Court Opinion

ID: 3605139
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2016-07-05 23:50:51.124857+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:45:34.230386
License: Public Domain

To restrict the phrase "obligation payable in money of the United States" so as to exclude a bond, if in addition, for convenience of foreign bondholders, it also provides for payment in what was meant to be an equivalent amount in Swiss francs, guilders or other foreign currency, would seem to be unduly narrowing a resolution which by its language indicated that it was of the broadest scope. A reading of the Joint Resolution shows it to be a resolution not only broad in scope, but one referring to an obligation as a whole rather than to any particular provisions contained therein. (Norman v. Baltimore Ohio R.R. Co., 294 U.S. 240; Perry v. United States,294 U.S. 330.)
Furthermore, a detailed analysis of the language used would seem to show that the ordinary meaning of the language would reach and apply to every obligation issued before or after the 5th of June, 1933, capable of being paid in the United States. Every such obligation shall be discharged upon payment dollar for dollar in any coin or currency which at the time of payment is legal tender for public and private debts. While the first sentence of the resolution considers the obligation as a whole, and strikes down the gold clause, the next sentence provides in the most sweeping language for every obligation which is capable of being paid or may be paid in money of the United States. This language of the Joint Resolution does not exclude a bond payable in money of the United States because such a bond also contains a provision as a matter of convenience for the payment of the same amounts in foreign currencies. An obligation which is payable in money of the United States is no *Page 500 
whit less such an obligation because it also gives the obligee the right to receive the equivalent of this money in foreign currency.
The obligations in suit are certainly capable of being paid in money of the United States, which brings them within the terms of the Joint Resolution. As such they are dischargeable, dollar for dollar in legal tender.
When we consider that the Joint Resolution precludes a court of the United States from enforcing a gold clause provision, we are forced to the conclusion that such courts may not enforce similar provisions of coupons having the same effect.
The intent of Congress being manifest, to strike down gold clause provisions and any other obstructions to its currency policy, it would seem to follow that all similar provisions contained in the principal obligation should be likewise invalid, to the end that a uniform parity should exist as to all obligations which are capable of being paid in dollars.
The judgment appealed from should be affirmed, with costs.
CRANE, Ch. J., LEHMAN, LOUGHRAN and RIPPEY, JJ., concur with O'BRIEN, J.; FINCH, J., dissents in opinion in which HUBBS, J., concurs.
Judgment accordingly. *Page 501