United States v. GREEN VALLEY CREAMERY

• Decision Date: 19 March 1945
• Docket Number: No. 4522.,4522.
• Citation: 59 F. Supp. 153
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. GREEN VALLEY CREAMERY, Inc.

59 F. Supp. 153

UNITED STATES v. GREEN VALLEY CREAMERY, Inc.

No. 4522.

District Court, D. Massachusetts.

February 20, 1945.

As Amended March 19, 1945.

Edmund J. Brandon, U. S. Atty., and Joseph M. Hargedon, Asst. U. S. Atty., both of Boston, Mass., J. Stephen Doyle, Sp. Asst. to Atty. Gen., and Handley C. Harrison, Atty., Office of Solicitor, United States Department of Agriculture, of Washington, D. C., for plaintiff.

Richard Wait and Choate, Hall & Stewart, all of Boston, Mass., for defendant.

SWEENEY, District Judge.

There is before me the petition of Howard B. Parker for a final order upon petition for attachment for contempt. This petition raises the question whether a discharge in bankruptcy bars the collection of an unpaid balance of a compensatory fine levied by this Court against the petitioner in the above proceeding. This memorandum deals only with the petitioner's claim as a matter of right and is not concerned with the discretion vested in this Court to mitigate the fine imposed.

The petitioner was on June 16, 1942, adjudged in civil contempt of this Court and ordered to pay the sum of $42,236.74 to the clerk of this Court for the benefit of the market administrator. This sum was the equivalent of the loss suffered by the market administrator by reason of the acts and conduct of the said Parker in directing the business of Green Valley Creamery,, Inc. After several appeals to the Circuit Court of Appeals the sum of $20,000 was paid by Parker to the clerk and on October 18, 1943, Parker filed a voluntary petition in bankruptcy and on May 15, 1944, received his discharge in bankruptcy. The market administrator filed a proof of claim seeking the balance of the compensatory fine over and above that which had already been paid to the Court. On this proof of claim he received a dividend in the approximate amount of $1,950.

The present petition seeks a final order from this Court adjudicating that the discharge in bankruptcy prevents the collection of the unpaid balance of the compensatory fine, and that the petitioner is free from the possibility of confinement for failure to comply with the Court's order. In Lyman A. Spalding v. The People of the State of New York, 4 How. 21, 45 U.S. 21, 11 L.Ed. 858, the Supreme Court affirmed without opinion the holding of a state court (New York) that a discharge in bankruptcy is no release from a fine imposed by a state court for breach of an injunction.

In People ex rel. Otterstedt v. Sheriff of Kings County, D.C., 206 F. 566, a federal court denied its jurisdiction to sustain a writ of habeas corpus where a...