Court Opinion

ID: 9469318
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:37:25.223502+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:19.733035
License: Public Domain

OAKES, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I realize that the era of purposive interpretation of Acts of Congress may be at an end, and a new era of literalism at hand. The view may no longer prevail that “[tjhere is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally” and that “although [Congress’s] words are by far the most decisive evidence of what they would have done, they are by no means final.” Guiseppi v. Walling, 144 F.2d 608, 624 (2d Cir. 1944) (L. Hand, J., concurring), aff’d sub nom. Gemsco, Inc. v. Walling, 324 U.S. 244, 65 S.Ct. 605, 89 L.Ed. 921 (1945). We are now urged instead to pay “strict adherence” to Congress’s chosen words. Mohasco Corp. v. Silver, 447 U.S. 807, 826, 100 S.Ct. 2486, 2497, 65 L.Ed.2d 532 (1980). See generally Note, Intent, Clear Statements, and the Common Law: Statutory Interpretation in the Supreme Court, 95 Harv.L.Rev. 892 (1982). I nevertheless dissent.
Our task here is to determine which administrative agency — the Department of Agriculture or the Federal Trade Commission — was intended by Congress to have jurisdiction over alleged unfair practices in *287Perdue’s sale of slaughtered poultry.1 The statute at hand provides for USDA jurisdiction over “live poultry dealer[s] or handler[s]” (emphasis added). Jurisdiction over a company dealing solely in slaughtered poultry is left to the FTC. Perdue deals primarily but not solely in slaughtered poultry. Its only live poultry business, worth $2 million a year or 0.5% of total annual sales, is selling excess live broilers and “spent” breeder hens and cockerels. Unlike the majority, I read the statute to extend USDA jurisdiction over Perdue’s live poultry business, but not beyond that to its business in slaughtered and dressed poultry and poultry products. Nothing in the legislative history, the case law, or past administrative interpretation leads me to believe that the sale of one live chicken subjects a dealer to USDA jurisdiction over all his poultry products.
As the majority concedes, the legislative history of the 1935 amendments to the Packers and Stockyards Act reveals that Congress specifically declined to extend the Act’s coverage to all poultry dealers. Proposed language that would have covered producers of slaughtered poultry, see 78 Cong.Ree. 457 (1934), was omitted from section 503 of the Act when the amendments were enacted, see 7 U.S.C. § 218b. The amendments, aimed at protecting producers as well as consumers from racketeering in the live poultry market, extended the Act only to “live poultry dealers.” See S.Rep.No. 487, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. (1935); 79 Cong.Rep. 12593 (1935). The legislative purpose, as codified in section 501 of the Act as amended, was to eliminate unfair and deceptive practices in “[t]he handling of the great volume of live poultry” 7 U.S.C. § 218 (emphasis added). Nothing in the 1935 amendments indicates congressional intent to apply the Packers and Stockyards Act to slaughtered poultry production.
The majority rests its interpretation on the language of the 1958 amendments to the Act.2 Prior to 1958, the introductory language of section 202 read:
*288It shall be unlawful for any packer or any live poultry dealer or handler to: ... [prohibited practices enumerated].
The 1958 amendments changed that language to read:
It shall be unlawful with respect to livestock, meats, meat food products, livestock products in unmanufactured form, poultry, or poultry products for any packer or any live poultry dealer or handler to: ... [prohibited practices enumerated].
7 U.S.C. § 192. The majority reasons that “[t]here is no question that Perdue sells some live poultry; and the term ‘poultry or poultry products’ clearly encompasses slaughtered, ready-to-cook poultry. Thus, under the foregoing literal interpretation of the Act, Perdue’s alleged practices concerning the wholesale marketing of slaughtered, ready-to-cook poultry are covered by § 202.” After scanning the legislative history of the amendments the majority concludes that “Perdue has failed to demonstrate through clear evidence Congress’ intention not to include, in spite of the contrary statutory language added in 1958, the slaughtered poultry activities of live poultry dealers.” I take a different view.
The 1958 amendments were not in the least addressed to live poultry dealers or handlers. They were intended to resolve a debate about how to divide jurisdiction over packers between the FTC and the USDA. The Act had previously given the USDA sole jurisdiction over persons subject to the Act, and explicitly denied the FTC any jurisdiction except as requested by the USDA. Persons subject to the Act included “packers” as defined in section 201.3 The 1958 amendments predicated jurisdiction on the activities rather than the persons covered in order to ensure that USDA jurisdiction over “packers” would not extend beyond the activities enumerated in the statutory definition of a “packer” to packers’ other unrelated activities. The House Report on the amendments explained:
Under the present provisions of the Packers and Stockyards Act jurisdiction [over packers] is predicated entirely upon the “person.” The term “packer” is defined in section 201 of the act and any person or firm who falls within this definition is under the jurisdiction of the act and, therefore, of the Secretary of Agriculture with respect to all his activities, in interstate commerce whether or not they are directly related to the slaughter, processing, and marketing of livestock. While retaining the existing definition of a packer, the bill amends the act so that jurisdiction is predicated not upon the mere fact that a person or firm may fall within the definition of a packer but upon the type of activity carried on by such person. The bill limits the jurisdiction of the act and, therefore, of the Secretary of Agriculture to those commodities specifically listed in paragraph (1): “livestock, meats, meat food products, livestock products in unmanufactured form, poultry, or poultry products.” Activities of packers with respect to all other products will fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission.
This basic change in the jurisdiction of the act is reflected in section 3 where a change is made in the Federal Trade Commission Act to change the reference there from “persons, partnerships, or corporations subject to the Packers and Stockyards Act” to “matters made subject to the Packers and Stockyards Act”.
*289H.R.Rep.No. 1048, 85th Cong., 2d Sess. 5-6 (1957), reprinted in [1958] U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News 5212, 5217-18 (emphasis added).
By incorporating into section 202 the words “poultry” and “poultry products” that previously had been embodied in the definition of a “packer,” Congress thus did not intend to expend USDA jurisdiction over live poultry dealers. Congress’s sole intent was to clarify and limit USDA jurisdiction over packers, leaving to the PTC jurisdiction over nonpacking activities engaged in by packers.4 There is nothing in this legislative history to negate the inference that Congress similarly intended the USDA to exercise jurisdiction over the live poultry activities — defined in section 503 of the Act as “buying or selling live poultry in commerce for purposes of slaughter,” 7 U.S.C. § 218b — of “live poultry dealers,” while jurisdiction over the unrelated activities of “live poultry dealers” would remain with the FTC.
The applicable case law supports this more limited reading of the Act. Even before the 1958 amendments, courts found that packers were not subject to USDA jurisdiction for activities not integral to their packing operations. In Crosse & Blackwell Co. v. FTC, 262 F.2d 600, 606 (4th Cir. 1959), the Fourth Circuit found that “a canner of miscellaneous products is so far removed from [the business] of the packing industry, upon which the attention of Congress was focused, that it may be said to have been reached by the [Packers and Stockyards] Act, if at all, only to the extent it is actually concerned with the processing of meats.” The court observed that “it was never intended that relatively inconsequential activity which might be classified as meat packing should insulate all of the other activities of a corporation from the reach of the Federal Trade Commission.” Id. at 605. See also Safeway Stores, Inc. v. Freeman, 244 F.Supp. 779, 781 (D.D.C.1965) (supermarket chain held subject to USDA jurisdiction under the Packers and Stockyards Act only to the extent that it actually engaged in the specific activities covered by the Act, but otherwise subject to FTC jurisdiction), aff’d, 369 F.2d 952 (D.C.Cir.1966).
To be sure, I put not much stock in subsequent negative legislative history. The fact that Congress has several times rejected amendments which would clearly bring integrated poultry producers like Perdue within the Act does indicate, however, that some people at least think they are not now included except to the extent of their live poultry sales, if any. See, e.g., H.R. 7527, 89th Cong., 1st Sess. (1965); S. 2879, 90th Cong., 2d Sess. (1968); H.R. 12668, 91st Cong., 1st Sess. (1969); H.R. 13704, 91st Cong., 1st Sess. (1969); H.R. 5493, H.R. 6690, S. 1532, H.R. 8410, 94th Cong., 1st Sess. (1975).
As for administrative construction of the statute, this is the first case in which the Secretary has asserted jurisdiction over an integrated poultry producer under the 1958 amendments to the Packers and Stockyards Act. Yet these producers have had a major share of the market since the early 1960s. National Commission on Food Marketing, Organization and Competition in the Poultry and Egg Industries, Tech. Study No. 2 (1966). Nothing in the Code of Federal *290Regulations would apply the Act to them, except to the extent they are actually dealing or handling live poultry or live poultry products.
I believe, in short, that the expansive reading of the Act and its amendments to cover activities never once mentioned in the legislative history, activities which conced-edly would not be covered were Perdue simply to slaughter and process its spent hens and cockerels and excess live broilers, was not within the congressional “purpose” or “intent.” I still believe that somewhere in the realm of statutory interpretation these abstract concepts have a place, unless we are to attribute to Congress a precision and omniscience that makes the courts a useless appendage.

. The Government’s complaint relates only to Perdue’s “business of selling dressed, ready-to-cook poultry and poultry products,” not to Per-due’s live poultry business.

. The majority, however, does not adopt two of the Government’s other arguments which 1 find overly expansive. The first argument, that Per-due is “engaged in the business of buying” live poultry, 7 U.S.C. § 218b, when it “receives” its own poultry from its contract growers, is untenable, since Perdue is not then “buying” poultry.
The second argument, that Perdue is a “handler” as to all its dressed poultry, would reduce the defined terms “poultry dealer” to surplus-age. The term “handler” referred to shippers, “coopsters,” and other middlemen involved in the racketeering aimed at by the 1935 amendment. Senator Copeland of New York had this to say when he introduced the bill:
There is in my city of New York a very large Jewish and Italian population. With those people there is a demand for live poultry. A housewife goes to the poultry market and selects the bird and has it killed in her presence. That industry is so great that it amounts to about $200,000,000 a year in New York City, so it can be seen that it is a tremendous business.
^ *
The poultry is brought from the West in special cars, “Pullman palace cars” for poultry. When the poultry is unloaded from the cars in Jersey City, the birds are put into wooden coops, which are very cheap affairs, I suppose can be made for $2. They are loaded on trucks, the trucks are taken across on the ferry to the West Washington Market, or some other market, and there they are unloaded.
In order to get those birds from the car they have to be put into coops, which are rented from a concern having a monopoly, and $1 per trip is charged for them. In order to fill the coop, two men are employed, and then to lift the coop from the platform to the truck, two other men are employed, and the truck must be one which is owned by the monopoly controlling the transportation of live poultry. After the poultry gets across the ferry, two men must be employed to lift the coop off the truck to the sidewalk.
It costs $321 for the 5 days consumed in the transportation of a carload of poultry from Iowa to Jersey City. It costs $387 to unload that poultry in Jersey City and deliver it from Jersey City over to New York, which operation takes 5 hours. The cost of the transaction has been more than doubled by reason of the excessive charges made through these methods demanded in the handling of the poultry in the terminal. If they do not hire the right truck and use the right coops the poultry will never reach its destination in salable condition. The poultry racket *288has become one of the most outrageously dishonest and corrupt and vile industries known to the criminal world.
78 Cong.Rec. 451-52 (1934) (emphasis added).

. Section 201 of the Act, 7 U.S.C. § 191, which remained unchanged until 1976, provided as follows:
§ 191. “Packer” defined
When uséd in this chapter—
The term “packer” means any person engaged in the business (a) of buying livestock in commerce for purposes of slaughter, or (b) of manufacturing or preparing meats or meat food products for sale or shipment in commerce, or (c) of manufacturing or preparing livestock products for sale or shipment in commerce, or (d) of marketing meats, meat food products, livestock products, dairy products, poultry, poultry products, or eggs, in commerce ....

. The House Report described the specific changes embodied in the 1958 amendments as follows:
(1) There is a clear delineation between the Secretary of Agriculture and the Federal Trade. Commission with respect to their jurisdiction over meatpackers with separate areas of responsibility designated.
(2) The Secretary of Agriculture will have jurisdiction over and responsibility for those activities of packers relating to livestock, meats, meat food products, livestock products in unmanufactured form, poultry, and poultry products.
(3) All other activities’ of packers will be under the jurisdiction and responsibility of the Federal Trade Commission.
(4) Chain stores and other firms or persons engaged only incidentally in the meat packing or processing business will be subject to the trade practice provisions of the Packers and Stockyards Act only to the extent that they are engaged in meatpacking or some other operation falling within the specific responsibility of the Secretary of Agriculture under the act.
H.R.Rep.No. 1048, 85th Cong., 2d Sess. 4, reprinted in [1958] U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News 5212, 5216 (emphasis added).