Fulford v. Forman

• Decision Date: 14 June 1957
• Docket Number: No. 16329.,16329.
• Citation: 245 F.2d 145
• Parties: J. T. FULFORD, Appellant, v. Jesse V. B. FORMAN, Elmer G. Gardner and Murphey W. Luna, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

245 F.2d 145 (1957)

J. T. FULFORD, Appellant, v. Jesse V. B. FORMAN, Elmer G. Gardner and Murphey W. Luna, Appellees.

No. 16329.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

May 17, 1957.

Rehearing Denied June 14, 1957.

Austin C. Wilson, Houston, Tex., T. J. McMahon, Abilene, Tex. (Fulbright, Crooker, Freeman, Bates & Jaworski, Houston, Tex., McMahon, Smart, Walter, Sprain & Wilson, Abilene, Tex., of counsel), for appellant.

Neil Brooks, Asst. Gen. Counsel, Dept. of Agriculture, Paul A. Sweeney, Chief, Appellate Section, Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., George Cochran Doub, Asst. Atty. Gen., Donald A. Campbell, Atty., U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., for appellees.

Before HUTCHESON, Chief Judge, and RIVES and BROWN, Circuit Judges.

JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge.

This is another skirmish in the smoldering controversy between West Texas cotton farmers who feel that allocation of acreage under the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, 7 U.S.C.A. § 1281 et seq., unfairly fails to take into account the recent trend toward intense cultivation of cotton under irrigation and those of East Texas who contend that what they have perhaps gotten back for the 1956 crop was only a portion of that unfairly taken from them and given to those in West Texas in the 1954 and 1955 adjustments for trends. Save that litigation on a wide front,¹ petition to political and executive bodies for legislative and administrative relief and other peaceful means of persuasion have been substituted as the weapons, it has much of the character² of earlier cattle-sheep disputes of the Western range.

Here the battle, while waged on a narrow front, may be decisive. For if the farmer, Fulford, is right that the Review Committee is not confined to considering and determining that which the County Committee could take into account, then whatever inequities, discriminations or wrongs are done at any of the successive stages of the administrative hierarchy can be corrected on the spot by the local³ county folk comprising the Review Committee.

The question for us, as for the District Court and the Review Committee, is whether the function of the Review Committee is so limited.

The farmer's complaint is simply stated: for the crop year 1956 Texas received a State allotment of 7,410,893 acres. This was 2.65% less than 1955. Pursuant to the Act, 7 U.S.C.A. § 1344 (e), the State Committee established the maximum allowable 10% State Reserve of 741,089 acres. But whereas, 80.5% in 1954 and approximately 60% in 1955 of the State Reserve was allocated (much of it to the newly productive areas of the West Texas counties), as an adjustment for "trends in acreage", the State Committee for 1956 determined (see note 16, infra) to allow no part of the Reserve to be so used in 1956. Not only that, out of the 62.8% (465,465 acres) designated by them under another statutory category for "hardships and inequities," approximately 191,000 acres was, by a special formula, in effect assigned to areas (presumably East Texas) to partially offset the 1954, 1955 increases to other areas. The upshot was that in contrast to a statewide cut of but 2.65% and an actual increase in many counties to 103%, or more, the allocation of acreage to Terry County and Fulford's farm was 7% less than in 1955.

When the impact of this allocation to Terry County was translated into the acreage allotment (157.9 acres) to Fulford, he appealed, as permitted by the Act, to the county Review Committee,⁴ claiming that he ought to have been allotted 171.2 acres. But by formal petition and orally before the Review Committee, he was careful to point out that no complaint was made as to action taken by the County Committee, and that his grievance was directed entirely at the action of the State Committee in its distribution⁵ of the State Reserve. At the hearing in which a tender of evidence sufficient at least to show the existence of a genuine controversy was made, the Review Committee adopted the view pressed so hard by counsel for the Secretary that one of his own regulations⁶ prevented this body from reviewing an assertedly wrongful act of another of his agents (the State Committee). On Fulford's appeal to the District Court,⁷ the Judge, in a persuasive opinion, Fulford v. Forman, D.C.Tex., 144 F.Supp. 536, sustained a motion to dismiss⁸ for want of jurisdiction.

If the regulation is valid, the matter would end there. But since rejection of the regulation sought by Fulford would still leave us with the question whether the Act itself gives such wide review powers to the Review Committee, we think it better to rest decision on the statute directly.

In this approach we conclude that the Act does not invest the Review Committee with any such wide powers.

At the outset, we must remember that involving, as it does, the national policy of dealing with the ever-present problem of farm surpluses, stability of farm income, and the use of Governmental sanctions or incentives in control of production and price, this is a matter of delicate complexity. It has been and still is a major problem challenging succeeding administrations of the legislature and the executive. In a legislative structure so abstruse that, as it sets forth formula which, to the tutored, reflects the product hammered out in the legislative process, but to the uninitiated, appears to be an unintelligible stream of words, it would be completely unrealistic for us to judge this serious matter by an undue reliance upon the simple, literal words of Section 1363, note 4, supra.

The simplicity of the words or the ease of resolution by accepting them and nothing else ought not to beguile us into forgetting the admonition, United States v. American Trucking Associations, 310 U.S. 534, 543, 60 S.Ct. 1059, 1063, 84 L.Ed. 1345, 1350, on the "literal interpretation dogma":

"There is, of course, no more persuasive evidence of the purpose of a statute than the words by which the legislature undertook to give expression to its wishes. Often these words are sufficient in and of themselves to determine the purpose of the legislation. In such cases we have followed their plain meaning. When that meaning has led to absurd or futile results, however, this Court has looked beyond the words to the purpose of the act. Frequently, however, even when the plain meaning did not produce absurd results but merely an unreasonable one `plainly at variance with the policy of the legislation as a whole\' this Court has followed that purpose, rather than the literal words * *."

In determining what Congress intended by language of Section 1363 which defines power of review neither negatively nor affirmatively, a fair test would be the consequences to the whole legislative program were this vast power of review recognized. That in legislative acts of plain purpose, there may be alarming or disturbing consequences gives no right to the judiciary to prevent what may have been a Congressional blunder. But where legislative intent is not plainly manifest, such consequences, especially as they pose threats of alarming proportions to the effective operation of a comprehensive program, are relevant guides in indicating at least what Congress did not intend.

If, as claimed, the language of Section 1363, note 4, supra, is so broad that a county Review Committee can review the action of the State Committee in allocating the State Reserve (or any of its other functions), so it can pass upon the actions of the Secretary himself, not only in allocating that State's acreage, but in the making of many other indispensable determinations. What would this do to the organic whole?

Of course, the heart of the Act is the elimination of excessive supplies of cotton, 7 U.S.C.A. § 1341, through a detailed scheme for regulating production. "The framework of the Act itself, both as originally passed and as amended, and the reports of the congressional committees that drafted it, show a prime purpose to limit national and individual farm production and marketing to the quotas allotted * * *," Rodgers v. United States, 332 U.S. 371, 375, 68 S. Ct. 5, 8, 92 L.Ed. 3, 7. And control of "* * * total supply, upon which the whole statutory plan is based, depends upon control of individual supply," Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111, 130, 63 S.Ct. 82, 91, 87 L.Ed. 122, 138. And Congress expressly found that "conditions affecting the production and marketing of cotton are such that, without Federal assistance, farmers, individually or in cooperation, cannot effectively prevent the recurrence of excessive supplies of cotton * * *," 7 U.S.C.A. § 1341.

At the top of this inverted pyramid, the total amount of cotton which may be produced has to be, and is, fixed by a single agency, the Secretary. This is the National Marketing Quota which can be promulgated only after determining whether the "total supply"⁹ of cotton for the marketing year will exceed the "normal supply."¹⁰

Once fixed within statutory minimums, 7 U.S.C.A. § 1342, approved by the Farmer Referendum 7 U.S.C.A. § 1343, and proclaimed, the National Marketing Quota must be translated by the Secretary into a National acreage Allotment¹¹ which, after proper determination, he must then apportion¹² to the several cotton producing states as the State Allotment.

Responsibility, initial at least, for the apportionment of the State acreage allotment among the counties is in the State Committee¹³ on the same basis¹⁴ as applicable to the State, note 12, supra, except for a permissive 10% State Reserve.¹⁵

Specifically then five important judgment decisions are committed,¹⁶ subject to the Secretary's approval, to the State Committee: (1) whether a Reserve is needed; (2) if so, its amount, not to exceed 10 per cent; (3) its distribution within the statutory categories, note 15, supra; (4) whether "adjustments for abnormal weather conditions" is necessary; and (5) if so, in what areas, to what extent and from which areas will...