Court Opinion

ID: 9443257
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:15:52.610747+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:25.715341
License: Public Domain

L. HAND, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Already before the order here in suit was passed in 1945, handlers had paid a “uniform price” to producers for fluid milk delivered in a marketing area, that price being computed as it has been under the order in suit. This was by the following formula. Milk was divided by its “uses”— “fluid milk” was one “use” and there were many others, which can be lumped as “products.” Each “use” was given a “classified price,” and the handler became liable for the price of the “use” to which he put his fluid milk: his liability was therefore the product of the number of hundredweights he took, multiplied by the “classified prices” for the “uses” to which he put them. The amounts for which handlers so became liable were added together, and the total was divided by the number of hundredweights of “fluid milk” delivered by the producers. The quotient was - the “uniform price,” and was the price at which the “pool” settled with its producers. Since this price was inevitably somewhere between the highest and lowest of the “classification prices,” it followed that the account of any particular handler would never — except theoretically — equal the amount due by him to the producers for the milk which he had taken. If he had turned the milk to lower priced “uses,” his payment would not equal the amount owed by the “pool” to the producers for that milk; if he had turned his milk to higher priced "uses,” his payment would be higher. Nevertheless, it is obvious that the excesses would always exactly cancel the deficiencies, and that there would be enough to pay producers the “uniform price.”
In administration it turned out that this system resulted in shortages of supply in the drier seasons and in variations in the “uni*798form price” to producers; and these the Secretary sought to correct by the amendments of 1945. Until then there had been no condition upon any “plant’s” becoming a “pool plant” except that the milk received by it must be properly certified hygienically by the local public authorities. One provision of the order here in suit required all “pool plants” between August and March to supply to their allocated “marketing areas” in the form of “fluid milk” 25 per cent of all milk received by them, and for the other four months, 10 per cent. In addition, the provisions of the order here in suit imposed upon handlers who procured milk or “products” from a “non-pool plant” the payments or penalties which the plaintiff has paid and seeks to recover in this action. These provisions were designed to protect the “uniform price” from the competition of “non-pool” handlers, and to induce plants to become “pool plants” subjecting themselves to the conditions just mentioned. This the Secretary attempted to do by financially handicapping handlers of “non-pool” milk; probably because the Act — § 8c(5) (G) — forbade him to “prohibit” or “limit” the “marketing” of “products” in a “marketing area.” These provisions required “non-pool” handlers to pay a differential, made up of the difference between a minuend and a subtrahend, determined as follows. The minuend was always the local “classification price” for the “use” to which the “non-pool” handler had turned the milk. The subtrahend differed according to whether or not the “product” had been made under the regulation of another “pool.” Where it had not been, the subtrahend was the local “classification price” for butter fat; when it had been, it was the “classification price” fixed in that order for the “use” to which the milk had been turned.
What orders, short of prohibition or limitation, the Secretary might adopt to protect the new system of “pool plants” which he had set up, it was certainly for him to say within the limits of his statutory powers. One method might have been to restore to the producers in a “pool” what they had lost by the “non-pool” competition of each handler; but that was patently impossible to determine, and nobody suggests that it should have been attempted. Another method was to impose upon a “non-pool” handler the same cost that “pool” handlers must pay, thus eliminating any inducement to poach, so to say, upon the local “pool.” The provisions in suit were promulgated to effect this purpose; and I shall assume that they can be defended only on that ground. However, like all rules made to carry out statutory powers, it was not necessary that in application they should go not a jot beyond the exact purposes for which they were intended. There is always a permissible latitude or overlap, which can be justified by the administrative difficulties which may arise in exactly limiting the scope of the measures taken to their need. The Secretary, if he was justified in supposing that the remedy which exactly matched the evil, would prove in execution more cumbersome, dilatory and obstructive than any prejudice which its application would impose upon a handler, was entitled to adopt it, although of course this exercise of his “discretion” is reviewable by us. His decision, and our review of it, do indeed involve a choice between conflicting interests, for which there are, and can be, no general rules. The standard applied is “arbitrary”: i. e. personal; and its ambit is correspondingly narrow, and should be jealously scrutinized; nevertheless it is a delusion to suppose that such latitude is not inevitable in all administration, which without it would degenerate into an impenetrable jungle of verbiage. We ought, I submit, approach the determination of the differential with this in mind.
No one can object to the minuend: i. e. the local “classification price” for the “use” in question — for that is what the “pool” handler has to pay; the doubt arises as to the subtrahend: i. e. the proper credit for the amount which the “non-pool” handler has already paid. When there is a similar order in the “pool” where he has bought, it is fair to take the “classification price” in that “pool” for that “use.” It is possible that on occasion he máy have to pay more, but by hypothesis the price has. been fixed as adequate in that market, and it is likely to be the current price. In any event I *799cannot think that it will he argued the Secretary was not free in the interest of convenient administration to assume that outside “pool” handler has paid no more. However, only a small part of the recovery here at bar is for products sold after a "pool” had been installed in Ohio; and the subtrahend used to compute the differential during the earlier period presents greater difficulties. It must be owned that there is not the least reason to suppose that the price paid by a handler in an unregulated market will be the same as the “classified price” of butter fat in a local “pool”; and there must be substantial reasons for so fixing his subtrahend. I think that there were. The alternative — so far as I can see, the only one — was to conduct an inquiry as to what the handler had in fact paid for each purchase; and that was imperative, I submit, only in case its absence would deprive the putative handler of an interest plainly more weighty than the impediment which the inquiry would impose upon fixing the subtrahend to be used. In such an inquiry the Secretary would have to choose between accepting the evidence of the handler, to whom all the facts were accessible, and conducting an inquiry of his own which would on occasion be expensive and would always be dilatory. Against this was imposed the chance that a “non-pool” handler might be compelled to compete with the “pool” upon unequal terms: i. e. would not be allowed his full cost. I do not disguise the fact that that was a very real chance; I may even assume for argument that as to all “uses” except butter fat itself, it was an extreme probability. On the other hand, it seems to me that the “non-pool” handler’s interest in an “unloaded” competition was not of enough importance —or at least that the Secretary might conclude that it was not — to require what would amount to a controversial inquiry as to each purchase in which the Secretary would be at great disadvantage. It was not as though the “non-pool” handler was deprived of his milk — by hypothesis he was free to sell it in the unregulated area where it was produced, or any other such area. All that the order denied him was the privilege of invading the “pool” upon equal terms with the “pool” handlers. I cannot believe that that interest was so vital that to protect it the Secretary was compelled to clog the administration of the Act as the plaintiff insists that he was.
There remains the question whether the statute gave the Secretary adequate authority to promulgate the provisions in suit; and § 8c(5) (C) and § 8c(5) (B) did not do so. Laying aside § 8c(5) (C) as too indefinite, his authority must therefore be found in the parentheses at the outset of § 8c (5): (“except as provided in subsection (7) ).” Nothing “provided” in that subsection is relevant except subdivision D, which allows the Secretary to insert in an order any specifications, “incidental to” and “necessary to effectuate the other provisions of such order.” I shall not labor the argument that the provisions in suit were “incidental” to the order, and that their “necessity” was clearly for the Secretary to decide. I shall confine myself to whether they were “inconsistent with the terms and conditions specified in subsections (5), (6), and (7).” The only parts of these three subsections with which they can be thought to be “inconsistent” are § 8c(5) (A), § 8c(5) (B) and § 8c(5) (G). Section 8c(5) (A) authorizes the insertion in an order of “terms and conditions” fixing “minimum prices” .that all handlers shall pay “for milk purchased from producers”. The provisions in suit do not do that; they fix no prices “for milk purchased from producers” at all, if by “price” is meant the money that eventually goes to producers in payment for their milk. The differential exacted from a “non-pool” handler is not the “price” of anything; moreover — for whatever that may be worth — it is collected “to accomplish the purposes” of assuring “minimum prices” for milk delivered by producers, § 8c(5) (C). Section 8c(5) (B), unlike § 8c(5) (A), is not concerned with fixing prices that handlers shall pay for milk delivered to them; but with the payment to producers for the milk delivered by them; and § 8c(5) (B) (i) may be ignored, for it only demands uniformity of price for the milk delivered to “the same handler”; Section 8c(5) (B) (ii) requires a single price to be paid to all producers for all milk delivered to handlers, “irrespec*800tive of the uses made of such milk by the individual handler to whom it is delivered”: i. e. the producers shall be paid a “uniform price” for “fluid milk.” The provisions in suit can indeed be deemed “inconsistent” with this, if one reads “all producers” to include “non-pool” producers, for the differential is not paid to the “non-pool” producers; and indeed, even if it were, it would not make the price paid to such a producer the same price as that paid to other producers. However, it is apparent that such producers were not intended, for if they were, “non-pool” producers whose milk came into competition with a “pool” would be automatically included in the “pool.”
There remains only § 8c(5) (G), which forbids any order affecting “any marketing area” to “prohibit or in any manner limit, in the case of the products of milk, the marketing in that area of any milk or product thereof produced in any production area in the United States.” This was introduced at the demand of cheese-makers, principally of Wisconsin, to prevent the exclusion of their cheese from any “marketing area”; it was not intended to touch the price of milk or “milk products.” The provisions in suit do not in terms limit “the marketing” of any “products” in the area of a “pool,” although no doubt they do lessen the inducement to such “marketing,” which in.turn would almost certainly result in marketing fewer of such “products” in that area. The plaintiff’s argument therefore is, and indeed must be, that § 8c(5) (G) forbids any provision in an order, however necessary to protect a “pool,” if in operation it will result in limiting the introduction of “products” into “the marketing area.” I cannot believe that, when Congress decided to regulate the industry in order to assure a “uniform price” to producers, it meant by § 8c(5) (G) to forbid all protective'measures, which should result in lessening the amount of “products” which without such measures would have entered the “marketing area” in question.' It is not necessary in any such way to expand the literal meaning of the word, “limit,” and its conjunction with the word, “prohibit,” strongly suggests that it was directed only against any express quantitative limit. Of course I agree that the Secretary might not put such a limit upon the amount of “products” that might come in from outside; but I do not believe that he might not economically handicap those who sought to bring them in, although, as was inevitable, such a handicap would diminish the amount which entered the “marketing area.”
I can see so little basis for the assertion that the provisions in suit are unconstitutional that I shall not discuss it. The only possible doubt would be as to the plaintiff’s condensed milk before the notice of hearing was amended, and as to that I am in accord with the “Judicial Officer” that it is a case of de minimis. I think that the order should be affirmed.