Mulford v. Smith
| Decision Date | 17 April 1939 |
| Docket Number | No. 505,505 |
| Citation | 83 L.Ed. 1092,59 S.Ct. 648,307 U.S. 38 |
| Parties | MULFORD et al. v. SMITH et al |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
[Syllabus from pages 38-40 intentionally omitted] Messrs. A. J. Little, of Valdosta, Ga., and L. E. Heath, of Douglas, Ga., for appellants.
Messrs. Robert H. Jackson, Sol. Gen., and Robert K. McConnaughey, of Dayton, Ohio, for the United States.
Mr. Omer W. Franklin, of Valdosta, Ga., for appellees Smith et al.
The appellants, producers of flue-cured tobacco, assert that the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938,1 is unconstitutional as it affects their 1938 crop.
The portions of the statute involved are those included in Title III, providing marketing quotas for flue-cured tobacco.2 The Act directs that when the supply is found to exceed the level defined in the Act as the 'reserve supply level' a national marketing quota shall become effective which will permit enough flue-cured tobacco to be marketed during the ensuing marketing year to maintain the supply at the reserve supply level. The quota is to be apportioned to the farms on which tobacco is grown. Penalties are to be paid by tobacco auction warehousemen for marketing tobacco from a farm in excess of its quota.
Section 311 is a finding by the Congress that the marketing of tobacco is a basic industry which directly affects interstate and foreign commerce; that stable conditions in such marketing are necessary to the general welfare; that tobacco is sold on a national market and it and its products move almost wholly in interstate and foreign commerce; that without federal assistance the farmers are unable to bring about orderly marketing, with the consequence that abnormally excessive supplies are produced and dumped indiscriminately on the national market; that this disorderly marketing of excess supply burdens and obstructs interstate and foreign commerce, causes reduction in prices and consequent injury to commerce, creates disparity between the prices of tobacco in interstate and foreign commerce and the prices of industrial products in such commerce, and diminishes the volume of interstate commerce in industrial products; and that the establishment of quotas as provided by the Act is necessary and appropriate to promote, foster and obtain an orderly flow of tobacco in interstate and foreign commerce.
There is no provision for continuous regulation of tobacco marketing, but, by Section 312(a), regulation becomes effective in any year only if, on November 15th, the Secretary finds that the total supply of tobacco as of July 1st exceeded the reserve supply level which is defined in the Act.3 If he so finds, he shall, by December 1st, proclaim the total supply and a national marketing quota shall be in effect throughout the marketing year which commences the following July 1st. The quota is to be the amount which the Secretary finds will make available during the ensuing marketing year a supply of tobacco equal to the reserve supply level. As it was not passed until after November 15, 1937, the Act provided, with respect to the marketing year beginning July 1, 1938, for which the quotas involved in this case were in effect, that the determination and proclamation of the national marketing quota should be made within fifteen days after the statute's approval.4
Within thirty days after proclamation, the Secretary is to conduct a referendum of the producers of the crop of the preceding year to ascertain whether they favor or oppose the imposition of a quota. If more than one-third oppose, the Secretary is to proclaim the result before January 1st and the quota is not to be effective.5
By Section 313(a) it is directed that the quota is to be first apportioned among the states based on the total quantity of tobacco produced in each state during the five years immediately preceding the year in question, plus the normal production of any acreage diverted under any agricultural adjustment and conservation program in any of the years. The basic determination is to be adjusted to correct state allotments, giving due consideration to seed bed or other plant diseases, production trends, or abnormal producing conditions which affected production in the several states during the five-year period, and to make required provision for allotments to small farms. A limit is set below which the quota of any state may not be reduced.
The Act provides for the apportionment of the state allotment amongst the farms which produced tobacco in the current year or have produced previously in one or more of the four preceding years. Apportionment to these farms is to be made on the basis of past marketing, after due allowance for drought, flood, hail, and other abnormal weather conditions, plant bed and other diseases, land, labor, and equipment available for the production of tobacco, crop-rotation practices, and soil and other physical factors affecting production. A limit is fixed below which the adjustment may not reduce the production of a given farm. Allotment to new tobacco farms is to be made on a slightly different basis.6
Apportionment of the quota amongst individual farms is to be by local committees of farmers according to standards prescribed in the Act, amplified by regulations and instructions issued by the Secretary. Each farmer is to be notified of his marketing quota and the quotas of individual farms are to be kept available for public inspection in the county or district where the farm is located. If the farmer is dissatisfied with his allotment he may have his quota reviewed by a local review committee, and, if dissatisfied with the determination of that committee, he may obtain judicial review.
Section 314 provides that if tobacco in excess of the quota for the farm on which the tobacco is produced is marketed through a warehouseman, the latter must pay to the Secretary a penalty equal to fifty per cent. of the market price of the excess, and may deduct an amount equivalent to the penalty from the price paid the producer.7
Section 376 gives the United States a civil action for the recovery of unpaid penalties.8
A few days before the 1938 auction sales were to take place, the appellants, who produce flue-cured tobacco in southern Georgia and northern Florida, filed a bill in equity in a Georgia state court against local warehousemen to restrain them from deducting penalties under the Act from the sales price of tobacco to be sold at their auction warehouses on behalf of appellants. The bill alleged that the Act is unconstitutional; that it illegally commands the defendants to deduct penalties, pay them over to the Secretary, who must cover them into the treasury of the United States; that, if the defendants should make the required payments, the amounts paid by them would aggregate so large a sum that they would be unable to satisfy judgments in actions brought to recover the illegal payments. The court granted a preliminary injunction and ordered the defendant warehousemen to pay the amounts of the penalties into the registry of the court. The cause was removed to the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia. The District Court continued the injunction, modified the order to require the payments to be made into its registry, the auction sales were held, and payments into the court were made. The United States was permitted to intervene as a defendant.9 The warehousemen and the United States filed answers. The cause was set down before a court consisting of three judges,10 which heard it on a stipulation of facts and entered a decree dismissing the bill.11
Before coming to the merits we inquire whether the court below had jurisdiction as a federal court or as a court of equity. Though no diversity of citizenship is alleged, nor is any amount in controversy asserted so as to confer jurisdiction under subsection (1)12 of Section 24 of the Judicial Code, the case falls within subsection (8)13 which confers jurisdiction upon District Courts 'of all suits and proceedings arising under any law regulating commerce.' Maintenance of the bill for injunction is not forbidden by R.S. § 3224,14 which applies only to a suit to restrain assessment or collection of a tax. Under the averments of the bill the defendant warehousemen would be wrongdoers if they deducted and paid over the prescribed penalties, but no action at law would be adequate to redress the damage thus inflicted. It appears that the total of the penalties involved in this suit is some $374,000. The allegation that the warehousemen would be unable to respond in actions for sums aggregating this amount has, therefore, reasonable basis. Before any such action could be initiated the penal sum would have been paid to the Secretary of Agriculture and by him to the Treasurer of the United States and covered into the general funds of the Treasury. No action could be maintained against the warehousemen or either of these officials for disposing of the penal sums in accordance with the terms of the Act unless prior notice not to do so had been served upon each of them. In the light of the fact that the appellants received notice of their quotas only a few days before the actual marketing season opened, the maintenance of actions based upon collection of the penalties would have been a practical impossibility. We are of opinion, therefore, that a case is stated for the interposition of a court of equity.
The appellants plant themselves upon three propositions: (1) that the Act is a statutory plan to control agricultural production and, therefore, beyond the powers delegated to Congress; (2) that the standard for calculating farm quotas is uncertain, vague, and indefinite, resulting in an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to the Secretary; (3) that, as applied to appellants' 1938 crop, the Act takes their property without due process of law.
First. The statute does not purport to...
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