Court Opinion

ID: 9450372
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:43:54.896022+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:16.456003
License: Public Domain

DIMOCK, District Judge
(dissenting).
The goods were stolen before they had left the state in which they were delivered to the carrier. Since they had not crossed a state line at the time of the theft the only basis for a determination that the shipment was an interstate one would have to be someone’s intention.
No one had any intention that the goods should travel interstate at the time of the theft. That intention arose when, after the theft, the carrier issued an interstate waybill and thus chose the interstate route. Up to that time the only intention was that of the shipper. This was expressed by the shipper when it prepared the bill of lading giving the destination, “Nichols Siding, Long Island,” and the routing, “N.Y.C.-L.I. RR Delvy.” If the Government had proved only the theft and the bill of lading the case would have had to have been dismissed. The shipment, just as if it had been one originally rolling between two points in the same state but thereafter diverted out of the state and back again because of an obstruction in the track, was intrastate for part of its journey and interstate for the remainder. Thus, in plain fact, the shipment here was intrastate until a waybill was issued and interstate thereafter.
*489John A. Dillon, Lackawanna, New York, for appellant Berger.
F. Lambert Haley, Buffalo, New York, for appellant Satz.
Condon, Kloeke, Ange & O’Donnell, Buffalo, New York, for appellant Polakoff.
My brethren indulge in the fiction that the post-theft decision by the carrier to route the shipment interstate made the shipment interstate ab initio. In the past, fictions have been useful in ameliorating injustices in the law. I am unwilling, however, to vote for the use of a novel fiction to send a man to prison for five years. I would reverse and dismiss the indictment.