Court Opinion

ID: 9418020
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 20:46:49.592077+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:54.181412
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brown,
with whom was Mr. .Justice Peck-ham, dissenting.
The main, and practically the only question in this case is whether the Armour Packing Company was a “meat packing house doing business” in the State of North parolina within *237the meaning of the statute. The seventh' and eighth items' of the stipulation of facts are as follows:
“7. A meat packing house is a place where the business of slaughtering animals and dressing and preparing the products of their carcasses for food and other purposes is carried on. The products thus prepared consist of fresh and cured .meats, such as hams, dry salt sides, bacon, lard, beef extracts, glue, blood, tankage, etc.
“8. Said Armour Packing Company does not anywhere within the State of North Carolina slaughter, dress, cure, pack or manufacture any products hereinbefore set forth, of any animal, for food, or for commercial use, or for other purposes.
As one article of the findings defines the meat packing business to consist in doing certain things, and the very next article declares that none of these things are done within-the State, it is difficult to say that, notwithstanding these findings of fact, there is a conclusion of law that the company is doing a meat packing business in that State. The Packing Company doubtless falls within the letter of the statute. It does a meat packing business in Kansas City. It does a business in North Carolina. But as we have said in numerous cases, a-thing may be within the letter of a statute and not be within its spirit. United States v. Babbitt, 1 Black, 55. The letter of the statute in this case would be satisfied if the Packing Company did a furniture or dry goods business in North Carolina, yet it would clearly not be within the intent of the statute. If, for instance, the 'tax were upon breweries, and the beer were all manufactured out of the StatH and then shipped into thé State for sale and distribution, is it possible, that the defendant would be liable for doing business as a brewer? So if the tax were imposed upon manufacturers of carriages, and all the manufac-. taring were done in- Chicago, and the carriages shipped into North Carolina and there sold, the defendant would be liable as a dealer in carriages, but certainly not as a manufacturer. The business done at the five cold storage plants, which consists in packing the meats and wrapping them for delivery as *238they are sold, is not mentioned in the seventh finding, even as an incidental part of the packing business. Much less even is the business of selling meats at retail as ordinary butchers do. Yet, in the opinion of the court, the company was doing a meat packing-house business within the State. In the view of the minority the business done within the State must be a meat packing business, and not the business of selling meats either at wholesale or retail, and when the meat packing house is accurately defined in the stipulation, and no part of the business thus defined appears to have been doné within the State, it is impossible to support the tax.
The case resembles that of Kehrer v. Stewart, 197 U. S. 60, in many particulars, but with the vital difference that the law of Georgia imposed a .tax upon “all agents of packing houses doing business within this State, $200, in each county where said business is carried on.” As the tax was imposed upon agents of packing houses, and not upon the packing houses themselves, the court was unanimously of the opinion that the managing agents of foreign packing houses were subject to the tax. But in this case the act attempts to reach out and tax packing houses doing business as such exclusively in another State.
"With the utmost deference to the opinion of the court, we are constrained to dissent from its view.
Me. Justice White and Mr. Justice McKenna also dissented upon other grounds.