Court Opinion

ID: 9652789
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:32:01.698616+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:54.114948
License: Public Domain

WOODROUGH, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) .
The statute made the jurisdiction in this case dependent on the value of the salesman’s sample stock of jewelry stolen and transported in interstate commerce. In bulk, as the merchandise was when stolen and transported, its value amounted to less than the required $5,000, but the trial court instructed that the standard or criterion of value was the “retail market value,” which was more than $5,000. I think that standard gave a fictitious value and erroneously expanded the jurisdiction. It will become more obvious when the standard is applied to value sacks of coffee or cases of cigarettes or hogsheads of beer or bundles of pelts or casks of rum or any of a thousand things which like jewelry fetch a great price in broken bulk and costly setting over the retail counter. In Illinois Central R. R. Co. v. Crail, 281 U. S. 57, 50 S.Ct. 180, 74 L.Ed. 699, 67 A. L.R. 1423, the court had to find the value of some coal lost out of a car load in transit and settled upon the wholesale value. The opinion together with the four opinions in the same case within this Circuit, Crail v. Illinois Central R. R. Co., 8 Cir., 2 F.2d 287; Crail v. Illinois Central R. R. Co., 8 Cir., 13 F.2d 459; Crail v. Illinois Central R. R. Co., D.C., 21 F.2d 836 and Illinois Central R. R. Co. v. Crail, 8 Cir., 31 F.2d 111, exhaust the subject.' I see no merit in the contention that that long litigation only settled the standard in civil *172cases for the jury to measure the value of goods, wares, and merchandise which are in bulk at the time they are to be valued. In such civil cases the true value measures the damages. Here it delimits the jurisdiction, but the standard or criterion of valuation ought to be the same. The matter is of far reaching importance and I therefore dissent.