Court Opinion

ID: 9446338
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:52:37.80919+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:37.343799
License: Public Domain

POPE, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I find myself in accord with substantially everything that is stated in the court’s opinion. The only qualification I would make is the statement that the date of Sec. 121.4 includes Zimovia Strait. Had the appellants raised the point I think it would be a serious question whether the prohibition stated in that section extended to Zimovia Strait, thus raising doubt as to whether there was any closed season in that strait. The section contains an express exception: “With the exception of Ernest Sound and the vicinity of Anan Creek”. But that area would appear to include Zimovia Strait, for the drafters of Sec. 121.3 found it necessary to make an express exclusion of this strait. That is, a reading of 121.3 seems to indicate that “Ernest Sound and * * * the vicinity of Anan Creek”, so described, would ordinarily include Zimovia Strait.
But such a point was not preserved at the trial nor made in the specifications of error here. If the matter were entirely clear, and if it were plain that the regulations simply did not provide any prohibitions as to Zimovia Strait, we might be called upon to notice the point as a plain error under Criminal Rule 52(b), 18 U.S.C. But I am satisfied that the matter is not so plain, but that there is sufficient ambiguity in this part of the regulations so that we may accept the administrative construction of the section under the rule of Norwegian Nitrogen Products Co. v. U. S., 288 U.S. 294, 315, 53 S.Ct. 350, 77 L.Ed. 796, and cases there cited. Cf. Doyle v. Fox, 9 Cir., 234 *568F.2d 830, 833. Hence we are not called upon to notice a point not made by the parties.