Crancer v. Lowden

• Citation: 86 L.Ed. 1077,62 S.Ct. 763,315 U.S. 631
• Decision Date: 16 March 1942
• Docket Number: No. 505,505
• Parties: CRANCER et al. v. LOWDEN et al
• Court: United States Supreme Court

315 U.S. 631

62 S.Ct. 763

86 L.Ed. 1077

CRANCER et al.

v LOWDEN et al.

No. 505.

Argued March 3, 4, 1942.

Decided March 16, 1942.

Rehearing Denied April 13, 1942.

See 316 U.S. 708, 62 S.Ct. 1030, 86 L.Ed. —-.

Messrs. Irl B. Rosenblum and Abraham B. Frey, both of St. Louis, Mo., for petitioners.

Mr. Hale Houts, of Kansas City, Mo., for respondents.

Mr. Justice BYRNES delivered the opinion of the Court.

In the District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri respondents brought this suit to recover certain freight charges from petitioners. The case was tried without a jury and judgment rendered in favor of respondents in the sum of $2,263.47. On appeal, the judgment was affirmed by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, 121 F.2d 645.

We brought the case here because of the claim that the courts below sustained the jurisdiction of the District Court although the matter concerned called for the exercise of the administrative discretion of the Interstate Commerce Commission, under the established rule first announced in Texas & Pacific Ry. Co. v. Abilene Cotton Oil Co., 204 U.S. 426, 27 S.Ct. 350, 51 L.Ed. 553, 9 Ann.Cas. 1075, as explained in Great N. Ry. v. Merchants' Elev. Co., 259 U.S. 285, 42 S.Ct. 477, 66 L.Ed. 943.

The shipments, amounting to seven car loads, moved from points in several states, the cars being billed by petitioners to themselves at St. Louis, Missouri. The petitioners billed the contents of the cars as scrap iron and paid the tariff charge applicable to that classification. When the cars arrived at St. Louis, the respondents caused the Western Weighing and Inspection Bureau to inspect their contents. As a result of that inspection, respondents claimed that the articles were actually 'pipe thread protecting rings' and that they belonged in the classification of 'pipe fittings'. The tariff rates on pipe fittings being higher than the rate on scrap iron, demand was made upon petitioners for the difference in freight charges. The demand was refused and this suit followed.

The trial court found that the articles in question were governed by the tariff for 'pipe-fittings' and not by that for 'scrap-iron'. The Circuit Court of Appeals sustained this finding. In the light of certain proceedings before the Interstate Commerce Commission affecting the articles in question and their relation to the tariffs in controversy, we hold that the lower courts were right.

The only questions of any moment presented by this case arise in connection with these proceedings before the Interstate Commerce Commission. In 1937 petitioners filed with the Commission a complaint against a number of railroads in which they asserted that certain shipments of iron or steel pipe thread protecting rings should have been classified under the freight tariffs as scrap iron or steel and not as pipe fittings. They also urged as an alternative contention that even though the shipments were classed as pipe fittings rather than scrap, the rate was unreasonably high. On August 6, 1937 the Commission dismissed the complaint, holding both that the pipe thread protecting rings fell within the classification of pipe fittings and that the rates so imposed were not unreasonable. Crancer and Fleischman et al. v. Abilene & Southern Railway Company et al., 223 I.C.C. 375.

In their answer and in a motion to stay proceedings filed in the District Court in the present case, petitioners asserted that on or about March 16, 1939 (the date on which respondents brought this suit) they had instituted a second action before the Commission. In their complaint in this 1939 action, petitioners alleged that the freight charges demanded by the respondents on the shipments involved in the suit now before us were 'unjust and unreasonable * * * to the extent that they exceeded or exceed rates applicable on scrap iron and scrap steel'. It is not clear from this language whether petitioners intended to raise anew the question of classification or whether they were simply requesting the Commission to pass again on the reasonableness of the rate. But in its opinion dated February 18, 1941 the Commission stated: 'While com- plainants admit for the purpose of this proceeding that the rates on scrap iron are not applicable, they contend that reasonable rates on thread protectors should bear some definite relation to the scrap-iron rates.' Valley Steel Products Company et al. v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Company et al., 243 I.C.C. 509, 512. We conclude that the classification question is not involved in the 1939 I.C.C. proceeding. This proceeding is still pending. The effective date of the February 18, 1941 opinion and order has been indefinitely postponed, a further hearing has been held, but no subsequent opinion or order has been issued.¹

Petitioners raise two contentions with respect to these I.C.C. proceedings and their bearing upon the present suit. First, they contend that it was reversible error for the District Court to admit in evidence a copy of the 1937 opinion of the Commission. At the trial, petitioners objected to its admission on the ground that the opinion has 'absolutely no probative value in this case at all,' that it is not 'de...