Roy Bryant Cattle Co. v. United States, 72-1256 Summary Calendar.
| Decision Date | 28 July 1972 |
| Docket Number | No. 72-1256 Summary Calendar.,72-1256 Summary Calendar. |
| Citation | 463 F.2d 418 |
| Parties | ROY BRYANT CATTLE CO., Inc., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. The UNITED STATES of America, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Jack B. Manning, Houston, Tex. (Bean & Manning, Houston, Tex., of counsel), for plaintiff-appellant.
James R. Gough, Asst. U. S. Atty., Houston, Tex., for defendant-appellee.
Before JOHN R. BROWN, Chief Judge, and GOLDBERG and MORGAN, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiff, Roy Bryant Cattle Company, instituted this action in federal district court under the provisions of the Tucker Act, 28 U.S.C.A. § 1346, to recover monies allegedly wrongfully paid to the United States Department of Agriculture for overtime services performed by federal meat inspectors at the plaintiff's meat processing establishment in Houston, Texas. The district court granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment, and we affirm.
The undisputed facts are that Roy Bryant Cattle Company commenced operations as a meat processing plant subject to the Federal Meat Inspection Act, 21 U.S.C.A. §§ 601 et seq., in February of 1968. Pursuant to the provisions of that Act, the Consumer and Marketing Service of the Department of Agriculture assigned the plaintiff an establishment number and proceeded to provide the company with inspection service. At the outset the company operated for eight hours during the day, and the Department was able to tie the plaintiff into a patrol assignment in which several federal meat inspectors serviced the Roy Bryant Cattle Co. and Armour & Company, a large processing plant approximately two miles from the plaintiff's establishment. The upshot of this patrol assignment was that the plaintiff received eight hours of free inspection service every work day. Sometime in 1968 the plaintiff began operating exclusively between the hours of 12 midnight and 8:30 a. m., which is outside the operating hours observed by the majority of the meat packing establishments throughout the Houston, Texas area. This metamorphosis engendered an administrative determination by the Department of Agriculture that the plaintiff was not operating within reasonable hours. Accordingly, the Department altered its inspection patrol assignments and began charging the plaintiff for an inspector's overtime work at the rate of three-and-one-half hours per day. The plaintiff paid almost $15,000 in overtime charges for more than two-and-one-half years and then instituted this suit to recover those payments. Sustaining the Department of Agriculture's interpretation of its own regulations, the district court held that the overtime charges paid by the plaintiff were properly assessed and collected.
On appeal the sole issue which commands our attention is the reasonableness of the Department of Agriculture's interpretation of the following regulation:
"The management of an official establishment, an importer, or an exporter desiring to work under conditions which will require the services of an employee of the Program on a Saturday, Sunday, or holiday, or for more than 8 hours on any other day, shall sufficiently in advance of the period of overtime, request the officer in charge or his assistant to furnish inspection services during such overtime period, and shall pay the Administrator therefor $8.00 per hour to reimburse the Service for the cost of the inspection service so furnished. . . ."
9 C.F.R. § 307.4. It is the plaintiff's contention that this regulation does not require the payment of overtime charges for inspection services unless a meat processor utilizes the services of an inspector in its own establishment for more than eight hours in any one day (excluding a Saturday, Sunday, or holiday). In other words, the company claims that this administrative directive entitles it to eight hours of free meat inspection every normal working day. The Department of Agriculture, on the other hand, has consistently interpreted the phrase "8 hours on any other day" as referring to the eight hours that an inspector works during a given day. Thus, it is the Department's position that any time an inspector labors for the Department more than eight hours a day the regulation authorizes the agency...
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