Court Opinion

ID: 9462276
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:36:53.969547+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:30.649212
License: Public Domain

EUGENE A. WRIGHT, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
With due respect, I dissent and would adopt the language of the district court:
Here the Government is attempting to impose a serious sanction. It must therefore convince the Court that Stockton is not a “designated terminal”. It suffices to say that it has not done so. If Congress intended to provide that Stockton and similar cities are not “designated” terminals, i. e., not appropriate for the purposes of the legislation, its message has not carried across to this Court.
United States v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Co., 363 F.Supp. 644, 648 (N.D.Cal.1973).
I would hold that any Santa Fe terminal as defined in the collective bargaining agreement which meets the minimum food and lodging standards is a designated terminal for the purposes of this Act unless the relevant collective bargaining agreement specifically excludes it.
The majority observes, Note 1, that grievance procedures were available to the train crew, that they were paid for the run in question and for the time spent in Stockton, and that they made no complaint and filed no grievance. I disagree with the conclusion that these “are facts which do not bear directly on the merits of the issue in this case.” Rather, they convince me that the interpretation of the term “designated terminal,” as applied to a specific run, should be left to the collective bargaining process.
There are times when a court should look to ways in which persons have reacted in response to a statute as an aid to interpreting the statute’s meaning. The analysis used by the late Professor Henry Hart and Professor [now Dean] Albert Sacks of Harvard Law School in interpreting the terms “work,” “workweek,” and “working time” for purposes of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 [29 U.S.C. § 201 et seq.] can be applied to the case at bar.
Evidence of the common understanding of the terms “work” or “working time” or “workweek” [or designated terminal] might be thought to be relevant for two reasons: first, as a showing, at the least, that the words would bear the meaning reflected in the understanding; and second, as showing, on the basis of the assumption that the legislature used the words in their ordinary signification to the people affected, that this meaning was the correct one.
H. M. Hart and A. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in the Making and Application of Law, 1299 (tent. ed. 1958). The fact that no grievance was filed indicates that those affected did not find Stockton unacceptable or a breach of the collective bargaining agreement which regulates the designated terminals.
The majority’s reliance on testimony before a Congressional committee, in determining Congressional intent, is misplaced. As noted by the district court, the testimony is ambiguous. In the absence of a clear expression of legislative intent, I would look to the purpose of the statute to find the meaning of “designated terminal.”
The plain language of § 64 demonstrates why a broad definition of the term should be favored. It reads:
The requirements imposed by sections 61 to 64b of this title with respect to time on duty of employees are hereby declared to result in the maximum permissible hours of service consistent with safety. However, shorter hours of service and time on duty of employees for lesser periods of time are hereby declared to be proper subjects for collective bargaining between any common carrier subject to sections 61 to 64b of this title and its employees.
45 U.S.C. § 64.
*1192If Stockton could be considered as a designated terminal for purposes of the Hours of Service Act,1 then Section 64 would seem to place the burden of bargaining on the unions to determine that Stockton is not so designated.
The primary purpose of the Hours of Service Act is to provide minimum standards to insure safety. Congress appears also to have intended to encourage both railroads and unions to bargain above these mínimums. The majority position interferes with the bargaining by setting a status quo ante which is above the implied minimum standards. I do not read the statute to go so far.
I would affirm the district court’s judgment on the basis that Stockton was a designated terminal within the broad definition.

. Using the majority’s definition it is possible for the railroad to accomplish the dire result which the majority relates at page 1190 without violating the Act. Riverbank would be the home terminal and Stockton and Richmond would be away-from-home terminals for this crew. It seems clear that the Hours of Service Act will permit the railroad to take its employees away from their homes for up to 16 hours per day, e. g., 12 hours on duty [45 U.S.C. § 62(a)(1)], 4 hours off at a designated terminal [45 U.S.C. §§ 61(b)(3) A, B], and 8 hours at home [45 U.S.C. § 62(a)(2)],