Walling v. Rocklin, 12393.
| Decision Date | 28 December 1942 |
| Docket Number | No. 12393.,12393. |
| Citation | 132 F.2d 3 |
| Parties | WALLING, Administrator of Wage and Hour Division, United States Department of Labor, v. ROCKLIN, et al. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Kenneth P. Montgomery, Regional Atty., U. S. Department of Labor, of Kansas City, Mo. (Irving J. Levy, Acting Sol., Mortimer B. Wolf, Asst. Sol., Edward J. Fruchtman and Henry A. Silver, all of Washington, D. C., Attys., on the brief), for appellant.
Louis S. Goldberg, of Sioux City, Iowa (Lyman W. Sherwood, of Chicago, Ill., on the brief), for appellees.
Before GARDNER, WOODROUGH, and THOMAS, Circuit Judges.
This is an appeal from a judgment dismissing appellant's complaint seeking an injunction to restrain appellees from violating §§ 15(a) (1), 15(a) (2), and Sec. 15 (a) (5) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 201 et seq. We shall refer to the parties as they appeared in the trial court.
It was alleged in plaintiff's complaint that the eight individual defendants were co-partners doing business as Rocklin, Lehman & Co., in Sioux City, Iowa, engaged in the production of floral designs and other decorative items, and in the distribution and sale thereof in commerce. That the eight employees working in the Pierce Street shop of defendants had not been paid either the minimum wages or overtime compensation as required by Sections 6 and 7 of the Fair Labor Standards Act, and "that defendants had shipped in Interstate Commerce goods produced by these employees and had not kept records of their wages and hours as required by the Act and the regulations issued pursuant thereto."
Defendants answered that they were not subject to the Act but were wholly exempt therefrom under Section 13(a) (6) and Section 3(f), and that they and all their employees including those employed at 507 Pierce Street, were employed in agriculture; that their place of business at 507 Pierce Street, Sioux City, Iowa, was merely an incident to their extensive greenhouse and flower garden business which they conducted in the outskirts of Sioux City, partly within and partly without the city limits.
The question presented to the lower court and renewed here is whether the employees of defendants at their 507 Pierce Street location are employed in agriculture within the meaning of the exemption contained in the Act. It appears from the evidence that defendants have for some years operated the Morningside Greenhouse and Gardens in the outskirts of Sioux City, Iowa; that these greenhouses and gardens are larger than all others in Sioux City combined. They comprise ten acres of ground under glass and five acres of flower garden in the open. The investment in land, greenhouses and other buildings, and improvements on this property is about $40,000 exclusive of the value of the crops under cultivation. They employ twenty-two persons at the gardens and they produce and grow plants and every kind of flower in season except lily of the valley. Some of the plants are cultivated entirely in open gardens while others are nurtured in the greenhouses and then transplanted to the open grounds and later re-transplanted to the greenhouse for final cultivation. These horticultural products are grown for the retail market and the wholesale market. Substantially all the plants grown at the greenhouses and gardens are sold and delivered from the greenhouses and gardens, but the balance of the products there grown is transferred by trucks of defendants to the building at 507 Pierce Street. The supply of the products maintained at 507 Pierce Street is ordinarily restricted to about $200 in value at any one time. The Pierce Street location consists of the street floor and basement of a three-story building about four miles from the greenhouses, the portion of the building used by the defendants being rented. The large part of the fixed equipment in the building is owned by the lessor, and the total investment of the defendants in the 507 Pierce Street station is less than $3,000. Through this Pierce Street station defendants sell the balance of their flowers and other horticultural products grown by them. The products are sold at wholesale and retail and delivered by defendants to the trade in the same form in which the product comes to Pierce Street from the greenhouses without designing or other rearrangement except as to some of the products which are for a brief interval placed in the refrigerators at Pierce Street for hardening before shipment. The sales at wholesale constitute 60% or more of the total sales of all the products sold by defendants; 90% or more is grown in their own greenhouses and gardens. The balance comes from what is designated as "outside purchases". These purchases are made only when a blizzard or other adverse weather conditions disappoint, limit or delay the greenhouse products, and are made from other greenhouses. The product so purchased is resold, such resales being made at or below cost. The purchases so made are for the purpose of enabling defendants satisfactorily to keep its wholesale customers supplied when they are in need so as to hold the trade of such customers.
The services performed by the eight employees of the defendants at 507 Pierce Street are as follows: two are truckers who transfer the products from the gardens and greenhouses to 507 Pierce Street and who make deliveries from Pierce Street both to the retail and wholesale trade; two other employees are packers who wrap the products for the wholesale and retail trade; two others are employed as designers, who arrange the flowers in floral designs. More than 70% of all retail sales are sales within Iowa. Both the designers and packers at times wait on the retail trade and make sales to retailers at 507 Pierce Street. The two remaining employees are young women, one of whom sells at retail and does a small amount of bookwork and stenographic work, some of which is directly from the greenhouses; the other is in charge of the office and does all the bookkeeping and keeps all of the records including all of the greenhouse accounting.
The court made findings embodying substantially all the evidentiary facts and found that about 90% or 95% of all sales by defendants were their own production, that it was found necessary to purchase in order to supply customers in cases of frosts, storms and other emergencies, about 5% to 10% of their products handled. The court then found as an ultimate fact that "defendants are exclusively engaged in agriculture in the production of flowers, plants, flowering shrubs, ornamental grasses, etc., necessary to meet the wants of purchasers of flowers, floral designs and tributes". The court concluded as a matter of law "that defendants are exclusively engaged in agriculture as defined by the Fair Labor Standards Act" and "that defendants by reason of their exclusive engagements in agriculture are exempted from the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act relating to minimum wage and minimum hours of...
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Adkins v. Mid-American Growers, Inc.
...of an excess of orders over normal production, is also exempt. Wirtz v. Jackson & Perkins Co., supra, 312 F.2d at 51; Walling v. Rocklin, 132 F.2d 3, 7 (8th Cir.1942). That leaves the southern foliage plants that are sold without being acclimatized and the cover purchases not warranted by p......
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Waialua Agricultural Co. v. Maneja, 13114.
...with a wholesale and retail outlet located in a city four miles from the "farm" are held to be employed in agriculture. Walling v. Rocklin, 8 Cir., 132 F.2d 3. "The raw products were at most being prepared for market in connection with the business of producing them." 132 F.2d at page 16 Th......
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...set up as a marketing point to aid the distribution of those products." Id. Section 780.209 cites as contrasting examples Walling v. Rocklin, 132 F.2d 3 (8th Cir. 1942), and Mitchell v. Huntsville Nurseries, 267 F.2d 286 (5th Cir.1959).6 In Walling, the employees worked at a flower shop own......
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...purchases are made to cover production shortfalls, that business is entitled to the agricultural exemption. See, e.g.,Walling v. Rocklin, 132 F.2d 3,7 (8th Cir. 1942) (flower business entitled to exemption where five to ten percent of its sales came from outside purchases; "the occasional p......
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29 C.F.R. § 780.209 Packing, Storage, Warehousing, and Sale of Nursery Products
...retail distribution of such commodities, the employees in such separate enterprise are not engaged in agriculture (see Walling v. Rocklin, 132 F. 2d 3; Mitchell v. Huntsville Nurseries, 267 F. 2d 286). Although the handling and the sale of nursery commodities by the grower at or near the pl......
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29 C.F.R. § 780.209 Packing, Storage, Warehousing, and Sale of Nursery Products
...retail distribution of such commodities, the employees in such separate enterprise are not engaged in agriculture (see Walling v. Rocklin, 132 F. 2d 3; Mitchell v. Huntsville Nurseries, 267 F. 2d 286). Although the handling and the sale of nursery commodities by the grower at or near the pl......