Court Opinion

ID: 9845771
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:28:02.028467+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:21.413973
License: Public Domain

On Motion For Rehearing.
The plaintiff, in his motion for a rehearing, points out that the agreement between the parties was to do an act which was, after the agreement was made, declared by an act of Congress to be illegal, and that the performance of such a contract would have subjected the plaintiff to criminal prosecution. It appears that transactions occurring during the period from June 30, 1946, to July 25, 1946, were excepted from the operation of the price-control laws by the following proviso in section 18 of the Price Control Extension Act of July 25, 1946 (60 Stat. 678, then 50 U. S. C. A., Appendix, § 901-a): “Provided, further, that no act or transaction, or omission or failure to act, occurring subsequent to June 30, 1946, and prior to the date of enactment of this Act, shall be deemed to be a violation of the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942, as amended, or the Stabilization Act of 1942, as amended, or of any regulation, order, price schedule, or requirement under either of such Acts.” If the transactions *245in the present case may be considered to have been- completed during this gap in the continuity of the price-control laws, or if the purchase of bulk whisky during such period were not connected with the subsequent purchase of bottled whisky by the plaintiff from the' defendants, then the transaction was not illegal. See U. S. v. Henry Drew & Co., 177 Fed. 2d, 555.
But if, as contended by the plaintiff, the performance of the contract, in which the defendants were to make available increased allotments of bottled and cased whisky for purchase by the plaintiff after July 25, 1946, was made unlawful by the terms of the Price Control Extension Act of 1946—which provided that “all regulations, orders, price schedules and requirements under the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942, as amended,” should be effective as of June 30, 1946—nevertheless, the petition shows that the plaintiff participated in such illegal performance of the contract by ordering and receiving from the defendants “a number of deliveries of whisky” after the Emergency Price Control Act had been extended. In short, the contract was partly executed by the parties thereto after the price-control laws were extended; and, according to the plaintiff’s contentions, such part performance on his part subjected him as well as the defendants to possible criminal prosecution for violation of the price-control laws. The parties were in pari delicto.
- “When a contract which is illegal, or opposed to public policy has been executed, in whole or in part, and the parties are in pari delicto, neither a court of law nor of equity will interpose to give relief to either party, but will leave the parties where they find them.” Adams v. Barrett, 5 Ga. 404. “Where money has been paid or goods have been delivered under a bargain containing illegal- provisions, the money or the value of the goods can be recovered so long as the illegal part of the bargain is wholly unexecuted,, unless entering into the bargain involves serious moral turpitude on the part of the plaintiff.” 2 American -Law Institute, Restatement of the Law of Contracts, § 605. (Emphasis supplied in above quotations.) Also see 12 Am. Jur. 732, Contracts, § 216; 17 C. J. S. 662, Contracts, § 275. The plaintiff, alleging that he performed-the contract in part, and now contending that such performance was in violation of *246the laws prohibiting sales of goods at prices above the maximum prices fixed by law, cannot recover the amounts he has paid under the contract to the other parties thereto.
Furthermore, as it is contended that the transactions were prohibited by the provisions of the Federal statutes, and since the same Federal statutes denied a right of recovery to one who makes purchases at over-ceiling prices in the course of his trade or business but, instead, gave the right of recovery in such a case to the Price Administrator, then the Federal statutes in effect imposed the same rule in regard to parties who are in pari delicto as does the law of this State, although the Federal statutes made an exception to the rule in the case of persons who made such'illegal purchases for use or consumption other than in the course of their trade or business.
Nor do we think that the plaintiff can reasonably and consistently claim that he has been placed in a position where he could not carry out his part of the contract without violating the law, and that for this reason he should recover his money, for after he has violated the law by partly consummating the illegal purpose of the contract, his petition for restitution of the money paid is as consistent with an attempt to avoid the terms of what turned out to be a hard or improvident bargain as it is with an offer to repent and comply with the law. For the plaintiff to be able to rescind the partly performed illegal contract whenever it might become disadvantageous to him, would 'promote rather than discourage the making of such contracts, and we think the- rule that the court should leave the parties where it finds them in such a case, and should afford a locus poenitentiae only where the illegal purpose has not been achieved at all, is salutary and applicable to the facts of this case.
The case of Hunt v. Burk, 22 Ga. 129, cited and relied on by the plaintiff, does not authorize or require a different ruling from that which has been made in this case.

Rehearing denied.