United States v. Patterson, 56 CR 544.

• Decision Date: 27 September 1957
• Docket Number: No. 56 CR 544.,56 CR 544.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America v. Lester B. PATTERSON and Edythe F. Patterson, d/b/a Clinical Dental Laboratories and Jerome Getsla.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois

155 F. Supp. 669

UNITED STATES of America v. Lester B. PATTERSON and Edythe F. Patterson, d/b/a Clinical Dental Laboratories and Jerome Getsla.

No. 56 CR 544.

United States District Court N. D. Illinois, E. D.

September 27, 1957.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Robert Tieken, U. S. Atty., Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff.

Martin S. Gerber, Chicago, Ill., for defendants.

CAMPBELL, District Judge.

Defendants in this case are charged with violations of Section 1821 of Title 18 United States Code. That section makes it a criminal offense to send, through the mails into a state whose laws contain certain specified prohibitions, "any set of artificial teeth * * * constructed from any cast or impression made by any person other than, or without the authorization or prescription of, a person licensed to practice dentistry under the laws of the place into which such denture is sent".

The indictment, containing eight counts, charges the defendants with mailing dentures to specific addressees in the states of Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Missouri, constructed from casts or impressions made by such addressees who were neither licensed to practice dentistry nor authorized to make casts and impressions by persons licensed to practice dentistry within those States. The indictment further alleges, in each count, that the laws of each of the States involved "prohibited the taking of impressions and casts of the human mouth and teeth by a person not licensed under the laws of such state to practice dentistry". The prohibition thus characterized is referred to in each count of the indictment by citation to statute and section.

Defendants have filed a motion to dismiss the indictment. By this motion they challenge the constitutionality of Section 1821, Title 18 of the United States Code.

That Congress has power to regulate for the promotion of the general welfare, where the object of such regulation is within the police power and where the regulation is effected through the power to regulate commerce, cannot now be doubted. As authority to the contrary, defendants cite Carter v. Carter Coal Co., 298 U.S. 238, 56 S.Ct. 855, 80 L.Ed. 1160. The authority of that case has been considerably modified by later decisions, cf. United States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100, 123, 657, 61 S.Ct. 451, 85 L.Ed. 609. Nor can it seriously be contended that regulation of manufacture and sale of prosthetic dental appliances has no relation to public health. United States v. Johnson, 7 Cir., 149 F. 2d 53, certiorari denied 326 U.S. 722, 66 S.Ct. 28, 90 L.Ed. 428. The Supreme Court of Illinois, in upholding a State statute of the type referred to in Section 1821, has recently declared: "Voluminous testimony establishes beyond doubt that the furnishing of artificial dentures is intimately related to the general health of the patient, and that the mechanical work of making the denture is but a small part of the total undertaking, which always requires biological, physiological and pathological knowledge, and sometimes surgical skill. This relationship justifies legislative regulation of dentistry, including prosthetic dentistry". People ex rel. Chicago Dental Society v. A. A. A. Dental Laboratories, 8 Ill.2d 330, 333-334, 134 N.E.2d 285, 288.

But defendants contend that the provision here in question lacks the statutory specificity required of criminal provisions under the Due Process Clause; that, in its broadest interpretation, it prohibits to laymen the taking of casts of their own mouths, which is an unlawful interference with the individual's right to personal liberty; that it constitutes an unlawful delegation of Congressional powers to the States; that it provides for cumulative penalties for violations of state laws; that it constitutes an unlawful delegation of regulatory powers to the dental profession; that it invests the dental profession with an unlawful monopoly of the trade in prosthetic appliances; and that it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution in that it applies only to the states which have the kind of prohibitory laws to which it refers.

Defendants' first objection as to lack of required statutory specificity is that neither the purpose for which, nor the persons to whom, the prohibited shipment is made are specified. The result, defendants contend, is that it is uncertain whether shipment into a state for exhibition, police work or any other lawful purpose not involving the appliance's use in the mouth falls within the prohibition. Likewise, defendants contend, it is uncertain whether shipment into a prohibited State as an incident to transit through that State to a non-prohibited State, falls within the prohibition.

The primary purpose of the constitutional requirement of specificity is to give sufficient notice that an act has been made criminal before it is done, and it has been stated that if a criminal provision "either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application" it violates the first essential of due process of law. Lanzetta v. State of New Jersey, 306 U.S. 451, 453, 59 S.Ct. 618, 619, 83 L.Ed. 888; Connally v. General Construction Co., 269 U.S. 385, 391, 46 S.Ct. 126, 70 L.Ed. 322.

Taking the provisions of Section 1821 as a whole, it is difficult to believe that any person of common intelligence could be in doubt as to the acts intended to be prohibited with regard to the destination and purpose of a shipment. The section speaks of "sending or bringing into any State" and requires the "authorization or prescription of, a person licensed to practice dentistry" at the cast taking stage of the manufacturing process. The word "prescription", when seen in the context of a provision which obviously has something to do with individual health, implies the existence of a person for whose use the appliance is prescribed. It also implies the existence of a condition which the prescribed appliance is designed to remedy. In view of the clear purpose of the enactment, which is to assure that public health is not endangered through use of prosthetic dental appliances unsuited to individual requirements as they are known to dental medicine, the word "authorization" must be understood as ejusdem generis with the word "prescription". It should be clear to any one reading Section 1821 as a whole, that its prohibitions do not cover a prosthetic dental appliance which is not destined to be used as a remedy for a condition which it is the appliance's function to remedy and one which is the normal concern of dentists. Shipment into a prohibited State en route to a non-prohibited State is clearly not within its prohibitions. Any doubt on that score must be based on the supposition that Congress intended to subject the manufacure of prosthetic appliances, shipped through several states, to the control of licensed dentists not only at the State of destination, if that be a prohibited State, but also to the control of licensed dentists in each prohibited State en route. That supposition is absurd.

The defendants' second objection as to lack of specificity is in reference to the words "any set of artificial teeth * * * constructed from any cast or impression * * *". Defendants argue that these words make it uncertain whether toy dentures or dentures made from casts of animal mouths, and intended for use by animals, are included. Suffice it to say here that few persons, and certainly no person of ordinary intelligence, would believe that Congress desired dentists to control the manufacture of toy dentures or animal dentures.

Defendants' final objection as to lack of specificity is that by its reference to state statutes, Section 1821 incorporates a whole body of changing and uncertain law which it is practically impossible to research. In support of their contention here, defendants cite Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 65 S.Ct. 1031, 89 L.Ed. 1495. That case involved a provision which, in substance, made it a criminal offense for any person, acting under color of state law, to deprive any one of a right guaranteed under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Most of the members of the court agreed that the reference to the Due Process Clause alone would render the provision too vague. But the majority thought that the provision under consideration was saved by its requirement that the deprivation be "willful". Defendants attempt to compare the reference to the Due Process Clause in that case with the reference to state statutes in this case. Section 1821, unlike the provision involved in the Screws case, defines the offense in every material respect save one. The one material respect in which reference is made to other law, in this case state statutes, is in designating the States into which the clearly defined articles may not be sent. The state statutes referred to do not enter into the definition of the offense for any purpose other than to identify the States into which the articles may not be sent. The alleged changing and uncertain body of law affects defendants' awareness of the offense only in respect to the question of whether the State into which they are about to send an article constructed in a clearly prohibited manner, is a prohibited State. In other words, Section 1821 itself, unlike the provision involved in the Screws case, gives notice of an impending offense before any reference need be made to state statutes. Defendants complain that to require them to research and interpret state statutes in order to be certain of the offense is an impossible burden. This is indeed a novel argument. In the Screws case, the objection was that federal prosecution on the basis of the Due Process Clause was analogous to federal prosecution founded on any undefined body of so-called common law. The dissenting opinion of Justices Roberts, Frankfurter and Jackson states...