Schuetzle v. Duba
| Decision Date | 24 January 1962 |
| Docket Number | Civ. No. 901 N. D. |
| Citation | 201 F. Supp. 754 |
| Parties | Hilmer SCHUETZLE, Willis Rodenberg, John Pollock, and Martin Schaeffer, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. William D. DUBA, George O. Crouch, and Walter N. Evans, individually and as members of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Committee for the State of South Dakota, and Al Jonnson, individually and as State Administrative Officer for the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Committee for the State of South Dakota, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of South Dakota |
Maynes & Myers, Aberdeen, S. D., for plaintiffs.
Harold Doyle, U. S. Atty., and Travis Lewin, Asst. U. S. Atty., Sioux Falls, S. D., for defendants.
This is a rehearing, granted at the request of the defendants because of their complaint that the two day notice under Rule 65(b) F.R.Civ.P., 28 U.S.C.A., necessarily invoked as the first hearing was held, did not afford the time they needed to answer the plaintiffs' application for the preliminary injunction which was issued on September 23, 1961.
The controversy which led first to a restraining order and then to an application for and the granting of the preliminary injunction, arose out of an alleged attempt by the defendants under cloak and pretense of official authority to compel the Campbell County, South Dakota ASC committee to move its office from Mound City to Herreid, another town in the same county, contrary to the provisions of subparagraph 7.32 of the Regulations Governing ASC County and Community Committees, which provides:
For purpose of the hearing it was and has been adequately shown that the defendants in the process of attempting to force the local committee to initiate such relocation and prevent the exercise of its own judgment, first threatened to and thereafter dismissed two members who refused to vote as they were told on the proposed relocation. Two alternates, who stepped in to fill the vacancies, received like treatment and for the same reasons. The defendants' hint that the Campbell County ASC office would be combined with one in another county, was another expedient used as they sought obedience to their proposal and a commentary that a committeeman once dismissed could never again qualify for federal employment, was one more used to dissuade.
Confronting the court at the time of the granting of the restraining order on September 15, 1961, and again on hearing of the motion for preliminary injunction, was progress in the defendants' scheme for relocation to the extent that office quarters at Herreid had been selected, under circumstances tending to show that the defendants had initiated that act and not the local committee; that two of the committeemen and their alternates had been dismissed because they were voting to oppose; that the defendants' method had stifled all local committee activities; that mob resistance to the defendants' relocation proposals was in progress and that the defendants but for the preliminary injunction would have consummated the circumventing measures they had employed.
The state committee's and its administrative officers' use of those methods in an attempt to complete the contemplated relocation, without official local committee hindrance, was an illegal effort to use powers they didn't have, to invade the domain of rights, exclusively vested in the local committee, usurp its administrative functions by coercive means, to compel obedience by threats and by unwarranted dismissals to prevent local committee administrative questions to be decided by majority vote.
It was for the local ASC committee, in the first instance under the regulations, to decide whether or not the committee office should be moved to another location. Its decision on that point would have been final. The state committee, following a decision to relocate, acting in a supervisory capacity only, could approve or disapprove. It could do no more.
Further background for the commencement of the action, for the motion and for the granting of the preliminary injunction, is in the original plaintiffs, being Campbell County farmer participants in the monetary and other benefits prescribed under the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936, as amended, 16 U.S.C.A. § 590(h), and in the defendants' unlawful and autocratic ousting of that county's ASC, with intent to divest the farmer shareholders of a voice by representation in the county ASC management.
Official opposition to the relocation from the local committee, thus, dismissalwise, having been destroyed, it was for those with actual contract interests in the benefits of the farm program and in prescribed orderly county administration thereof, to prevent ultra vires encroachments by the defendants by stepping into the county committee vacancies, so as to preserve the status quo, pending official election of other ASC members to take the places of those who had been deposed.
Though interim acting and self-appointed, they were actually and semi-officially attending to an administrative function which but for the illegal deactivation of the county ASC, presumably in view of the record, would have had the attention of its members.
The standing of the original plaintiffs for purpose of this suit, under those circumstances, is in no material respects different from what it would have been, had the local committee been the plaintiff. Moreover, the defendants, since they created the situation, can't and shouldn't be permitted to urge insufficiency of standing as a defense.
On that theory the court is of the opinion that the case at the time of the hearing, was within the rule, as to standing, in Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433, 59 S. Ct. 972, 83 L.Ed. 1385:
"But there has been recognition of the legitimate interest of public officials and administrative...
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...its contract with appellant." 316 U.S. at 422, 62 S.Ct. at 1202. 7 This is the same error pursued by the District Court in Schuetzle v. Duba, 201 F.Supp. 754, at 758, reversed by this court in 303 F.2d 8 Perhaps the most realistic balance to judicial review as to administrative conduct even......
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Kephart v. Wilson
...conventions. In one case, at least, the members of a county committee have defied the directive of a State Committee. See Schuetzle v. Duba (D.C.1962), 201 F. Supp. 754; same case on appeal, Duba v. Schuetzle (8th Cir. 1962), 303 F.2d 570. Section 7.20 of the Regulations provides, in part, ......
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Duba v. Schuetzle
...the new County Committee, "subject to the approval of the State ASC" could decide on the matter of relocation of the office. Schuetzle v. Duba, D.C., 201 F.Supp. 754. In the meantime, the new County Committee attempted to rescind the Herreid lease and to secure authority to establish the Ca......