Court Opinion

ID: 9637376
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:05:33.618909+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:55.785395
License: Public Domain

FARIS, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I concur in the reversal of this case, for the reason that the charge set out in the indictment was not borne out by the facts as disclosed by the evidence in the case, which facts were not at all in dispute.
Defendant was charged by the indictment with having exacted and received more than $10 for his services in assisting and rendering assistance to one Arthur E. York, a veteran of the World War, “in preparation and execution of the necessary papers in the presentation to the United States Veterans Administration of a claim of the said Arthur E. York for certain moneys claimed to be due him as accrued permanent and total disability compensation.”
The undisputed evidence was that the thing, and the only thing, done by defendant, was to prepare and file an action in mandamus in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia against the Veterans’ Administrator. So far as the record discloses, defendant never prepared or filed, nor has he ever assisted or rendered assistance in the preparation or filing of any paper or papers, in the Veterans’ Administration. What he was employed to do and what he did was wholly different. He filed an action in mandamus in a court, in an effort to compel an administrative officer to perform a mere final action or administrative duty which the law, as defendant may well have deemed, made it obligatory on such officer to perform, as soon as that officer had found all of the facts to warrant performance and final action.
It is not at all denied, but categorically admitted in the answer filed in this mandamus suit, that on October 12, 1931, *641the Veterans’ Administrator had found York to have been totally and permanently disabled, and that such disability had existed for insurance purposes continuously since August 27, 1919. It is true, that prior to the filing by defendant of the action in mandamus the Veterans’ Administrator had written to defendant, admitting such finding of total and permanent disability of the soldier, but drawing a distinction between such finding, as it applied to a policy of war risk insurance, and a similar finding in the matter of a rating for compensation purposes. It is also true that the Administrator in fair effect denied that the soldier was entitled to rate for compensation purposes, as totally and permanently disabled, and that after such denial the defendant filed the mandamus action.
I am of the view that section 5 of title 1 of the Act of March 20, 1933 (38 U.S.C.A. § 705), as pointed out in the opinion of Judge VAN VALKENBURGII, stood in the way of a successful outcome of the mandamus action in the situation existing when that action was begun. But this is not so far plain as that defendant can wholly without doubt be charged with bad faith, for that he deemed mandamus to be the proper remedy. He may well have taken the view that the Administrator, having found the legal and requisite disability to exist, to warrant action in one situation, was obliged to apply the like finding in the matter of compensation, and the further view that section 5 in such situation did not apply. I .think the distinction drawn by the Administrator is one of law, and that mandamus in such case was forbidden by the section cited. But to me it seems that the 'thing was not so obvious and plain till after the case of Lynch v. United States, cited by Judge VAN VALKENBURGH, was ruled, as to warrant the charge of bad faith in what defendant did; especially since the above case was decided some six months after the action in mandamus was begun.
I think it is settled that the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia has the right to exercise practically the same broad power in the matter of actions for mandamus as is exercised by the state courts of general and original jurisdiction. 18 R.C.L. 95; Smith v. United States (C.C.A.) 57 F.(2d) 998. That a federal District Court, except in aid of its jurisdiction, has no such power, is of course settled.
Before the passage of section 5,1 should have held the opinion that, when all of the facts and the law to entitle a soldier to compensation had been found in favor of the soldier, and yet, notwithstanding the Administrator capriciously, arbitrarily, and recalcitrantly refused to grant the compensation, he could have been compelled by mandamus to act and to cause such compensation to be paid. Silberschein v. United States, 266 U.S. 221, 45 S.Ct. 69, 69 L.Ed. 256; Smith v. United States, supra. Here, however, as already indicated, the Administrator was of the view that total and permanent disability for the purposes of warranting recovery on a war risk insurance policy was a different thing from such disability for the purpose of awarding compensation to the soldier. Defendant, not having the benefit of the Lynch Case, supra, took the view that in so assuming the administrator was in error. In a state court in a situation similar in principle, mandamus would have lain, and but for section 5 I think it would have lain here. The answer on the merits in the mandamus suit, after a merely formal and perfunctory objection to jurisdiction, rather clearly shows that counsel for the Administrator must have been of the opinion that mandamus would lie. So I think defendant may not be charged with an attempt to obtain an unlawful fee by resorting to evasion of the statute and subterfuge. Even a charge of ignorance is subject to some doubt, and much more a charge of bad faith, and ordinarily ignorance is not a crime.
I am not saying that the matter of bad faith has any compelling legal weight in the case; because, after all, the single question is whether the statute on which the prosecution of defendant was based applies to what was done by him. I cannot be brought to believe that it does; hence I think the motion for a finding that defendant was not guilty should have been sustained by the trial court.
No criminal statute should be so distorted by the construction put upon it by prosecuting attorneys as to be made to apply to acts not within its plain terms. This, as to a criminal statute, has been said so often by the courts as to render reiteration trite. No citizen will be protected against trouble and dishonor, if it shall become *642the law here, as it is now in at least one dictator-ridden country, that in cases not punishable under the Penal Code punishment, if deemed deserved, shall be inflicted “according to the underlying idea of a Penal Code or according to healthy public sentiment.”
It was for a time somewhat in doubt whether a statute fixing a fee for legal services was not' constitutionally invalid, for that it was an interference with what had long been deemed the free right to make a contract. Calhoun v. Massie, 253 U.S. 170, 40 S.Ct. 474, 64 L.Ed. 843. This is another reason, in addition to' the fact that the statute is highly penal, for construing the statute narrowly and for not extending it by construction beyond its rather plain terms.
So I concur in reversing this case on the single simple ground that what the defendant did was not covered by the statute on which he was prosecuted and convicted.