Court Opinion

ID: 8638575
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-24 19:49:20.086621+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:56:01.202162
License: Public Domain

LOWELL, District Judge
(charging jury). The law intends that the invoice, by which goods, purchased abroad and imported into the United States and subject to an ad valo-rem duty, are entered at the custom house, should state accurately the true transaction between the buyer and the seller; and, as part of this statement, that it should be made out in the currency in which the purchase was made, if that is a currency of the country from which the goods are imported; and the statement of the currency in an invoice of such goods is, by intendment of law, a statement that the goods were purchased in that currency, it being a currency of the country.
If the invoice is made out in a currency different from that of the purchase, and that mode of statement would, by the usages of the treasury officers, be likely to result in a payment of less duties than would have been lawfully exacted by the statement of the currency actually used; and the merchant makes out the invoice with the knowledge of this result, and with the design and for the purpose by that mode of statement to obtain this result, then the invoice is falsely made up under the fourth section of the act of May 28, 1830 [4 Stat. 410], although the currency actually used is another currency of the same place or country, and although the statement is an equivalent statement to a person acquainted with the relative values of the currencies. If in this case the invoice was s> made up, with such purpose and intent by the agent of the claimants, and entry of the goods was made upon that invoice by the claimants, their innocence of the purpose and result wiU not prevent a forfeiture, but will *917be proper evidence to be weighed by the jury in considering the intent and design of the entire transaction.
The fourth- section of the act of May 28, 1830, so far as the points involved in this case are concerned, applies to invoices of goods imported in bulk, as well as to goods imported in packages, and to an entry for warehouse as well as to an entry for consumption. If any appraisement is necessary in case of an invoice falsely made out with intent to evade the duties under the fourth section of this act, the appraisement in this case is sufficient
If the jury find that doubloons were in common use at Buenos Ayres, at the time of this purchase, as a medium of purchase and sale, between merchants of Buenos Ayres, and between such merchants and traders from the interior provinces of the Argentine republic (of which Buenos Ayres is one), and in which accounts were often kept by merchants and bankers, then the jury may properly find that doubloons were a currency of the country within'the meaning of the act of March 3, 1801 [2 Stat. 121], although the paper money of the province of Buenos Ayres was also in common use in that province, in purchases and sales, and was a legal tender in that province; and although the doubloon was not of the coinage of Buenos Ayres or of the Argentine republic.
If the jury find that invoices in doubloons were in fact sent forward by the consul without any certificate of the value of the doubloon, and were accepted at our custom houses at a rate satisfactory to our officers and nearer the true value of our money than were the paper Invoices as reduced by the consul’s certificate, that practice is to be considered, for the purposes of this case, to have been a lawful practice, and would be binding on Fol-mar, if he was aware of it; and if, knowing of this difference, he made out the invoice as he did, for the purpose of taking advantage of it, and thereby evading duties, his action would be within the statute.
If the jury find that Mr. Folmar did not make out the invoice for the purpose of evading the duties, as above explained, but for another and different purpose, then the goods are not liable to forfeiture. For instance, if he honestly believed, after due inquiry, whether of our consul or of other persons likely to be informed upon the subject, including his partner in New York, that our custom house regulations required the invoice to be made out in paper; and he in good faith made It out in order to meet that supposed requirement, then the goods would not be liable to forfeiture, although he knew that by that mode a less duty would be paid than by some other mode, which he thought inadmissible, and though no such regulation in fact existed.
On this issue, the burden of proof is on the claimants,—that is, they are to show what the transaction really was. Whichever party has made out his case by the preponderance of the evidence will be entitled to the verdict. If the evidence appears entirely equal on each side, the government must prevail. Very few cases are decided by the burden of proof, because the jury usually finds that one side or the other has made out the best case. There is no evidence in the case upon which the jury can find a false valuation of the goods under either of the statutes upon which this information' is framed.
The jury returned a verdict for the claimants.