Boston & Maine RR v. Hayes, 4210.

• Decision Date: 07 March 1947
• Docket Number: No. 4210.,4210.
• Citation: 160 F.2d 325
• Parties: BOSTON & MAINE R. R. v. HAYES.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

160 F.2d 325 (1947)

BOSTON & MAINE R. R. v. HAYES.

No. 4210.

Circuit Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

March 7, 1947.

John De Courcy, of Boston, Mass., for appellant.

Searcy L. Johnson, Sp. Asst. to Atty. Gen., John F. Sonnett, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Philip W. Yager and Fendall Marbury, Attys., Department of Justice, both of Washington, D. C., and George F. Garrity, U. S. Atty. and William J. Koen, Asst. U. S. Atty., both of Boston, Mass., for appellee.

Before MAHONEY and WOODBURY, Circuit Judges, and HEALEY, District Judge.

WOODBURY, Circuit Judge.

This appeal from a judgment in favor of a petitioner under § 8(e) of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, 54 Stat. 891, 50 App. U.S.C.A.Appendix § 308 (e), for restoration in employment as required by § 8(b) (B) of the Act presents a question which appears to be one of first impression in the Circuit Court of Appeals. It is this: Does an employee whose induction is deferred at his employer's request, but who resigns from his employment in order to volunteer for induction into the armed forces, forfeit his statutory right to be restored, on the satisfactory completion of his military service, to the position from which he resigned, or to one of like seniority status and pay?

The respondent argues that he does. It says that when Congress in § 8(b) of the Act gave a right to reemployment to any person "who, in order to perform * * * training and service, has left or leaves a position" etc., it clearly expressed its intention to give reemployment rights only to persons forced or compelled to leave their civilian jobs because of the military training and service required of them by the Act. And the respondent says that this obvious meaning of the words themselves is strongly reenforced by the underlying purpose of the Act to provide military manpower in a controlled and orderly fashion with a minimum of disturbance to essential industry. We do not agree.

In the first place the words chosen by Congress do not seem to us clearly to express the limited meaning attributed to them by the respondent. We think they will readily bear the broader interpretation contended for by the petitioner. And in the second place we think the legislative history of the Act indicates unmistakably that Congress intended its words to have this broader interpretation. That is to say, we think Congress intended the reemployment provisions of the Act to apply to the man who voluntarily quits his job to enlist or to make himself available for induction as well as to the man who is compelled to quit his job because of his induction in the usual course.

The bill which eventually became the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, as originally introduced in the Senate, contained no provision for the reemployment of service men upon their return to civilian status. Its...