Court Opinion

ID: 9447156
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:27:13.542799+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:55.213821
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I concur readily in the Court’s opinion for reversal of the cause for a new trial. With deference, however, I am unable to agree with its treatment of the official Interpretative Bulletin issued by the Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division.
While I must recognize that the matter presents unusual difficulties, it seems to me that any such ruling ignores the statutory position of the Administrator *563who is charged with the enforcement of the statute, 29 U.S.C.A. § 204, and whose policies and standards are “entitled to respect,” Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 1944, 323 U.S. 134, 140, 65 S.Ct. 161, 164, 89 L.Ed. 124, 129.a
If, as the Supreme Court states, note a, supra, the Interpretative Bulletins of the Administrator “constitute a body of experience and informed judgment to which courts and litigants may properly resort for guidance,” the question arises as to how they shall be of any effectiveness at all where the trier is a jury unless the jury is somehow made aware of the bulletins. Of course, a question of law might well exist in which the court will have to determine, on the standards b laid down in Skidmore, what weight, if any, the jury is to accord to the particular interpretive ruling. But here this court affirms that under no circumstance is the jury to have the benefit of the Administrator’s policies which “are made in pursuance of official duty, based upon more specialized experience and broader investigations and information than is likely to come to a judge [or a jury] in a particular case.” Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 1944, 323 U.S. 134, 139, 65 S.Ct. 161, 164, 89 L.Ed. 124, 129.
The courts do accord great weight to the Administrator’s rulings in the evaluation of factual cases. Mitchell v. Grei-netz, 10 Cir., 1956, 235 F.2d 621, 624, 625, 61 A.L.R.2d 956. That court pointed out that Congress is aware of these administrative interpretive rulings and bulletins by the 1949 Amendments in Section 16(c), 29 U.S.C.A. § 208, and which we have characterized as the “unique imprimatur” which Congress has placed upon these rulings. Libby, McNeill &. Libby v. Mitchell, 5 Cir., 1958, 256 F.2d 832, 837.
Here this Court reads this Interpretative Bulletin through a technical microscope. The Court states that it “does not purport to be a finding * * * that in the ice industry sales of a ton or more are not considered retail sales. It appears only to be instructions for the attempted enforcement of the Act by the Administrator.” Since the Bulletin has as its express purpose the application of the exemptions of Section 13(a) (2) and *56413(a) (4) which speak in terms of the business “recognized as retail sales * * in the particular industry,” it seems obvious that the Administrator’s use of the term “regarded as retail” was synonymous with a finding that such described sales are not retail sales and any such business would not be a retail establishment under the Act.c
The error of this Court is reflected by the brief comments made on how the Administrator can combat testimony, expert or factual, from industry representatives. The Court states “just as the [industry] witnesses were permitted to give as the basis of their opinion their familiarity with the practices of the industry so could a witness for the Secretary if such a one testified to the contrary, give the basis of his opinion, including the studies made by the Wage and Hour Division.” This seems to me to have two primary defects. First, the ruling no longer has an institutional character. And second, this subjects the Administrator to cross examination as to the manner in which he performs his office.
As to the first, it must surely be acknowledged that the weighty deference which the Supreme Court accords to the Administrator’s rulings, see note a, supra, is only to those made in his institutional status and character as Administrator. As such they represent a collective judgment in an institutional corporate sensed and are not the mere reflection of the views or decisions or conclusions of individual staff members who may appear as live swearers on the witness stand. As to the second, this requirement that some human being be presented as a witness to testify to an act done by a governmental official disregards the Government Business Records Act.e More important, this is the very doing of that which is disruptive of orderly governmental administrative proceeding and which has so long been forbidden. See United States v. Morgan, 1941, 313 U.S. 409, 422, 61 S.Ct. 999, 1004, 85 L.Ed. 1429, 1435, where the Secretary of Agriculture had been cross examined concerning his decision. “But the short of the business is that the Secretary should never have been subjected to this examination.”
The effect of what this Court has done is to obliterate for all practical purposes this Interpretative Bulletin of the Administrator. It permits only that some human being speaking on his own personal knowledge and as a spokesman for those personal views- — -not official conclusions — shall be allowed to testify. But when thus heard by the jury, or the other trier of fact, the words no longer carry the weight of the collective institu*565tional judgment of the Administrator as a result of corporate action. They are the words only of the person uttering them with so much weight, more or less, as he, as a human being, and his own personal knowledge and competence, may inspire.
That is inconsistent with the institutional character of the Administrator’s rulings to which courts are admonished to give careful respect. Either they are entitled to no weight whatsoever (and this Skidmore repudiates) or they are entitled to be used under appropriate limitations by the particular agency — judge or jury — having the responsibility for drawing the final fact conclusions.
Skidmore accords deferential respect to the Administrator’s rulings as an institutional product. They cease to have that status if they must be espoused by some human being on the witness stand.
I therefore respectfully dissent.
Rehearing denied: JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge, dissenting.

. The Supreme Court there had this to say about the Administrator’s rulings. “The rulings of this Administrator are not reached as a result of hearing adversary proceedings in which he finds facts from evidence and reaches conclusions of law from findings of fact. They are not, of course, conclusive, even in the cases with which they directly deal * *. They do not constitute an interpretation of the Act or a standard for judging factual situations which binds a district court’s processes, as an authoritative pronouncement of a higher court might do. But the Administrator’s policies are made in pursuance of official duty, based upon more specialized experience and broader investigations and information than is likely to come to a judge in a particular ease. They do determine the policy which will guide applications for enforcement by injunction on behalf of the Government. Good administration of the Act and good judicial administration alike require that the standards of public enforcement and those for determining private rights shall be at variance only where justified by very good reasons. The fact that the Administrator’s policies and standards are not reached by trial in adversary form does not mean that they are not entitled to respect. This Court has long given considerable and in some cases decisive weight to Treasury Decisions and to interpretive regulations of the Treasury and of other bodies that were not of adversary origin.
“We consider that the rulings, interpretations and opinions of the Administrator under this Act, while not controlling upon the courts by reason of their authority, do constitute a body of experience and informed judgment to which courts and litigants may properly resort for guidance. * *

. This was summed up by the Court in words which follow immediately the text quoted in note a above :
“The weight of such a judgment in a particular case will depend upon the thoroughness evident in its consideration, the validity of its reasoning, its consistency with earlier and later pronouncements, and all those factors which give it power to persuade, if lacking power to control.” Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 1944, 323 U.S. 134, 140, 65 S.Ct. 161, 164, 89 L.Ed. 124, 129.

. In this respect the practice of the Administrator in the issuance of this Bulletin was quite different from that followed and described by the Supreme Court in note a, supra. Since that time (1934) public notice in the Federal Register must be given for rule-making under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C.A. §§ 1002, 1003. This Interpretative Bulletin recited that “On October 26, 1955, notice was published in the Federal Register (20 FR 8051), that the Administrator * * * proposed to amend Interpretative Bulletin, Part 779 by the addition of a new section applicable to ice manufacturers and ice dealers. Interested persons were given 30 days to submit for consideration, data, views or arguments pertaining to the proposed amendment. No objections have been received.” This was dated December 21, 1955 and published in the Federal Register December 24, 1955. The ruling thus made is now found in 29 OFR Part 779.32.

. See, Cooper, Administrative Daw: The Process of Decision, 44 A.B.A.J. 233 (1958).

. 28 U.S.C.A. § 1733.
“(a) Books or records of account or minutes of proceedings of any department or agency of the United States shall be admissible to prove the act, transaction or occurrence as a memorandum of which the same were made or kept.
“(b) Properly authenticated copies or transcripts of any books, records, papers or documents of any department or agency of the United States shall be admitted in evidence equally with the original thereof.”