Court Opinion

ID: 9637742
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:17:52.739672+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:59.927313
License: Public Domain

WALLER, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I concur with such parts of the main opinion as hold that the liberty ships were produced for commerce. I concur, also, in the conclusion that under the Portal-to-Portal Pay Act of 1947, Chapter 52, Public Law 49 — enacted since this case was decided by the lower Court — the judgment should be reversed in order that the lower Court may consider the case in the light of that Act.
I do not, however, concur in the conclusion that the production of tankers was not within the scope of the term “production of goods for commerce.”
“Commerce” was defined by the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 203 (b), among other things, as “ * * * transportation * * * among the several States or from any State to any place outside thereof.” Subsection (i) defines “goods” in connection with the production of goods for commerce as “including ships and marine equipment.”
These tankers were “goods” produced for “transportation,” and since the lower Court found that “Without altering the fundamental design of the vessel, however, and with certain modifications pertaining largely to safety, the crew’s living quarters, the removal of guns, etc., they are readily adaptable to civilian purposes for transporting fuel oils” [D.C., 69 F.Supp. 989, text, 991.], we are not justified in holding, contrary to the finding of the lower Court, that the production of these tankers was unattended by the hope, expectation, or belief that upon the cessation of war some of the surviving of these vessels would, no doubt, become instrumentalities of interstate and foreign transportation of fuel oil.
I think that the conclusion of the lower Court in respect to the tankers was also correct.
HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge (concurring in part and in part dissenting).
*1016As my brother Waller has done, I concur in part and dissent in part from the opinion in this case. In addition to the reasons he gives for his dissent, I add the broader ground of my dissent in Kennedy v. Silas Mason Co., 5 Cir., 164 F.2d 1016.