apply when those goods are again returned, even if only for a limited time, to the stream of interstate commerce as otherwise defined in the Act. This is in line with the legislative history — now persuasively presented to us in the Administrator’s brief amicus curiae — showing that the provision was intended to prevent an otherwise possibly overextensive application of the Act’s penalties, even to an ultimate consumer merely receiving the goods at the end of their interstate journey; it accords with the case precedents to date (Walling v. Roland Electrical Co., 4 Cir., 146 F.2d 745; Slover v. Wathen, 4 Cir., 140 F.2d 258, 259; Walling v. Armbruster; D.C.W.D. Ark., 51 F.Supp. 166; cf. Enterprise Box Co. v. Fleming, 5 Cir., 125 F.2d 897); and it accords further with the views of cases such as Lonas v. National Linen Service Corporation, 6 Cir., 136 F.2d 433, and Martino v. Michigan Window Cleaning Co., 6 Cir., 145 F.2d 163, giving a somewhat extensive content to the exemption of § 13(a) (2) for “retail or service establishments,” but in effect repudiating this suggested more extensive and overlapping, if not conflicting, exemption. The withdrawal of our former opinion eliminates all direct support for appellant’s contention, but it seems to me so opposed to the fair and just operation of the Act — as, indeed, the Administrator demonstrates in his brief— that I think we should studiously avoid any implication of support for it.