188 F. 191 | 8th Cir. | 1911
The St. Louis Merchants’ Bridge Terminal Railway Company complains that it has-been convicted and fined for failing to placard the cars and to stamp the waybills of certain cattle and sheep which had been received by previous carriers in quarantined districts in Texas without certificates of inspection and had been transported to St. Louis by previous carriers where they were delivered to it and whence they were carried by it to the national stockyards in Illinois. The ground of its complaint is that its receipt of the cattle and sheep and its failure- to placard the cars and stamp the waybills constituted no violation of any law of the United States. Counsel for the government, on the other hand, contend that these acts are punishable under Act March 3, 1905, c. 1496, § 1, 33 Stat. 1264 (U. S. Comp. St. Supp. 1909, p. 1185). The question is whether or not that statute includes in the class subject to its penalties a carrier that neither receives the live, stock for transportation in nor transports it out of the quarantined district. The provisions of that act which condition the answer to this question are these:
By section 1 the Secretary of Agriculture is authorized to quarantine any district when he finds that live stock therein are affected with any contagious or infectious disease and is directed to give notice of his action—
“to the proper officers of railroad, steamboat or other transportation companies doing business in or through any quarantined state or territory, or the District of Columbia, and to publish in such newspapers in the quarantined state or territory, or the District of Columbia, as the Secretary of Agriculture may select, notice of the establishment of quarantine.”
Section 2 provides:
“That no railroad company * * * shall receive for transportation or transport from any quarantined state * * * or from the quarantined portion of any state * * * • into any other state * * * any cattle or other live stock, except as hereinafter provided.”
Section 3 empowers the Secretary of Agriculture to make regulations to—
“govern the inspection, disinfection, certification, treatment, handling and method and manner of delivery and shipment of cattle or other live stock from a quarantined state * * * and from the quarantined portion of a state * * * into any other state, * * * and the Secretary of Agriculture shall give notice of such rules and regulations in the manner provided in section 2 (one) of this act for notice of establishment of quarantine.”
‘‘may be moved from a quarantined state * * * or from tlie quarantined portion of a state * * * into any other state * * * under and in compliance with the rules and regulations of the Secretary of Agriculture made and promulgated in pursuance of the provisions of section ‘i of this act: but it shall be unlawful to move, or to allow to be moved, any cattle or oilier live stock from any quarantined state * * * or front the quarantined portion of any state * * * into any other state * * * in manner or method or under conditions other than those prescribed by the Secretary of Agriculture.”
The provisions of section 5 have no relevancy to the issue under consideration.
Section 6 provides that any person, company, or corporation “violating- the provisions of sections 2 or 4” shall be punished by fine or imprisonment, or both.
The Secretary of Agriculture made regulations under section 3 to the effect that, when cattle or sheep of the character of those carried in the case at bar were shipped from a quarantined district, the transportation company should affix a descriptive placard to each side of each car carrying them, and should stamp the waybills with descriptive words such as “uninspected exposed cattle” and “exposed sheep for slaughter,” and that:
“Whenever such shipments are transferred to another transportation company or into oilier cars or into other boats, or are rebilled or reeonsigned to a point other than the original destination, the cars into which said cattle or slice]) are transferred and the new-waybills * * * shall be marked as herein specified for cars first carrying said cattle or sheep and for the billing, etc., covering the same. If for any reason the placards required by the regulations are removed from the car. or are destroyed or rendered illegible, they shall be immediately replaced by the transportation company or its agents, the intention being that legible placards shall be maintained oil the cars from the time of shipment until they arrive at destination and the disposition of the ears is indicated by an inspector of the Bureau of Animal Industry.”
In United States v. Wiltberger, 5 Wheat. 96, 5 L. Ed. 37, Chief Justice Marshall said:
“The case must be a strong one, indeed, wbieb would justify a court in departing from the plain meaning of words, especially, in a penal act, in search of an intention which the words themselves did not suggest. To determine that a ease is within the intention of a statute, its language must authorize us to say so. It would he dangerous, indeed, to carry the principle that a case, which is within the reason or mischief of a statute, is within its provisions, so far as to punish a crime not enumerated in the statute, because it is of egual atrocity, or of kindred character, with those which are enumerated.”
The terminal company was not charged in the information filed against it or proved at the trial to have been a member of this class. It owned and operated railroads in the immediate vicinity of the city of St. Louis and performed only the usual functions of a terminal company. The quarantined districts were in'the state of Texas. It was not “doing business in or through” any of those districts. It never “received for transportation or transported” any live stock or “moved” any live stock “from any quarantined state” or “the quarantined portion of any state” into any other state or territory in manner or method or under1 conditions other than those prescribed by the Secretary of Agriculture. If any offense was ever committed under the act of March 3, 1905, in the receipt for transportation, carriage, or movement of the cattle or sheep that the defendant below, hauled from St. Louis to Illinois, that offense had been committed and completed long before that company received them, by some earlier carrier that took them for transportation and carried them from the quarantined district in Texas into some other state. There is no provision or permissible construction of the statute under consideration that can add to or include in the class of railroads punishable thereunder transportation companies that receive and carry live stock that
The attempt of the Secretary of Agriculture to add by his regulations to the class of railroad companies and to the acts punishable under the quarantine act of March 3, 1905, other railroad companies and other acts was unauthorized and ineffective. No offense was charged in the information or proved against the defendant below, the judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded to the court below, with directions to sustain the demuri-er to the information and to discharge the terminal company.