Court Opinion

ID: 9420336
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:54:01.400881+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:24.195845
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Vinson,
with whom
Mr. Justice Douglas and Mr. Justice Jackson join, dissenting.
The Court holds that fifteen months’ delay in transshipment of the gasoline in question was so long that continuity of the process of exportation was broken, because during that period it might have been diverted to domestic markets. I think that this rationale and the conclusion which follows therefrom mark a substantial and unwarranted departure from our previous decisions in this field.
As I understand it, the Court’s opinion reflects the view that a long delay in transshipment makes it uncertain whether the gasoline will eventually be exported, and further, that a delay of fifteen months makes it possible for this Court to say, as a matter of law that the uncertainty is so great that the process of. exportation has ceased, whatever the reason for the delay. But the Court concedes that petitioner intended to export the gasoline at the time the tax was imposed, and petitioner’s uncontradicted evidence shows that it had that intent throughout the period of delay, which was caused by its inability to procure water transportation. That intent was manifested in a number of ways. . The bills of lading by which the gasoline moved from Graniiville and Alma, Michigan, to Dearborn, a Great Lakes port, were marked “For Export to Canada”; petitioner certified that the gasoline was to be exported iri order to secure an exemption under the federal manufacturer’s excise tax and to qualify for lower freight rates accorded exports; it transported 50,000 gallons of the gasoline by truck, over the Ambassador Bridge *290into Canada until a federal regulation closed the bridge to inflammable materials; and finally, petitioner exported all of the gasoline to Canada when shipping space became available. There is nothing in the record to indicate either that petitioner at any time deviated from that expressed intent, or that the delay was not due solely to lack of shipping space.
The Court is in the anomalous position, therefore; of holding as a matter of law that a fifteen-month delay in transshipment breaks the “stream of export” because of the resulting uncertainty that the goods will ultimately be exported, when all of the evidence is to the effect that the shipper’s intent to export has never wavered; that exportation was as certain as of the date of the tax as it had been fifteen months before. The Court has previously considered the question to be quite a different one. We have held that
“The character of the shipment in such a case depends upon all the evidential circumstances looking to what the owner has done in the preparation for the journey and in carrying it out. The mere power of the owner to divert the shipment already-started does not take it out of interstate commerce, if the other facts show that the journey has already begun in good faith and temporary interruptiomof the passage is reasonable and in furtherance of the intended transportation, as in the Champlain case.” Hughes Brothers Timber Co. v. Minnesota, 272 U. S. 469, 476-476 (1926).
This test was quoted with approval by Mr. Chief Justice Hughes in Minnesota v. Blasius, 290 U. S. 1, 10 (1933), and he added, “The question is always one of substance, and in each case it is necessary to consider the particular occasion or purpose of the interruption djiring which the tax is sought' to be levied.” See also to the same effect, *291Champlain Realty Co. v. Town of Brattlehoro, 260 U. S. 366, 377 (1922); Carson Petroleum Co. v. Vial, 279 U. S. 95, 102 (1929); United States v. Erie R. Co., 280 U. S. 98, 102 (1929). The Court now refuses to look at any circumstances except the delay — not even the reason for the delay.
It is true that petitioner could have moved the gasoline more quickly had it used the more expensive all-rail service. But in almost every case of delay a quicker method of moving the goods might have been devised. No doubt the logs held up by low water in Coe v. Errol, 116 U. S. 517 (1886), could have been drawn overland by mules or oxen. And it would have been possible, though not practical, for oil to have been transferred directly from tank cars to waiting ships in Carson Petroleum Co. v. Vial, supra, yet this Court found that the delay necessarily attendant upon the accumulation of oil in tanks at the waterfront to await the arrival of ships did not constitute interruption of the process of exportation. The delay was “reasonable and in furtherance of the intended transportation.”
Concededly, the gasoline here involved was in the process of exportation when taxed unless the delay was alone enough to break the stream of export. It had been started on its journey with every indication that it. was to be transshipped for export. If actual exportation had followed its arrival in Dearborn by a few days or weeks, there is no question that it would have been a commodity in the process of exportation and thus exempt from tax. In this situation, the Court has always, until today, applied “a liberal construction of what is continuity of the journey, in cases where the Court finds from the circumstances that export trade has been actually intended and carried through.” Carson Petroleum Co. v. Vial, supra at pp. 105-106. But the Court now treats as immaterial the fact that the process of .exportation had *292started, which has always been considered the decisive factor, Cornell v. Coyne, 192 U. S. 418 (1904), Empresa Siderurgica v. County of Merced, 337 U. S. 154 (1949), and assumes that a delay of fifteen months conclusively demonstrates that certainty of exportation had been undermined. It is almost always possible in cases of this kind that the .owner of the goods may change his mind before exportation is actually carried out, as Mr. Justice Holmes pointed out in Spalding & Bros. v. Edwards, 262 U. S. 66, 70 (1923). Delay undoubtedly increases the possibility, but it does not work such a change as a matter of law. The question, instead, is that previously pointed out, namely, whether “the journey has already begun in good faith and [whether] temporary interruption of the passage is reasonable and in furtherance of the intended transportation.” Hughes Brothers Timber Co. v. Minnesota, supra, at 476.
The result is that the. Court, without consideration of the fact that the gasoline had been started on its journey with the- intent that it be transshipped for immediate export to Canada, holds that fifteen months’ unavoidable. delay is so productive of uncertainty that the process of exportation ceases as a matter of law. It might be pointed out that in the leading case of Coe v. Errol, supra, logs being floated down a river were held up by low water for about a year, but this Court did not consider that delay enough to break the continuity of the interstate journey. The line now seems to be drawn somewhere between twelve and fifteen months, whatever the other circumstances. • Such an arbitrary demarcation is hardly consonant with “the liberal protection that hitherto [exports] have received.” Spalding & Bros. v. Edwards, supra, at p. 70. I would adhere to the test set out in. our previous decisions : whether the delay was reasonable under all the circumstances and in furtherance of the intended transportation.