United States v. Fabric Garment Co.

• Decision Date: 30 December 1958
• Docket Number: 289,24733.,Dockets 24732,No. 288,288
• Citation: 262 F.2d 631
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. FABRIC GARMENT CO., Inc., Joseph Abrams, and Harold Hyman, Defendants-Appellants. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. FABRIC GARMENT CO., Inc., Mayflower Manufacturing Corp., Joseph Abrams, Harold Hyman, and Murray Berman, Defendants-Appellants, and Alert Trading Corp., and David Q. Hartman, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

262 F.2d 631 (1958)

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. FABRIC GARMENT CO., Inc., Joseph Abrams, and Harold Hyman, Defendants-Appellants.

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. FABRIC GARMENT CO., Inc., Mayflower Manufacturing Corp., Joseph Abrams, Harold Hyman, and Murray Berman, Defendants-Appellants, and Alert Trading Corp., and David Q. Hartman, Defendants.

Nos. 288, 289, Dockets 24732, 24733.

United States Court of Appeals Second Circuit.

Argued June 12, 1958.

Decided December 30, 1958.

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Simon H. Rifkind, of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, New York City (Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, Edward N. Costikyan, and Frederick S. Wyle, New York City on the brief), for Fabric Garment Co., Inc. and Joseph Abrams.

Milton C. Weisman and Cecelia H. Goetz, both of Weisman, Celler, Allan, Spett & Sheinberg, New York City (Weisman, Celler, Allan, Spett & Sheinberg, and Ralph J. Schwarz, Jr., New York City, on the brief), for Mayflower Manufacturing Corp., Murray Berman and Harold Hyman.

Alan W. Richenaker and Robert B. Fiske, Jr., Asst. U. S. Attys. for Southern District of New York, New York City (Paul W. Williams, U. S. Atty., and Charles H. Miller, Asst. U. S. Atty., S. D. N. Y., New York City, on the brief), for the United States.

Before HINCKS and WATERMAN, Circuit Judges, and RYAN, District Judge.

HINCKS, Circuit Judge.

This appeal grows out of two indictments which were consolidated for purposes of trial and appeal. One had been returned against Abrams, Hyman and Fabric Garment Co., Inc., plus Mayflower Manufacturing Corp., Berman, Alert Trading Corp. and Hartman, charging (1) the unlawful sale of approximately 19,000 yards of Government-owned wool serge, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 641, and (2) a conspiracy to defraud the United States and to violate 18 U.S.C. § 1001.¹ The other indictment charged violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001, and contained eight counts charging Abrams, Hyman and Fabric Garment Co., Inc., with the making of eight separate false statements about the disposition of wool serge furnished to the Fabric Garment Co. by the New York Quartermaster Procurement Agency under four contracts to make jackets for the United States Army.² After a trial to a jury, Alert Trading Corp. and Hartman were acquitted; the other defendants were convicted. From these convictions and from the denial of a motion for a new trial, the convicted defendants appeal.

Both indictments grew out of four successive contracts which the New York Quartermaster Procurement Agency, in 1951, entered into with the defendant Fabric Garment Company (Fabric), under which Fabric was to manufacture, in the aggregate, 450,000 Eisenhower jackets for the Army out of 18 ounce olive drab wool serge to be furnished by the Procurement Agency. The contracts provided that unless otherwise directed by the contracting officer, on the completion of each contract Fabric should return all surplus property and scrap "not returned in form of acceptable articles." It was further required by each contract that on QM Form 183 Fabric should certify that "all property furnished by the government * * * has been returned * * * in the form of finished articles, full pieces, short pieces, remnants, clippings containing wool * * *" subject to "the penalty imposed by Section 1001 of Title 18 U.S. C.A. of the Criminal Code for so certifying falsely." And on Form 201 Fabric was to certify the amount of surplus Government furnished property "on hand" at the completion of the contract.

The Agency supplied over 709,000 yards to Fabric for the manufacture of jackets, delivering this material to Fabric's cutting room first at 473 Liberty Street, and later to Knickerbocker Ave., both of Brooklyn, where it was stored pending processing. Fabric returned 454,814 finished jackets plus 89,238 pounds of wool scrap.³ The specified Government forms, two for each contract, were certified by Fabric purportedly over the signatures of Abrams and Hyman or both at the completion of each contract. The foregoing facts were not contradicted.

The appellants now contend that the evidence was insufficient to support the verdicts. At the trial the prosecutor, to prove the charge of an illegal sale of wool, offered evidence which if accepted established the following facts. Abrams, officially the secretary of Fabric, was its "boss." Berman was the proprietor and operator of Mayflower Manufacturing Corp. (Mayflower) and a close associate and assistant of Abrams in the operation of Fabric. In January 1951, Berman rented premises for Mayflower for the storage of cloth, at 450 Liberty St., Brooklyn, a block away from Fabric's plant. In July 1951, after Fabric had received the wool serge under the first two Government contracts, Abrams told a trucker, whom he had frequently employed to carry the Government serge to and from the place it was cut, to pick up 30 pieces of goods at Mayflower and truck it to Alert. The trucker received these pieces from Berman at the Mayflower premises and in the transfer the brown paper wrapping on certain pieces was broken disclosing serge which the trucker testified as the "same" and "looked the same" as the Government serge which at Fabric's behest he frequently transferred for cutting. Other such deliveries to Alert were made in July and August, 1951, some of which were confirmed by trucking tickets. In all, some 19,000 yards were sold to Alert as was proved by Mayflower's invoices and Alert's checks.

There was uncontradicted evidence that in July and August, 1951, the checks in payment of the sales to Alert were deposited in the Mayflower bank account; that shortly thereafter Abrams caused $15,000 to be withdrawn for his personal use by devious devices whereby a bank check on Mayflower was exchanged for the check of Abrams' personal attorney in Washington, D. C., which in turn was used to pay for Abrams' purchases of oil well leases in Illinois. Moreover, Abrams made an unsuccessful attempt to obtain from the trucker possession of the trucking tickets which evidenced the transfer of the piece goods from Mayflower to Alert. And after the Government investigation began in December, 1951, Berman fled, remained in hiding under an assumed name for several months and discontinued the payment of rent for the Mayflower premises.

There was other evidence to identify the serge sold to Alert as that furnished by the Government to Fabric. The Government investigators found in the Mayflower premises, whence the delivery to Alert had been made, a piece goods ticket which had been attached to a piece of serge furnished to Fabric under its first contract for the Eisenhower jackets. Moreover, there was evidence of a "paper test" made at the instance of the prosecution which was offered to show that the linear yardage of serge, in pieces 56" wide, which went into the finished jackets plus that of the scrap returned was 46,451 yards less than the yardage furnished for all four contracts and 30,000 less than the 425,876 yards which had been furnished on the first two contracts before the sale from Mayflower to Alert had been made. Thus according to this test, Fabric should have had on hand more surplus serge than that delivered to Alert. To be sure, the validity of the test and the accuracy of its indications were challenged by the defense and the admission of its results is now assigned as error. We now proceed, therefore, to give the test detailed consideration.

The primary purpose of the paper test was to ascertain the square yardage of the wool serge used in the completed jackets. The scheme of the test was suggested by the method of manufacture which was as follows. From copies of the master linen-paper patterns of all sizes of the jackets provided by the Quartermaster Corps, Fabric caused working patterns to be cut on heavy paper cardboard from which thin paper "markers" were traced. These were superimposed upon "lays" of the wool serge which comprised lengths of 80-layer thickness. The serge was then cut by an electric knife along the pattern of the marker. There were twenty-five separate irregularly shaped pieces of serge in each completed jacket and the contracts called for jackets of thirty different sizes.

The prosecution's paper test followed this basic scheme. A set of the twenty-five patterns for each size jacket was reproduced in heavy paper from the master pattern. This set of patterns, after conditioning, was weighed and the weight compared with that of a square yard of the same paper similarly conditioned, thereby establishing a ratio of area to weight from which was computed the square yardage of the aggregate pieces of serge going into one jacket of each size. This figure, expressed in square yards, by simple mathematical computation was translated into linear yardage of 18 ounce wool in pieces 56" wide.

There was detailed testimony as to the manner in which the test had been carried out. Mr. Strykower, the military apparel designer of the Philadelphia Quartermaster Depot, testified that the master patterns for Eisenhower jackets, copies of which were sent to Fabric for the performance of the contracts, were in his custody; that pursuant to instructions, he cut out in designer's pattern paper exact duplicates of the master patterns in use at the time of the Fabric contracts; and that he turned these paper parts over to Mr. Bordonaro, head of the physical testing section of the paper and paper products at the Philadelphia Depot. Mr. Bordonaro testified to the conditioning and weighing of the paper parts. And finally, Mr. Good testified to the conversion of weight into yards and to the computation of the yards of wool, which by analogy the prosecution argued had gone into the completed jackets.

Although forewarned of the method of this test, the appellants offered no witness who disputed its basic validity. They did, however, question its accuracy urging that apart from any...