Court Opinion

ID: 9639990
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:54:43.645951+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:24.800372
License: Public Domain

DENMAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I do not agree that the “first processing * * * of fresh fruits” in the exceptive clause, Section 7(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, means all the processes to which the fresh fruit is subject till it ceases to be fresh fruit and is in the “non perishable” form of a fruit product. So to construe the provision of 7(c) is to make the adjective “first” meaningless and to ignore the cardinal rule of construction that words in a statute shall be given effect and not made nugatory. By such unwarranted interpretation of an exceptive clause, non agricultural laborers in a plant in part chemical are denied the benefit of that act.
So, also, if first processing means all processing till the fruit ceases to be fresh, that is, “non perishable,” the immediately succeeding word “canning” is meaningless. Section 7(c) makes an exception of wage earners in “first processing of, or in canning or packing perishable seasonal fresh fruits.” Canning processes the fresh fruit until it ceases to be fresh and becomes “non perishable.” The disjunctive “or” shows that “canning” means something different from “first” processing. If it does not, Congress would not have specified' it in the exception. The words “first processing” would have included it. So, also, of the word “packing.” This is often done by farmers. If “first” processing includes processing till the fresh fruit is packed for the ultimate consumer, the word “packing” is surplusage.
The specific words of Congress are what we are required to construe. We cannot escape that obligation by saying that to perform it is to indulge in “hyperfechnical reasoning.” As a wag of a judge once stated, this is a weasel phrase to rationalize a desired result which gives relief from the bother of considering the carefully prepared contentions of a litigant.
The appellee is a manufacturer of fermented apple cider, apple juice and pomace from the cores and skins of apples, which it purchases from dehydrators of apples.
Appellee’s manufacturing enterprise consists of a treatment of the cores and skins, in part chemical. It is a manufacture, entirely apart from farming. No farmer is *909shown to conduct such manufacture of cores and skins as a part of his production of apples. We must assume that Congress made the instant exception to the Fair Labor Standards Act, with a view to actual relationship of the employees of this manufacturing process to the producing orchardists.1 In no sense are the men in appellee’s plant agricultural laborers, a matter later considered.
The process by which the skins and cores are cut from the apples by the dehydrators is mechanical. A coring machine cuts out the apple cores. A machine with a knife edge cuts the skin from the apple.
The cores and skins so processed become articles of commerce. As such, they are purchased by appellee from the dehydrators.
A minor part of appellee’s raw material is of culled inedible apples bought from farmers. These are mixed with the cores and skins for the ensuing treatment producing pomace, cider and cider vinegar. It is arguable that the culling is a first processing. However, assuming it is not, culled apples constitute but from 10% to 28'% of the total raw material. The employment of the men in such manufacture for the 72% to 90% of skins and cores is in violation of the Act, if they are not engaged in a first processing in appellee’s plant.2
It is apparent from the above facts that there never can be two or more processings of fresh fruits if the mechanical processing of cores and skins prior to their sales to the manufacture in a market of such products is not a first processing. Whatever labor occurs after the sale is not farm, but manufacturing, labor. If all the successive processings till the apples are in the form of pomace and chemically produced cider are a first processing, then, as stated, the adjective “first” before the word “processing” must be construed as used by Congress with no meaning at all.
It seems clear that the manufacture byappellee’s laborers is a second processing within the meaning of the exceptive provision 7(c). Were it not clear, such an interpretation is not irrational and must be sustained under the rule stated by this court in Consolidated Timber Co. v. Womack, 9 Cir., 132 F.2d 101, 106, that such exceptions to the Fair Labor Standards Act are to be strictly construed in favor of the laborer, a rule later stated by the Supreme Court: “To extend an exemption to other than those plainly and unmistakably within its terms and spirit is to abuse the interpretative process and to frustrate the will of the people.” A. H. Phillips, Inc., v. Walling, 324 U.S. 490, 493, 65 S.Ct. 807, 808, 89 L.Ed. 1095, 157 A.L.R. 876.3
*910It is true that this exceptive provision is for the purpose of denying the relief of the Fair Labor • Standards Act to labor employed in canning and packing, often performed by farmers and hence for the benefit of the farmer who, if not a canner or packer, will obtain a better price from the purchasing canner or packer. However, the dominant purpose of that act is its benefit to labor, and the rule construing exceptive provisions in favor of the laborer is here peculiarly applicable. As stated, the men in manufacturing plants of appellee’s type are not agricultural laborers, nor are they within the exception of canning or packing labor.
How dominant is protection of the right to the minimum wages of the Fair Labor Standards Act of labor engaged in interstate commerce, as are appellee’s employees, is shown in two recent well considered cases, one in the third and another in the first circuit. That act also excepts “any employee employed as a seaman” in interstate commerce, as farm labor is here. In Walling v. Keansburg Steamboat Co., 3 Cir., 162 F.2d 405, one of the questions was whether certain employees of the steamboat company were seamen. They were engaged on its passenger vessels during the mooring period. It was held that a person previously employed on the vessel as a seaman who continued to do seaman’s work in the mooring period was within the exception, id. at page 407. On the other hand, if the laborers were employed on the passenger vessels during the mooring period only and were not required to sign articles, the rule of strict construction of the exception required the holding they were not seamen, although working side by side with the excepted seamen.
Walling v. Bay State Dredging and Contracting Co., 1 Cir., 149 F.2d 346, 349, 161 A.L.R. 825, certiorari denied, 326 U.S. 760, 66 S.Ct. 140, 90 L.Ed. 457, held similarly that the employees of a dredge were not within the exception of those “employed as seamen,” though such dredgermen are “seamen’,’ within the meaning of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, 46 U.S.C.A. § 688, Kibadeaux v. Standard Dredging Co., 5 Cir., 81 F.2d 670, and in general maritime law are “seamen” engaged in aiding commerce and hence entitled to maritime liens for their wages, Saylor v. Taylor, 4 Cir., 77 F. 476, 478. It seems apparent that under the principle established in these circuits of strict construction of clauses excepting labor from the act, the non-farm labor engaged in interstate commerce in appellee’s factory can not be classified as in a first processing of farm products.
The Administrator has on several occasions interpreted the language of Section 7 (c) in accord with this opinion. In appraising the meaning of “first processing,” the Administrator concluded that the term “processing” connotes a change in the form of the raw material, and, therefore, that “first processing” meant the first change in the form of the raw, materials. This interpretation was publicly announced in-Interpretative Bulletin No. 14, paragraph 15 (first issued in August, 1939), and in opinion letters to the public. At the same time, the Administrator interpreted “fresh fruits” to mean fruits “in their rawl or natural state as distinguished from them after they are ‘processed,’ canned, or dried.” Paragraph 19. To illustrate the content of his interpretation, the Administrator referred to certain operations which would not be considered exempt and specifically mentioned the crystallizing of-citrus peels, and the drying of citrus waste for conversion into cattle food. (Paragraph 19 of Interpretative Bulletin No. 14.) In these examples the Administrator made clear that he did not regard the processing of parts removed from fresh fruits, such as the peel or pulp, as the first processing of fresh fruits. This view applied to the processing of apple peels and cores as well as to orange peels and waste, and the Administrator so stated in an opinion letter dated May 18, 1942.
. Concerning the value of these interpretations of the statute, they “are entitled to great weight.” United States v. American Trucking Assns., 310 U. S. 534, 549, 60 S. Ct. 1059, 1067, 84 L.Ed. 1345. As was stated by the Eighth Circuit in Miller Hatcheries v. Boyer, 131 F.2d 283 at page 286, 386:
“The practical interpretations which the Administrator and his staff have been re*911quired to make in applying and placing the provisions of the Act in social and industrial operation should be recognized as having peculiar persuasiveness and weight. Unless such a construction is one which could not reasonably or soundly be made under the terms of the statute, it should ordinarily be accepted by the courts.”
At the trial, it was admitted that the appellee had not violated the record keeping provisions of the Act. The Administrator is entitled to an injunction against the violation of the overtime provisions and the sale of the products of the skins and cores and, incidentally, used apple culls in interstate commerce. The judgment should be reversed and the district court ordered so to enjoin the appellee.

 The district court seemed impressed with the possibility that the payment of overtime after 40 hours might make appellee’s manufactuie of cider and pomace too costly to pay a profit and hence the dehydrators would not have a market for their cores and skins and would pay the farmers less^for their apples, while the farmers producing the cut cores and skins for appellee would have no market for them. There are no figures in evidence supporting such result from paying overtime. Even if this were true of this particular pomace and cider plant, we would deem it not relevant to the construction of the Act.

 Wabash Radio Corp. v. Walling, 6 Cir., 162 F.2d 391, 394. See also Collins v. Kidd Dairy & Ice Co., 5 Cir., 132 F.2d 79; Walling v. Connecticut Co., 2 Cir., 154 F.2d 552; Walling v. Goldblatt Bros., 7 Cir., 152 F.2d 475, 477; Davis v. Goodman Lumber Co., 4 Cir., 133 F.2d 52. And as was pointed out in the Wabash decision 162 F.2d at page 394, “Where the exempt and nonexempt characteristics of the business are so intermingled as to he inseparable, the exemption is denied entirely”. Citing Guess v. Montague, 4 Cir., 140 F.2d 500.

 Virtually all the Circuit Courts of Appeals have also announced the same viewpoint with respect to exemptions from the Fair Labor Standards Act. See Fleming v. Hawkeye Pearl Button Co., 8 Cir., 113 F.2d 52, 56; Fleming v. Palmer, 1 Cir., 123 F.2d 749, 762, certiorari denied Carribbean Embroidery Co-op. v. Fleming, 316 U.S. 662, 62 S.Ct. 942, 86 L.Ed. 1739; Bowie v. Gonzalez, 1 Cir., 117 F.2d 11, 16; Walling v. Reid, 8 Cir., 139 P. 2d 323; Helena Glendale Ferry Co. v. Walling, 8 Cir., 132 F.2d 616; West Kentucky Coal Co. v. Walling, 6 Cir., 153 F.2d 582; Fletcher v. Grinnell Bros., 6 Cir., 150 F.2d 337; Walling v. Consumers Co., 7 Cir., 149 F.2d 626; Anderson v. Manhattan Lighterage Corp., 2 Cir., 148 F.2d 971; Walling v. Keansburg Steamboat Co., 3 Cir., 162 F.2d 405.