Court Opinion

ID: 9444513
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:03:26.402719+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:54.059060
License: Public Domain

MAGRUDER, Chief Judge
(concurring).
I agree that the judgment of the district court should be set aside and the case remanded for further proceedings. It may be, though this is not entirely clear, that the district court was led to enter judgment against the defendant by reason of an erroneous view of the law. In its opinion, the district court said [122 F.Supp. 816] that the particular offense charged in the information “requires no element of criminal intent”, and that if it is found that the defendant knew, “or in the exercise of reasonable care should have known, of the dangerous content of the batteries and the weight of the shipment of said batteries exceeded 2500 pounds, and notwithstanding these facts, the defendant transported the cargo in interstate commerce, there would be a violation of the applicable statutes and regulations, herein concerned.” That language would seem to sanction a conviction of the corporation on the basis of negligence merely, which I think cannot be done under 18 U.S.C. § 835, imposing a penalty upon “whoever knowingly violates” a regulation of the Interstate Commerce Commission.
The opinion of the court simply applies the language of the Supreme Court in *398Boyce Motor Lines, Inc., v. United States, 1952, 342 U.S. 337, 72 S.Ct. 329, 96 L.Ed. 367. If it be thought that the indicated requirement of proof will seriously hamper effective enforcement of the Interstate Commerce Commission regulations, the answer is that Congress is at liberty to fix that up by striking out from 18 U.S.C. § 835 the prescribed element of mens rea — “knowingly”—as applied to violation of regulations of the sort here involved. That is to say, Congress could convert the offense into what sometimes has been called a “public welfare offense”, requiring no element of guilty knowledge or other specific mens rea, by providing that whoever, by himself or by agent, transports explosives, poison gas, flammable solids, or other dangerous commodities without the safeguards which may be prescribed by a lawful regulation of the Interstate Commerce Commission, shall be guilty of a public offense and subject to penalty. See the discussion in Morissette v. United States, 1952, 342 U.S. 246, 252-260, 72 S.Ct. 240, 96 L.Ed. 288.
If a statute provides that it shall be an offense “knowingly” to sell adulterated milk, the offense is complete if the defendant sells what he knows to be adulterated milk, even though he does not know of the existence of the criminal statute, on the time-honored principle of the criminal law that ignorance of the law is no excuse. But where a statute provides, as does 18 U.S.C. § 835, that whoever knowingly violates a regulation of the Interstate Commerce Commission shall be guilty of an offense, it would seem that a person could not knowingly violate a regulation unless he knows of the terms of the regulation and knows -that what he is doing is contrary to the regulation. Here again the definition of the offense is within the control and discretion of the legislature.
In the case at bar the defendant is a corporation. This artificial legal entity cannot “know” anything, except to the extent that the knowledge of some human being or human beings, acting for the corporation, is attributed to the corporation. The legislature, if it chooses, may be precise about this; but often it is not, and the courts have to do the best they can by implication. In the absence of legislative precision in the matter, some courts have construed and applied criminal statutes to mean that a corporate defendant cannot have the prescribed guilty knowledge unless some higher official of the corporation— perhaps called an “alter ego” for the corporation — has such knowledge. See People v. Canadian Fur Trappers Corp., 1928, 248 N.Y. 159, 161 N.E. 455, 59 A.L.R. 372. So far as I can find, the federal courts, in construing imprecise Acts of Congress, have not generally drawn such a line in the hierarchy of officers or agents of the corporation. See United States v. George F. Fish, Inc., 2 Cir., 1946, 154 F.2d 798, 801, cer-tiorari denied 1946, 328 U.S. 869, 66 S.Ct. 1377, 90 L.Ed. 1639; United States v. Armour & Co., 3 Cir., 1948, 168 F.2d 342, 343; Boston & Maine R. R. v. United States, 1 Cir., 1941, 117 F.2d 428, 431. In other words, in applying to a corporation an Act of Congress punishing “whoever knowingly” does something, it is usually held to be enough to charge the corporation with guilt if any agent or servant of the corporation, acting for the corporation in the scope of his employment, has the guilty knowledge, in accordance with the general principles of the law of agency as applied in determining civil liability. See Am.L.Inst., Restatement of Agency, § 272 et seq. On this view, it would not be enough to absolve the corporation from liability for a criminal offense of the sort here in question, that no member of the board of directors, or no one of the higher executives, knew that a dangerous commodity was being transported by the company truck in a forbidden quantity without the markings required by the regulation. Nor would it be enough that the higher executives of the corporation, as the defendant sought to show here, took the utmost care to lay down for the guidance of the subordinate employees procedures designed to assure compliance with the regulation. If the rating clerk, *399who apparently was aware of the requirements of the regulation, had actual knowledge that the impending shipment was of “wet” storage batteries, and had been charged by the corporation with the duty of passing this information on to the defendant’s manifester; and if the manifester, who subsequently weighed the shipment, was aware that it weighed in excess of the allowable 2500 lbs., then these two items of knowledge possessed by these two employees in the course of their duties would be attributed to the corporation. Therefore, on that hypothesis of fact, when the defendant’s dispatcher, in the regular course of his duties, caused the shipment to be taken out by the defendant’s truck driver, I should think it would have to be concluded, as charged in the information, that the corporation “did knowingly transport by motor vehicle a shipment of 70 wet electric storage batteries, complete with chemicals, a corrosive liquid, weighing 3,555 pounds, on public highways, from Boston, Massachusetts, to Portland, Maine * * * ” without the prescribed warning placards.