Court Opinion

ID: 9419399
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:49:17.04084+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:17.899110
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Murphy,
dissenting:
Our prime concern in this case is whether the criminal sanctions of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 plainly and unmistakably apply to the respondent in his capacity as a corporate officer. He is charged with violating § 301 (a) of the Act, which prohibits the introduction or delivery for introduction into interstate commerce of any adulterated or misbranded drug. There is *286no evidence in this case of any personal guilt on the part of the respondent. There is no proof or claim that he ever knew of the introduction into commerce of the adulterated drugs in question, much less that he actively participated in their introduction. Guilt is imputed to the respondent solely on the basis of his authority and responsibility as president and general manager of the corporation.
It is a fundamental principle of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence that guilt is personal and that it ought not lightly to be imputed to a citizen who, like the respondent, has no evil intention or consciousness of wrongdoing. It may be proper to charge him with responsibility to the corporation and the stockholders for negligence and mismanagement. But in the absence of clear statutory authorization it is inconsistent with established canons of criminal law to rest liability on an act in which the accused did not participate and of which he had no personal knowledge. Before we place the stigma of a criminal conviction upon any such citizen the legislative mandate must be clear and unambiguous. Accordingly that which Chief Justice Marshall has called “the tenderness of the law for the rights of individuals” 1 entitles each person, regardless of economic or social status, to an unequivocal warning from the legislature as to whether hejs within the class of persons subject to vicarious liability. Congress cannot be deemed to have intended to punish anyone who is not “plainly and unmistakably” within the confines of the statute. United States v. Lacker, 134 U. S. 624, 628; United States v. Gradwell, 243 U. S. 476, 485.
Moreover, the fact that individual liability of corporate officers may be consistent with the policy and purpose of a public health and welfare measure does not authorize this Court to impose such liability where Congress has not *287clearly intended or actually done so. Congress alone has the power to define a crime and to specify the offenders. United States v. Wiltberger, 5 Wheat. 76, 95. It is not our function to supply any deficiencies in these respects, no matter how grave the consequences. Statutory policy and purpose are not constitutional substitutes for the requirement that the legislature specify with reasonable certainty those individuals it desires to place under the interdict of the Act. United States v. Harris, 177 U. S. 305; Sarlls v. United States, 152 U. S. 570.
Looking at the language actually used in this statute, we find a complete absence of any reference to corporate officers. There is merely a provision in § 303 (a) to the effect that “any person” inadvertently violating § 301 (a) shall be guilty of a misdemeanor. Section 201 (e) further defines “person” as including an “individual, partnership, corporation, and association.” 2 The fact that a corporate officer is both a “person” and an “individual” is not indicative of an intent to place vicarious liability on the officer. Such words must be read in light of their statutory environment.3 Only if Congress has otherwise specified an *288intent to place corporate officers within the ambit of the Act can they be said to be embraced within the meaning of the words “person” or “individual” as here used.
Nor does the clear imposition of liability on corporations reveal the necessary intent to place criminal sanctions on their officers. A corporation is not the necessary and inevitable equivalent of its officers for all purposes.4 In many respects it is desirable to distinguish the latter from the corporate entity and to impose liability only on the corporation. In this respect it is significant that this Court has never held the imposition of liability on a corporation sufficient, without more, to extend liability to its officers who have no consciousness of wrongdoing.5 Indeed, in a closely analogous situation, we have held that the vicarious personal liability of receivers in actual charge and control of a corporation could not be predicated on the statutory liability of a “company,” even when the policy and purpose of the enactment were consistent with personal liability. United States v. Harris, supra.6 It fol*289lows that express statutory provisions are necessary to satisfy the requirement that officers as individuals be given clear and unmistakable warning as to their vicarious personal liability. This Act gives no such warning.
This fatal hiatus in the Act is further emphasized by the ability of Congress, demonstrated on many occasions, to apply statutes in no uncertain terms to corporate officers as distinct from corporations.7 The failure to mention officers specifically is thus some indication of a desire to exempt them from liability. In fact the history *290of federal food and drug legislation is itself illustrative of this capacity for specification and lends strong support to the conclusion that Congress did not intend to impose liability on corporate officers in this particular Act.
Section 2 of the Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906, as introduced and passed in the Senate, contained a provision to the effect that any violation of the Act by a corporation should be deemed to be the act of the officer responsible therefor and that such officer might be punished as though it were his personal act.8 This clear imposition of criminal responsibility on corporate officers, however, was not carried over into the statute as finally enacted. In its place appeared merely the provision that “when construing and enforcing the provisions of this Act, the act, omission, or failure of any officer, agent, or other person acting for or employed by any corporation . . . within the scope of his employment or office, shall in every case be also deemed to be the act, omission, or failure of such corporation ... as well as that of the person.” 9 This provision had the effect only of making corporations *291responsible for the illegal acts of their officers and proved unnecessary in view of the clarity of the law to that effect. New York Central & H. R. R. Co. v. United States, 212 U. S. 481.
The framers of the 1938 Act were aware that the 1906 Act was deficient in that it failed “to place responsibility properly upon corporate officers.” 10 In order “to provide the additional scope necessary to prevent the use of the corporate form as a shield to individual wrongdoers,”11 these framers inserted a clear provision that “whenever a corporation or association violates any of the provisions of this Act, such violation shall also be deemed to be a violation of the individual directors, officers, or agents of such corporation or association who authorized, ordered, or did any of the acts constituting, in whole or in part, such violation.”12 This paragraph, however, was deleted from the final version of the Act.
*292We cannot presume that this omission was inadvertent on the part of Congress. United States v. Harris, supra at 309. Even if it were, courts have no power to remedy so serious a defect, no matter how probable it otherwise may appear that Congress intended to include officers; “probability is not a guide which a court, in construing a penal statute, can safely take.” United States v. Wiltberger, supra at 105. But the framers of the 1938 Act had an intelligent comprehension of the inadequacies of the 1906 Act and of the unsettled state of the law. They recognized the necessity of inserting clear and unmistakable language in order to impose liability on corporate officers. It is thus unreasonable to assume that the omission of such language was due to a belief that the Act as it now stands was sufficient to impose liability on corporate officers. Such deliberate deletion is consistent only with an intent to allow such officers to remain free from criminal liability. Thus to apply the sanctions of this Act to the respondent would be contrary to the intent of Congress as expressed in the statutory language and in the legislative history.
The dangers inherent in any attempt to create liability without express Congressional intention or authorization are illustrated by this case. Without any legislative guides, we are confronted with the problem of determining precisely which officers, employees and agents of a corporation are to be subject to this Act by our fiat. To erect standards of responsibility is a difficult legislative task and the opinion of this Court admits that it is “too treacherous” and a “mischievous futility” for us to engage in such pursuits. But the only alternative is a blind resort to “the good sense of prosecutors, the wise guidance of trial judges, and the ultimate judgment of juries.” Yet that situation is precisely what our constitutional system sought to avoid. Reliance on the legislature to define crimes and criminals distinguishes our form of juris*293prudence from certain less desirable ones. The legislative power to restrain the liberty and to imperil the good reputation of citizens must not rest upon the variable attitudes and opinions of those charged with the duties of interpreting and enforcing the mandates of the law. I therefore cannot approve the decision of the Court in this case.
Mr. Justice Roberts, Mr. Justice Reed and Mr. Justice Rutledge join in this dissent.

 United States v. Wiltberger, 5 Wheat. 76, 95.

 The normal and necessary meaning of such a definition of “person” is to distinguish between individual enterprises and those enterprises that are incorporated or operated as a partnership or association, in order to subject them all to the Act. This phrase cannot be considered as an attempt to distinguish between individual officers of a corporation and the corporate entity. Lee, “Corporate Criminal Liability,” 28 Col. L. Rev. 1,181,190.

 Compare United States v. Cooper Corp., 312 U. S. 600, 606, and Davis v. Pringle, 268 U. S. 315, 318, holding that the context and legislative history of the particular statutes there involved indicated that the words “any person” did not include the United States. But in Georgia v. Evans, 316 U. S. 159, and Ohio v. Helvering, 292 U. S. 360, these considerations led to the conclusion that “any person” did include a state. See also 40 Stat. 1143, which specifically includes officers within the meaning of “any person” as used in the Revenue Act of 1918.

 In Park Bank v. Remsen, 158 U. S. 337, 344, this Court said, “It is the corporation which is given the powers and privileges and made subject to the liabilities. Does this carry with it an imposition of liability upon the trustee or other officer of the corporation? The officer is not the corporation; his liability is personal, and not that of the corporation, nor can it be counted among the powers and privileges of the corporation.”

 For an analysis of the confusion on this matter in the state and lower federal courts, see Lee, “Corporate Criminal Liability,” 28 Col. L. Rev. 1,181.

 In that case we had before us Rev. Stat. §§ 4386-4389, which penalized “any company, owner or custodian of such animals” who failed to comply with the statutory requirements as to livestock transportation. A railroad company violated the statute and the government sought to impose liability on the receivers who were in actual charge of the company. It was argued that the word “company” embraced the natural persons acting on behalf of the company and that to hold such officers and receivers liable was within the policy and purpose of *289so humane a statute. We rejected this contention in language peculiarly appropriate to this case (177 U. S. at 309):
“It must be admitted that, in order to hold the receivers, they must be regarded as included in the word 'company.’ Only by a strained and artificial construction, based chiefly upon a consideration of the mischief which the legislature sought to remedy, can receivers be brought within the terms of the law. But can such a kind of construction be resorted to in enforcing a penal statute? Giving all proper force to the contention of the counsel of the Government, that there has been some relaxation on the part of the courts in applying the rule of strict construction to such statutes, it still remains that the intention of a penal statute must be found in the language actually used, interpreted according to its fair and obvious meaning. It is not permitted to courts, in this class of cases, to attribute inadvertence or oversight to the legislature when enumerating the classes of persons who are subjected to a penal enactment, nor to depart from the settled meaning of words or phrases in order to bring persons not named or distinctly described within the supposed purpose of the statute.”

 “Whenever a corporation shall violate any of the penal provisions of the antitrust laws, such violation shall be deemed to be also that of the individual directors, officers, or agents of such corporation who shall have authorized, ordered, or done any of the acts constituting in whole or in part such violation.” 15 U. S. C. § 24.
“The courts of bankruptcy ... are hereby invested . . . with such jurisdiction at law and in equity as will enable them to . . . (4) arraign, try, and punish bankrupts, officers, and other persons, and the agents, officers, members of the board of directors or trustees, or other *290similar controlling bodies, of corporations for violations of this Act.” 30 Stat. 545.
“Any such common carrier, or any officer or agent thereof, requiring or permitting any employee to go, be, or remain on duty in violation of the next preceding section of this chapter shall be liable to a penalty . . .” 45 U. S. C. § 63.
"A mortgagor who, with intent to defraud, violates any provision of subsection F, section 924, and if the mortgagor is a corporation or association, the president or other principal executive officer of the corporation or association, shall upon conviction thereof be held guilty of a misdemeanor . . .” 46 U. S. C. § 941 (b).

 S. 88, 59th Cong., 1st Sess. Senator Heyburn, one of the sponsors of S. 88, stated that this was “a new feature in bills of this kind. It was intended to obviate the possibility of escape by the officers of a corporation under a plea, which has been more than once made, that they did not know that this was being done on the credit of or on the responsibility of the corporation.” 40 Cong. Rec. 894.

 34 Stat. 772, 21 ü. S. C. §4.

 Senate Report No. 493, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., p. 21.

 Ibid., p. 22. This report also stated that “it is not, however, the purpose of this paragraph to subject to liability those directors, officers, and employees, who merely authorize their subordinates to perform lawful duties and such subordinates, on their own initiative, perform those duties in a manner which violates the provisions of the law. However, if a director or officer personally orders his subordinate to do an act in violation of the law, there is no reason why he should be shielded from personal responsibility merely because the act was done by another and on behalf of a corporation.”

 This provision appears in several of the early versions of the Act introduced in Congress. S. 1944, 73d Cong., 1st Sess., § 18 (b); S. 2000, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., § 18 (b); S. 2800, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., § 18 (b); S. 5, 74th Cong., 1st Sess., § 709 (b); S. 5, 74th Cong., 2d Sess., § 707 (b), as reported to the House, which substituted the word “personally” for the word “authorized” in the last clause of the paragraph quoted above. A variation of this provision appeared in S. 5, 75th Cong., 1st Sess., §2 (f), and made a marked distinction between the use of the word “person” and the words “director, officer, employee, or agent acting for or employed by any person.” All of these bills also contained the present definition of “person” as including "individual, partnership, corporation, and association.”