United States v. Cutajar

| S.D.N.Y. | Jan 4, 1894

BROWN, District Judge.

I have examined, as far as I was able since last evening, the cases cited to me. I am satisfied that I cannot allow as damages any sum beyond the amount of duties and interest which the United States would lose by a failure to pr educe tbe invoices, wliere, as in a case like this, the proofs leave no question of what that loss is. If there had never been any invoice, or if the means by which the assessment of duties could be fixed and made certain had never come to hand, then, perhaps, the full penalty should be recovered, because the damage could not be shown to be less.

This case is distinguishable from the considerably large class of cases to which the counsel for the government has directed my attention, and which he has so dearly presented; namely, those in which the amount named in the bond is treated as a liquidated sum to be paid in lieu of damages which are incapable of exact estimate. This case does not fall within that class. The context of the bond, the general purpose for which it was given, and the way in which the amount of the bond in such cases is fixed, are such as taken together require the amount named in the bond to be regarded as fixing, not an amount of liquidated damages, but only the extent of the importer’s liability.

In the first place, the context shows the general purpose. It is a condition for the production of the invoice, and “for the payment of the additional duties,” which upon that invoice may prove to be the proper amount of duties. That sufficiently defines the purpose of the bond, viz. to secure the full payment of the duties. In the next place, the statute does not prescribe the amount of the bond. It leaves it to be regulated by the secretary of the treasury. I think it is hardly consistent with the general purpose of such legislation, or a proper construction of the law, to suppose that the secretary of the treasury was intended to fix, by a mere arbitrary regulation, a positive penalty as liquidated damages which the citizen must pay because an authenticated invoice might not be produced within- a specified time. In this case the bond itself is not even in exact compliance with the regulation. Its amount is in excess of the regulation. The bond was made greater than “double of the duties” as estimated, upon the authority of the collector, and as a mere matter of convenience in practice by the clerk who administered this business to take the nearest even hundred. It cannot be that the power to inflict a penalty as such, or to fix liquidated damages in that manner, irrespective of what might be the government’s loss, could be sustained. But it is reasonable and consistent enough if the amount thus fixed for the bond is regarded merely as a limit, and for the purpose only of securing to the government the payment of what shall eventually prove to be due to it.

So it seems to me, from the nature of the subject-matter, the context, and the object of the bond, as well as the unreasonableness of the contrary construction, as applied to a bond in which the amount is fixed in the way this amount is fixed, require me to treat this bond as admitting a recovery of no- more than the damages sustained, since these damages are easily capable of exact determination. They amount, on the proofs in evidence, to the difference between the first liquidation, and the amount of" duties recoverable upon the authenticated invoice, or what, in this case, is equivalent to it, the triplicate invoice already in evidence; and accordingly I so rule upon the questions presented.

An exception having been noted by the United States attorney, the defendants withdrew their offer of the entry, and thereafter the paper was offered and proved by the plaintiffs, together with the testimony of an expert from the customhouse showing that according to the United States weigher's return attached to the entry and part thereof, the government would he entitled to a balance o" unpaid duty on a final liquidation of the entry of $198.(50.

At the close of the testimony a motion was made by the United States attorney for a direction of a verdict in favor of the plaintiffs for the full amount of the penalty of the bond, viz. the sum of $800. The defendants moved for a dismissal of the complaint on the ground that no damage or loss to the United States had been proved under the bond; and that no additional duties could be recovered in this suit.- Both motions were denied by the court; and a verdict, was thereupon directed in favor of the plaintiffs for the sum of $198.60, and interest to the date of the trial. Verdict for plaintiffs accordingly.