Davies Warehouse Co. v. Brown

• Decision Date: 28 May 1943
• Docket Number: No. 5.,5.
• Citation: 137 F.2d 201
• Parties: DAVIES WAREHOUSE CO. v. BROWN, Price Administrator.
• Court: U.S. Temporary Emergency Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

137 F.2d 201 (1943)

DAVIES WAREHOUSE CO. v. BROWN, Price Administrator.

No. 5.

United States Emergency Court of Appeals.

Heard January 25, 1943.

Decided May 28, 1943.

Writ of Certiorari Granted October 11, 1943.

Reginald L. Vaughan, of San Francisco, Cal., for complainant.

W. R. Ming, Jr., of Washington, D. C. (David Ginsburg, General Counsel, Thomas I. Emerson, Associate General Counsel, Nathaniel L. Nathanson, Assistant General Counsel, Ben W. Heineman, Chief, Court Review Branch, and Carl H. Fulda and H. H. Schneider, Attorneys, Office of Price Administration, all of Washington, D. C., on the brief), for respondent.

Before VINSON, Chief Judge, and MARIS and MAGRUDER, Judges.

Writ of Certiorari Granted October 11, 1943. See 64 S.Ct. 40, 88 L.Ed. ___.

MARIS, Judge.

Complainant conducts the business of a public warehouse in the City of Los Angeles, California. Its business is declared by both constitution¹ and statute² of California to be that of a public utility subject to regulation by the railroad commission of the state. That regulation includes the fixing of rates and charges of the complainant. Pursuant to the California statute the railroad commission on May 12, 1942 authorized complainant to make an increase in its existing rates, effective May 22, 1942.

On April 28, 1942 the Price Administrator acting under the authority conferred upon him by the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942 issued a General Maximum Price Regulation³ which fixed as seller's maximum prices for any commodity or service the highest price charged by him during the month of March, 1942. Section 10 of the regulation, as amended,⁴ provided that it should not apply to such services as might be specified by supplementary regulations or amendments thereto.

Section 302(c) (2) of the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942, 50 U.S.C.A. Appendix § 942(c) (2), provides: "(c) The term `commodity' * * * includes services rendered * * * in connection with the * * * storage * * * of a commodity, or in connection with the operation of any service establishment for the servicing of a commodity: Provided, That nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize the regulation of * * * (2) rates charged by any common carrier or other public utility * * *."

On June 18, 1942 the Price Administrator issued Supplementary Regulation No. 11⁵ by which it was declared that the General Maximum Price Regulation would not apply to certain services until July 1, 1942. Among the services thus treated were "(2) Commercial Storage and warehousing and services incident thereto." On June 25, 1942 the Price Administrator issued Amendment No. 1⁶ to Supplementary Regulation No. 11 providing for the exception of certain services from the operation of the General Maximum Price Regulation, effective July 1, 1942. Of the services thus excepted the only ones partaking of the nature of a common carrier or other public utility were the following:

"(21) Electricity (companies furnishing as public utilities), rates charged by

* * * * * * *

(25) Express companies and freight forwarders offering their services to the general public as common carriers, rates charged by

* * * * * * *

(30) Gas (companies supplying, as public utilities through mains), rates charged by

* * * * * * *

(38) Light, heat, or power (companies furnishing, as public utilities), rates charged by

* * * * * * *

(61) Telephone services, rates charged for

(62) Telegraph service, rates charged for

* * * * * * *

(68) Transportation of commodities by persons offering their services to the general public as common carriers by rail, water, motor, pipe line, or other means of conveyances, rates charged for: Provided, however, that charges for storage and warehousing and all other services incident thereto by any person shall not be excluded from the General Maximum Price Regulation.

(69) Transportation of persons, rates charged for

* * * * * * *

(73) Water (companies supplying, to urban areas as public utilities), rates charged by."

The effect of the General Maximum Price Regulation, the Supplementary Regulation and the amendment, as applied to the complainant, was to prohibit it after July 1, 1942 from taking advantage of the rate increase which had been allowed to it by the California Railroad Commission two months previously. Asserting itself to be a public utility within the meaning of the exemption of "any common carrier or other public utility" set forth in Section 302(c) (2) of the act and therefore aggrieved by the failure of the Price Administrator to exempt its business from the General Maximum Price Regulation, the complainant filed a timely protest with the Price Administrator. The Price Administrator denied the protest and the complainant filed the present complaint asking this court to set aside the General Maximum Price Regulation, Supplementary Regulation No. 11 and Amendment No. 1 thereto insofar as they purport to regulate the charges of the complainant.

It is the contention of the complainant that the words "any common carrier or other public utility" as used in the exemption clause of section 302(c) (2) of the act mean any common carrier or other public utility which is designated as such by existing law and regulated as to its rates by existing federal, state or municipal authority. The Price Administrator contends, on the other hand, that the interpretation of these words is not dependent on state law, but that they must be given a uniform effect throughout the United States and must therefore be deemed to refer to all common carriers and other public utilities generally and traditionally recognized as such without regard to whether in a particular state they are or are not subject to rate regulation by statutory authority. It is the Price Administrator's further contention that the business of a public warehouseman is not a public utility in this sense, even though in California it is by statute described and regulated as such. Consequently, he says, the complainant is not entitled to exemption from his price regulation as a public utility and its complaint should be dismissed.

The question thus presented for our decision is as to the meaning to be given to the words "any common carrier or other public utility" in the exemption clause of the act. Are these words to be given their natural and ordinary meaning and applied uniformly throughout the nation or are they to be deemed to refer only to those businesses which have been designated as common carriers or public utilities by some other law and which have been made subject to rate regulation by existing federal, state or local authorities? If the former, do they include the business of a public warehouseman? It will first be observed that neither "common carrier" nor "public utility" is defined by the act. There is no contention that the complainant is a common carrier. Consequently that phrase need concern us no further. Accordingly we must proceed to ascertain the concept which the Congress had in mind in using the phrase "public utility" in the exemption clause of the act.

It need hardly be pointed out that the act was passed in the emergency of war to stabilize prices and to prevent speculative, unwarranted, and abnormal increases in prices. The threatened danger of disastrous inflation was and is nationwide and not local in character and the evident purpose of the act was to empower the Price Administrator to take needed action to combat it on a national scale. In this setting there is especially cogent reason for the application of the well established rule that descriptive terms used in a federal statute will, in the absence of language in the statute indicating a contrary intent, be given a general and uniform interpretation throughout the country.⁷ The same considerations make equally applicable the rule that exceptions to a general policy embodied in a law should be strictly construed.⁸ Here there is no indication that the Congress intended that the Price Administrator's power to fix the prices charged by a business should be dependent upon whether or not in the state in which the business was carried on it was described as a public utility and regulated as such. Particularly in the light of the wide variety of businesses which have been designated and regulated as public utilities in some of the states⁹ there is compelling force in the Price Administrator's argument that under such an interpretation of the act unjustified economic preferences, regional competition and other evils might well result. Likewise we find no indication that the Price Administrator was intended, as the complainant argues, to fix the rates of all common carriers and other public utilities whose rates are not otherwise regulated¹⁰.

We find in the act other indications of the Congressional intent that its application should be uniform throughout the country. Thus we observe that the exceptions to the broad sweep of the coverage of the act which appear in the proviso to Section 302(c) are very few in number. Then also the act expressly deprives all existing courts, federal and state, of jurisdiction to review the Price Administrator's regulations and confers sole jurisdiction in that field upon this court; a plain indication that Congress intended that a single standard of review of price regulations should be applied uniformly throughout the nation.

But even more persuasive is the fact that the exemption clause is wholly devoid of any qualifying language which would indicate that the Congress intended it to have a varying local application. The Congress did not, as it might have done,¹¹ say that the public utilities which were to be exempt from the operation of the act should be those businesses, and those alone, which were deemed to be public utilities and subject to rate regulation as such under existing federal or state law. Furthermore we think that such a definition of the term "public utility" would have extended its...