Williams v. Haurigan, Civ. No. 64-4N.

• Decision Date: 25 August 1965
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 64-4N.
• Citation: 244 F. Supp. 478
• Parties: Joe WILLIAMS, Plaintiff, v. S. T. HAURIGAN, Harold H. Hanson, and Chas. M. Siefert, as Review Committee, and as Members of said Committee, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of South Dakota

244 F. Supp. 478

Joe WILLIAMS, Plaintiff, v. S. T. HAURIGAN, Harold H. Hanson, and Chas. M. Siefert, as Review Committee, and as Members of said Committee, Defendants.

Civ. No. 64-4N.

United States District Court D. South Dakota, Northern Division.

August 25, 1965.

Agor, Siegel, Barnett & Schutz, Aberdeen, S. D., and Archie R. Moore, McIntosh, S. D., for plaintiff.

Harold C. Doyle, U. S. Atty., Sioux Falls, S. D., for defendants.

BECK, Chief Judge.

This is a bill in equity under 7 U.S.C. A., Section 1365, for review of the Review Committee's January 23, 1964 Determination, its second,¹ that the petitioner's total wheat acreage for 1962 was 1,307.7 acres, that his wheat allotment was 450.9 acres, that the excess was 856.8, that the actual yield was 17 bushels per acre, that his actual production was 14,565 bushels and the 1962 penalty on the excess $23,158.35.

The petitioner answers: that his total 1962 wheat production on the acreages involved, was 7,149 bushels, 500 some bushels less than the quantity allowed and that he for that reason could not be subjected to any penalties, including the one which now has been imposed.

The sufficiency of that answer, as a complete defense, is admitted, but challenged on the ground that the evidence in support thereof did not overcome the Committee's final Determination of a per acre yield, in bushels, of seventeen and a quantity total of 14,565.

While the court may not substitute its judgment for that of the Committee where the latter has applied the broad phrases in the regulations to a specific state of facts and there is substantial evidence to support its conclusions, Lee v. DeBerry, 219 S.C. 382, 387, 65 S.E.2d 775, 777, Luke v. Review Committee, 155 F.Supp. 719 (D.C.W.D.La. 1957), Review Committee, Venue VII, Etc. v. Willey, 275 F.2d 264, 273 (8 Cir. 1960), it is otherwise, in a given case, where such evidence consists of unrelated statistics, speculations, carelessly conducted investigations, hearsay, relevant, but only remotely related and there is positive uncontradicted corroborating proof of a crop which clearly is within the limits of the regulations. Thus in Willapoint Oysters v. Ewing, 174 F.2d 676, 691 (9 Cir. 1949), it is said:

"The degrees of probative force and reliability of hearsay evidence are infinite in variation, and its use by administrative bodies, ex necessitate, must in part be governed by the relative unavailability of other and better evidence. However, since "substantial evidence" includes more than "uncorroborated hearsay" and "more than a mere scintilla," the findings, to be valid, cannot be based upon hearsay alone, nor upon hearsay corroborated by a mere scintilla. Founded upon these requirements, the test whether evidence is "subtantial," is whether, in the individual case before the court, there is "such relevant evidence as a reasonable mind might accept as adequate to support a conclusion",

and again at page 690 it is indicated that the validity of an administrative "order can never rest upon conjecture, guess or chance". (Emphasis supplied).

Posturing the case, from that point of view, the court finds the postcard and letter information as to wheat yields on an adjoining farm and others close but managed or owned by others, having little if any probative value, to the point of not being relevant and therefore incompetent, Willapoint Oysters v. Ewing, supra, since in conjunction therewith there were no clinching comparisons as to soil, planting time, re-seeding, rotation program and damage by cut worms, wind, rust and hail.

The record reflects a curious indifference on the part of the local ASC to those factors and others basically important, as for instance, the use of what "amounted" to the Dewey County wheat yield average, rather than the actual bushels produced in the process of assessing the maximum penalty of $46,318.29. Notice of that assessment was on July 30, 1962,² with the on site inspection not before, but one day later. Like attitude comes to the fore as trained investigators checked the Lantry elevator for the asserted excess, but not in more remote storage places where ostensibly it would have been left had the producer tried to conceal. Ziebach County ASC could have assisted, but wasn't asked. Carter, one of the combiners, was at the hearing but not questioned. Johnson, the owner, had an interest in the total crop. His testimony, too, was left out. Adjoining farmers relied on, counted seven combines — an addition method not explained, unless they counted coming and going and one more — yet no questions. There was a relationship in the number of combines, in one truck only being used, in the hauling distance of thirty miles back and forth, in the number of trips per day and the per day harvesting potentials of the machines. This, too, was left untouched. Finally, marketing quotas, marketing cards, no evidence of violations, and the ultimate, where, if there was such a large excess was it placed, and the unanswered petitioner's prima facie case, positively proved, fully corroborated, not weakened in any specific detail, that the actual production could not have exceeded the quantity specified.

While the...