Court Opinion

ID: 9447098
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:25:23.333009+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:53.815901
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
I disagree with both opinions herein and would affirm the order as it stands. As Judge Smith points out, there seems ample basis in the evidence to sustain the classification made by the governmental agency charged by law with the responsibility of making it and having the expert knowledge and experience to do so which courts conspicuously lack. Much of this evidence is not noted in the principal opinion; and I shall only summarize it here, since our function is not to make the classification, but to see if it has support in the record. Actually the support is extensive. It includes (1) physical appearance and shape of petitioner’s product, which is clearly that of tumblers, not of bottles or jars; (2) cost of service as to space or special packing and' other attention, again clearly that required for drinking tumblers, rather than for bottles or jars; (3) practice of the trade, shown in several ways, as by the “Glossary of Packaging Terms,”1 published by the Packaging Institute, Inc. (to which petitioner subscribes), the explicit affidavit of Marshall, Vice Chairman of the important freight conference, and the attempt of the Antilles Conference to intervene to preserve its classification ; (4) the holding out to the public, which was that of “packer’s tumblers,” with the label of “glass-jars” employed only on petitioner’s bills of lading to its carriers; and (5) the intent or proposed *317use — a point strongly urged by the petitioner and in fact its one important argument — viz., that the tumblers, though shipped empty, were intended for use as food containers, but one which fails of conviction, since petitioner also sold the product for the other, or (so-called) secondary, use as a tumbler.2 Against this background, involving both the practice of the trade and objective standards or criteria, the holding favoring this one petitioner will appear to other shippers and the carriers as special discrimination.
Turning now to the issue here incompletely abbreviated as that of “willfulness” we should have in mind the exact statutory language of 46 U.S.C. § 815 set forth in note 2 of the main opinion. This makes it unlawful for any shipper “knowingly and willfully, directly or indirectly, by means of false billing, false classification,” or any other unfair means to obtain transportation by water of property at less than the rates otherwise applicable. Since Judge Smith and I have supported the Board’s classification, we must accept as premise here that the classification attempted by the petitioner was unjust and unfairly discriminatory and we have only the further question as to petitioner’s intent in seeking it. And it can hardly be disputed that petitioner knowingly, deliberately, and intentionally sought and still seeks that discriminatory classification. In fact it carefully avoided any inquiry of the carrier or the Conference as to the correct classification, a fact noted by the Board in its report. Also we may recall the difference in labeling on its bills of lading adverted to above — conduct suggesting a careful purpose to avoid the possibility of other classification. This seems to me the very form of purposive act interdicted by the statute in its obvious intent to prohibit discriminatory rates among shippers.
It cannot be that mere lack of knowledge of the law or of any active desire to break it will excuse the prohibited discrimination; that would mean that a shipper may secure the very advantage which the law forbids by not knowing the law or even by claiming to interpret it to his own benefit. So the concurring opinion confuses and negates this statutory intent by importing into this civil case the quite different standards for a conviction of crime. We are not ruling on any criminal prosecution; if one were instituted, the charge to the jury and issues of intent and burden of proof would of course follow standards of criminal prosecution, not of civil regulatory orders. This important distinction is stated and applied to similar wording in a railroad regulatory statute in United States v. Illinois Central R. Co., 303 U.S. 239, 242-243, 58 S.Ct. 533, 82 L.Ed. 773. So in the analogous situation of a similar prohibition against less than railroad tariff rates of the Elkins Act, 49 U.S.C. § 41, the courts hold that “it was not necessary under the Elkins Act that there should be an intentional violation of the law, but that purposely doing a thing prohibited by the statute amounted to an offense.” United States v. Erie R. Co., D.C.N.J., 222 F. 444, 449; United States v. General Motors Corp., 3 Cir., 226 F.2d 745; Boone v. United States, 6 Cir., 109 F.2d 560. I do not see how discrimination to favored shippers can ever be prevented if standards of criminal willfulness are to be read into this regulatory statute. Hence I dissent.

. Though not noted in the opinion, the Glossary contains this definition of “tumbler”: “A container made like a drinking glass, with straight sides or sides flaring slightly outward toward the opening. Also packer’s tumliler. Usually made of glass but also made from transparent molded plastic.”

. The opinion’s striking, though fanciful, description of the tumbler’s further journey into the garbage can, a picnic basket, the kitchen, or the carpenter shop suggests the difficulties of judicial expertise in fields •where judges are not expert. Personally I question whether these tumblers in their “secondary stage” are ever “highly expendable” in the normal household.