298 F. 520 | S.D.N.Y. | 1923
(after stating the .facts as above).
Clearly this is not what was meant by the words “for the benefit of” an alien enemy. The enemy must have some .present interest in the property to subject it to capture. Here there was no more than a mere possibility that Congress might recognize such an interest, which it has not even yet done, except to a limited extent. The argument is especially fanciful, in view of the fact that the deposit was made especially to prevent payment to Albert, and was to terminate with the war, when for the first time Albert could regain any capacity to sue in an American court. Thus at no time before April 3, 1919, the date of the last seizure, had Albert any existing interest in the deposit to be captured. The defendant cannot prevail on this theory.
“Any money * * * owing * * * to * * * an enemy * * * which the President after investigation shall determine is so owing * * * shall he * * * paid over to the Alien Property Custodian or * * * may be seized by the Alien Property Custodian.”
It is argued, further, that if the Custodian might, as in fact he might, demand the delivery of chattels without regard to whether they were
The consequences of such a power are excessively drastic, and would indeed be extravagant in operation. The Custodian might, in the case of the breach of a contract for the sale of goods or for their manufacture, undertake a liquidation of damages which, however honest, would have no relation to what should eventually be recovered. How could such a finding be enforced? The debtor must collect money to pay it, and, if he had none, must sell his goods till he got in hand the necessary cash. That is in fact execution in limine, a loss scarcely remediable by suit under section 9. It contradicts all our notions of the rights of putative debtors who dispute the-debt; it has no analogy in those possessory suits on which reliance was put, in part anyway, in Central Union Trust Co. v. Garvan, 254 U. S. 554, 41 Sup. Ct. 214, 65 L. Ed. 403. Rather one would look to the common procedure in garnishment, by which a discharge of the debt is paralyzed, and the asset effectively sequestered, until any controversy as to its existence or amount can be determined.
Nor does it seem to me that any such interpretation is called for by the general purposes of the legislation in question. Captures had a double purpose. They changed the title in any actual rights which the enemy might have in the captured property, and they sequestered the property itself in which those rights might inhere. The plaintiff concedes that the'demand of June 1, 1920, gave title to the Custodian to all Albert’s rights to the account; he disputes, however, that after the Custodian’s statement of the account his individual assets might be sequestered to pay the balance found.
The summary power to sequester property depends upon’the protection necessary to secure the United States in the assertion of its eventual right by capture; the property must be held in custody until any disputes shall be determined, just as is done in replevin or attachment. In the case of chattels or tenements this involves possession ad interim of the property itself, since otherwise the chattel might be delivered or the profits collected and disbursed. That would make ineffectual any -final decree óf title.
But these considerations cannot apply to the capture of a debt. A creditor has no rights in his debtor’s assets and is not concerned with their fate. The debt remains a general obligation, regardless of their disposition. Whatever makes invalid any payment by the debtor protects the captor of the debt. No possession is necessary, because none is possible; the captor is secure so long as the debtor cannot discharge the debt. How, then, can it be argued that the scheme of the act involved a payment of the debt in prsesenti? The captor being protected, why must the debtor be exposed to execution in limine?
When the language of a statute admits an interpretation which avoids any constitutional question, it should be adopted.. Perhaps under the war power Congress might have gone so far, but'surely there must be clear expression of such a purpose to overset the traditional methods in analogous cases. I ought not lightly to impute to such general words so oppressive a purpose; the language must, be confined to debts whose validity and extent the debtor acknowledges.
Decree for the plaintiff.