Gimbel Bros., Inc. v. Barrett

• Decision Date: 10 August 1914
• Docket Number: 3140.
• Citation: 215 F. 1004
• Parties: GIMBEL BROS., Inc. v. BARRETT.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Pennsylvania

215 F. 1004

GIMBEL BROS., Inc. v. BARRETT.

No. 3140.

United States District Court, E.D. Pennsylvania.

August 10, 1914

Morton Z. Paul and Wm. A. Glasgow, Jur., both of Philadelphia, Pa for plaintiff.

John L Evans and Thomas De Witt Cuyler, both of Philadelphia, Pa for defendant.

DICKINSON District Judge.

The action in this case is brought under the Interstate Commerce Acts. The motion to dismiss is based upon the proposition that the court is without jurisdiction to entertain the action until the proper rates of charge, which are alleged to have been exceeded, have been first interpreted by the Interstate Commerce Commission. The acts of Congress, after setting forth the requirements of the law and imposing a liability upon carriers who are guilty of the acts declared to be unlawful, provide that any person claiming to be damaged may make complaint to the Commission or bring suit for damages. The impression first received upon the reading of the act is that the tribunal, whose powers may be invoked to redress the injury, is optional with the complainant. This impression is deepened by the further provision that both remedies cannot be pursued, but that the claimant 'must elect' which of the two methods of procedure he will adopt, and is further deepened by those provisions of the act which indicate the purpose of Congress to give the remedies allowed in addition to those which pertain at common law. A fuller consideration of the acts, however, soon discloses that certain of their remedial features are made subordinate to the administrative powers conferred, and the remedies afforded do not become effective or cannot be applied except through or until after the exercise of these administrative powers, which are conferred not upon the courts but upon the Commission. This makes necessary that in such cases the appeal of the person injured be made, or at least be first made, to the Commission. This necessity arises, not because of a lack of jurisdiction, strictly speaking, in the courts but because some facts upon which the judgment of the courts must be based can only be made to appear from the exercise of these administrative powers. To construe the acts as conferring these administrative powers upon the courts would not only work practical confusion, in that the results would vary in different jurisdictions and even in different cases, but such a construction would make the act self-destructive. This is the basis of the ruling in every one of the cases to which we have been referred. For illustration, in Texas & Pacific Ry. Co. v. Abilene Cotton Oil Co., 204 U.S. 426, 27 Sup.Ct. 350, 51 L.Ed. 553, 9 Ann.Cas. 1075, the carrier there had published its tariff or schedule of charges. The complaint was that these rates were unreasonable, and the right of action was based upon a finding to this effect. To render judgment against the carrier with the schedules in force involved this incongruity. The act required the carrier to file its tariff. It further required it to adhere to it when filed and to strictly observe it as filed. This is its plain meaning. How, then, could it be construed to also mean that the carrier was bound to depart from the published rates? This and the practical difficulties in the way of any other construction of the act compelled the construction that the determination of the proper rate, or what the rate should be, or, in other words, the fixing of the rate, was committed to the Commission and to the Commission alone as an...