Puckett v. Sellars
| Decision Date | 19 March 1952 |
| Docket Number | No. 249,249 |
| Citation | 69 S.E.2d 497,235 N.C. 264 |
| Parties | PUCKETT et al. v. SELLARS. |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
Gavin, Jackson & Gavin, Sandford, for plaintiff appellees.
J. G. Edwards and Hoyle & Hoyle, all of Sandford, for defendant appellant.
The tobacco production program is a comprehensive plan to assure the orderly flow of tobacco into the stream of interstate and foreign commerce, and it has been approved by more than two-thirds of the tobacco producing farmers of the nation. The objective of the legislation putting the plan into operation, 7 U.S.C.A. Ch. 35 B is to eliminate the disparity between the prices of tobacco in interstate and foreign commerce and the prices of industrial products in such commerce, and to prevent the indiscriminate dumping on the national market of excessive supplies of tobacco at ruinously low prices which spell bankruptcy for the farmers, adversely affect the economy of the whole nation, disrupt the orderly marketing of tobacco, and substantially burden interstate and foreign commerce. 7 U.S.C.A. § 1311; Mulford v. Smith, 307 U.S. 38, 59 S.Ct. 648, 83 L.Ed. 1092. The act is administered by the U. S. Department of Agriculture through the Production and Marketing Administration, commonly known as PMA.
Under the plan each producer of tobacco is allotted annually a tobacco acreage quota. The tobacco produced on the acreage quota thus allotted may be marketed without penalty. However, to discourage overproduction and to assure the success of the program, the marketing of any kind of tobacco in excess of the quota allotted for the farm on which the tobacco is produced is subject to a penalty of forty per centum of the average maket price for such tobacco for the preceding maketing year. 7 U.S.C.A. § 1314.
To the end that the marketing of any excess production may be readily ascertained, every producer is furnished a marketing card which is his authority to place his tobacco on the market for sale and to sell the same. Adams v. Growers' Warehouse, 230 N.C. 704, 55 S.E.2d 331. The card must be produced and a sales memorandum made therein by a PMA representative before the sale may be consummated, without penalty, by the payment of the purchase price.
To facilitate the sale and assure the collection of any penalty due, the producer who has not planted in excess of his acreage quota is issued a white card. The farmer who has overproduced receives a pink card on which the amount per pound penalty is noted. The pink color serves to put the PMA representative and purchaser on notice that a penalty is assessable against the particular sale.
The Act provides that when tobacco is marketed through a warehouseman the 'penalty shall be paid by such warehouseman * * * who may deduct an amount equivalent to the penalty from the price paid to the producer'. 7 U.S.C.A. § 1314.
The phraseology of this latter provision is the underlying cause of this litigation. The defendant contends that the penalty is assessed against the warehouseman with an option on his part to deduct the assessed penalty from the sales price of the tobacco, and that when the plaintiff failed to exercise his option to make such deduction at the time of the sale he waived his right to claim reimbursement from him.
But when the Act is considered as a whole in the light of the evils sought to be eliminated, the remedies intended to be applied, and the objective to be attained, it becomes apparent that this is not the proper construction of the provision. 50 A.J. 283, sec. 303; Young v. Whitehall Co., 229 N.C. 360, 49 S.E.2d 797; Smith v. Davis, 228 N.C. 172, 45 S.E.2d 51, 174 A.L.R. 643.
Emphasis should be laid upon the necessity for appraisal of the purposes as a whole of Congress in analyzing the meaning of clauses or sections of general acts U. S. v. American Trucking Ass'ns, 310 U.S. 534, 60 S.Ct. 1059, 84 L.Ed. 1345.
The Congressional intent is to prevent the marketing of excessive amounts of tobacco. The penalty is intended as a deterrent against overproduction. It is the producer who is granted the production quota. It is he who overproduces, and the penalty is intended to penalize him for his overproduction. He markets his tobacco and the penalty is upon the marketing of tobacco produced in excess of the quota allotted. 7 U.S.C.A. § 1314.
The intention of the law-making body is the heart of a statute. Mullen v. Town of Louisburg, 225 N.C. 53, 33 S.E.2d 484; Branch Banking & Trust Co. v. Hood, Com'r of Banks, 206 N.C. 268...
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...evils sought to be eliminated, the remedies intended to be applied, and the objective to be attained’ " (quoting Puckett v. Sellars, 235 N.C. 264, 267, 69 S.E.2d 497, 499 (1952) ) ). Plaintiffs assert that a construction of N.C.G.S. § 40A-51 allowing compensation even if the property in que......
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