Court Opinion

ID: 9636967
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:51:06.298273+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:51.687360
License: Public Domain

*297CLARK, Associate Justice
(dissenting).
I find myself completely unable to agree with the decision -of the court in this case. I believe the finding of the Federal Trade Commission to be not only arbitrary and capricious in the extreme but also absu'rd and ridiculous.
The facts are very simple. Petitioner, Paul, had for many years manufactured and sold a line of so-called “art objects”, i. e., lamps, porcelain and art ware, using as a trade name the name “Du Barry.” Some of the material for this line of goods came from Italy, some from Czecho-SJovakia, some from Hungary, some from Yugoslavia, some from Japan. This importing practice had prevailed for many years.
The gist of the present action by the Commission is that an insertion was made in a catalogue intended to be and actually circulated to retailers only, and not to the general public, which described this line of goods as “Imported Du Barry”, and further stated that it consisted of copies of well-known French and British specimens of the same class. Now, mark well, there is not a scintilla of evidence in the whole record concocted by the Commission that contradicts in the slightest degree the statements in the catalogue. Not one single word denies (1) that the articles were imported, (2) that they were marketed under a well recognized trade name “Du Barry,” (3) that they were copies of well-recognized French and English masterpieces.
None of these facts were disputed. Moreover there was not one witness to testify that he or she had been misled into purchasing any of this line by any statement in the catalogue circulated to dealers. The proceeding was instituted on the complaint of a disgruntled retailer who had had several quarrels with petitioner on account of her singular reluctance, not to say resistance, toward paying her bills. The chief witness was the merchandise manager of a department store who neither bought nor sold goods, and was, moreover, embittered by the refusal of petitioner to give him an exclusive contract for the sale of goods. The so-called “public” witnesses, selected by the Commission, which was trying the case, were simply called in off the street and asked a hypothetical question which left out one of the most vital issues in the case — the question of the price at which the imported articles were sold. To be sure there was also the testimony of a man who qualified as an expert, on the basis of six weeks experience in the business,, •that some one might be misled, although he knew of no one who ever had been so misled.
It is on the basis of such testimony as this that the Commission arrives at the momentous conclusion that the term “Imported Du Barry” indicates origin from either France or Great Britain, Conceding the expertness of the Commission on such matters it is nevertheless incumbent on this court to check the bases of the Commission’s opinion.
If, for instance, there is anything in the name Du Barry to make it a national trade mark for France or Great Britain there is no finding of fact made by the Federal Trade Commission to justify this, nor is there any justification in history so far as is known. If the specialists of the Federal Trade Commission have such evidence they were notably negligent in producing it in the trial of this case, and it is remarkable chiefly from its entire absence in the opinion and decision in the case.
To be sure, in the middle of the 18th century, a nameless waif, the illegitimate daughter of a poor washerwoman in Vaucouleurs, France, became a successful courtesan under the name of Mile. Lange. Her great charm brought her under the protection of Jean, Comte du Barry, who used her as a decoy in his gambling house. Finding her very successful in this regard, he succeeded by devious means in introducing her to the notice of the King, who was captivated by her, with the result that she became his mistress. Since court etiquette forbade her introduction at court without a title and since Comte Jean was married and divorce was impracticable undos* French law at that time, Jean’s brother Guillaume married the lady. Which of the three, the King’s light of love, the erstwhile “protector”, Comte Jean, or his brother, the complaisant husband, has been adopted by the Commission as a perpetual and national trade mark for both France *298and Great Britain does not clearly appear from the Commission’s conclusion.
So far as history records the only connection that any one of them ever had with the unfortunate British to whom the Federal Trade Commission now attaches them is the final trip which Madame Du Barry made to England to try to sell her jewels, the ill-gotten gains from her affair with King Louis XV, for which she was beheaded in the French Revolution.