United States v. American Union Transport/Opinion of the Court

The United States appeals from a decree entered by a District Court of three judges permanently enjoining enforcement of an order of the United States Maritime Commission. The order required the appellees and others to answer within thirty days a questionnaire concerning certain aspects of their business transacted during 1940, 194 and 1942. The central issue is whether appellees are within the coverage of the Shipping Act, 46 U.S.C. § 801, 46 U.S.C.A. § 801, for this purpose.

On August 21, 1942, the Commission, upon its own motion, ordered an investigation concerning the lawfulness of the rules, regulations, practices and operations of named persons and firms, described as carrying on 'the business of forwarding in foreign commerce.' The order stated that from information before the Commission it appeared that a certain forwarding firm was engaging in practices which seemed to be in violation of § 17 of the Shipping Act, 46 U.S.C. § 816, 46 U.S.C.A. § 816, and further 'that the public interest requires a general inquiry to determine the extent of the said practices among all other forwarders in the port of New York subject to said Act, and the lawfulness of said practices under section 17 thereof. * *  * '

Accordingly, the Commission sent to the persons and firms named a questionnaire containing the inquiry, among others, 'Do you carry on the business of forwarding in connection with common carriers by water in foreign commerce?' Each of the appellees answered this in the affirmative. But negative answers were given to the question, 'Is your company owned or controlled by or affiliated with any shippers for whom you act as forwarder or with any common carrier?' In December, 1942, the Commission held public hearings before a trial examiner pursuant to the investigation order. On the second day the hearings were adjourned sine die so that the Commission might obtain additional information. They have not been resumed.

On January 14, 1943, the Commission entered an order, pursuant to § 21 of the Shipping Act, 46 U.S.C. § 820, 46 U.S.C.A. § 820, directing appellees and others to answer a questionnaire relating to their forwarding operations in 1940, 1941 and 1942. The answers were to be filed within thirty days. Before this period expired appellees instituted this suit to enjoin the carrying out of that order and the general order of investigation. Thereafter the Commission extended the time for answering the questionnaire, and on May 18, 1943, withdrew its order of January 14, issuing instead another under § 21. This order, like the earlier one, required the appellees to answer a questionnaire concerning their forwarding operations. The only difference, apparently, was that the information sought was somewhat more extensive. The parties agreed that the suit should be continued as against the order of May 18 without formal amendment of the complaint.

On November 30, 1943, the District Court denied the Commission's motion for summary judgment and granted a temporary injunction restraining execution of the May 18, 1943, order. The injunction was made permanent on November 30, 1944. The court held that the Maritime Commission had no jurisdiction over the appellees since, in its view, they did not come within the definition of the term 'other (persons) subject to this Act' given in § 1 of the statute, 46 U.S.C. § 801, 4 U.S.C.A. § 801. It refused, however, to enjoin the order of August 21, 1942, on the ground that it had no jurisdiction to annul an order which itself did not adversely affect the complaining parties.

The question we are to review is whether the appellees are included within the designation 'other person subject to this Act' as that phrase is defined in § 1 of the Shipping Act. The definition reads: 'The term 'other person subject to this Act' means any person not included in the term 'common carrier by water,' carrying on the business of forwarding or furnishing wharfage, dock, warehouse, or other terminal facilities in connection with a common carrier by water.' (Emphasis added.)

Substantially, the issue turns upon the meaning of 'in connection with,' that is, whether some relation of affiliation with the carrier is required, such as that exemplified in Railroad Retirement Board v. Duquesne Warehouse Co., 326 U.S. 446, 66 S.Ct. 238; or, on the other hand, the statutory phrasing is satisfied by the type of relationship illustrated by the companion cases of State of California v. United States and City of Oakland v. United States, 320 U.S. 577, 64 S.Ct. 352, 88 L.Ed. 322.

If, as appellees contend, 'in connection with' covers only forwarding businesses actually affiliated with a common carrier by water in a corporate sense, or under the control of or pursuant to a continuing contract with such a carrier, then plainly the Maritime Commission is without jurisdiction over these appellees, since none of them is controlled by or affiliated with a common carrier by water in any such manner. All are so-called independent forwarders and the case comes down to whether such forwarders are covered by the Act.

There is little or no dispute as to the nature of their business. They are primarily forwarders of freight, as that term is generally understood, for transshipment in foreign commerce. The foreign freight forwarding business is a medium used by almost all export shippers. An exporter, intending to send goods abroad, consigns the merchandise to a forwarder who then makes all the arrangements for dispatching it to a foreign port. The forwarder must arrange for necessary space with the steamship companies, procure and prepare the many documents, obtain permits for the acceptance of freight at piers, and at times must find available storage space for the shipment until steamers are available. If requested to do so, a forwarder will secure whatever insurance is needed.

Forwarders also have many other incidental duties. They check the marks on shipping papers and containers in order to be certain that they are in accordance with the regulations of the country of destination. They convert weights and measurements into the metric system when necessary. They keep records, for the convenience of the exporter, of all shipments dispatched. They also prosecute such claims as may be required by the exporter against carriers, insurance companies, and any other parties in interest.

By engaging in these many activities of the forwarding business, independent forwarders-and particularly the appellees act as agents of the shipper. They assume no responsibility for the transportation of goods.

We think the appellees are within the coverage of § 1. This conclusion is required not only by the broad and literal wording of the definition but also to make effective the scheme of regulation the statute established and by considerations of policy implicit in that scheme, as well as by the legislative history and the decision in the California and Oakland cases, supra. In order to place the discussion of our reasons in statutory as well as factual setting, we sketch below some of the more pertinent statutory provisions. In doing so we shall emphasize the consequences of including or excluding so-called independent forwarders, like the appellees, for effective administration of the Act and achievement of its policy. But first we turn to the definition in § 1 itself.

The language is broad and general. No intent is suggested to classify forwarders, covering some but not others, just as none appears to divide persons 'furnishing wharfage, dock, warehouse, or other terminal facilities' into regulated and unregulated groups. State of California v. United States; City of Oakland v. United States, supra. The absence of any such suggestion becomes highly significant by contrast with similar definitions of other statutes more or less related to the Shipping Act. In these Congress, when regulating carriers and 'other persons,' repeatedly has made plain the intent to cover only affiliates or other specially limited groups when this has been in fact its purpose.

Thus, in the legislation relating to railroads, forwarders were first covered expressly in 1942. 49 U.S.C. (Supp. IV) § 1002(a)(5), 49 U.S.C.A. § 1002(a) (5). The definition in shortened paraphrase is limited to any 'person,' other than a carrier, holding itself out 'to transport or provide transportation' which 'in the ordinary and usual course of its undertaking' (A) performs the usual functions of a forwarder, 'and (B) assumes responsibility for the transportation of such property from point of receipt to point of destination, and (C) utilizes, for the whole or any part of the transportation of such shipments, the services of a carrier or carriers * *  * .' (Emphasis added.) Not only would language so explicitly limited be difficult to apply to a person not performing any part of the 'transportation service' proper, cf. Lehigh Valley R. Co. v. United States, 243 U.S. 444, 37 S.Ct. 434, 61 L.Ed. 839; but the very limitations, altogether absent from § 1 of the Shipping Act, forbid identical constructions of the two definitions. See also, in relation to the different treatment of rail forwarders, the correlated definition of 'service subject to this chapter.' 49 U.S.C. (Supp. IV) § 1002(a)(7), 49 U.S.C.A. § 1002(a)(7).

The same difference applies with reference to the definitions of the term 'employer' in the Railroad Retirement Act of 1937, 45 U.S.C. § 228a, 45 U.S.C.A. § 228a, and the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act of 1938, 45 U.S.C. § 351 45 U.S.C.A. § 351, construed in Railroad Retirement Board v. Duquesne Warehouse Co., supra. In each instance the statute declares that 'employer' shall mean 'any carrier * *  * and any company' carrier-owned or controlled 'and which operates any equipment or facility or performs any service *  *  * in connection with the transportation of passengers or property *  *  * ,' thus plainly setting forth as to others covered than the carrier both the affiliation requirement and that of performing part of the transportation service.

In the face of such repeated demonstrations that Congress makes its purpose plain, when it actually intends to limit the coverage of others than carriers to affiliates or to persons performing part of the transportation service, the conclusion hardly is tenable that it means the same thing when it employs more broadly inclusive language and wholly omits all such limitations. This view is further emphasized, as will appear, by the fact that to cut down the meaning of § 1 as appellees suggest would be to single out the term 'forwarding' from all others in the definition and give to it a narrow application none of them possesses.

In view of these facts, it is doubtful that the wording of the definition is sufficiently ambiguous to require construction, more especially in view of the decisions in the California and Oakland cases. But if room for doubt remains, it is altogether removed by the considerations of policy and history to which we have referred. We turn accordingly to the statutory setting.

In several sections, for example, §§ 15, 16, 17, 20 and 21 (pursuant to which this proceeding began), 'other persons' as well as common carriers by water either are made subject to affirmative duties or are prohibited from engaging in certain activities.

Section 15 requires filing of specified agreements or memoranda with the Commission and exempts from the operation of the antitrust laws arrangements made by carriers and 'other persons' among themselves or with one another which have been filed with and approved by the Commission. The Commission is given the power to disapprove, cancel or modify, among others, any agreement which it finds to be unjustly discriminatory or unfair as between carriers, shippers, exporters, importers or ports, or between United States exporters and their foreign competitors; or to operate to the detriment of the commerce of the United States; or to be in violation of the Act. Obviously agreements or understandings between forwarders or between forwarders and shippers or between forwarders and carriers may be discriminatory in such a way as to violate the provisions of § 15. Moreover, since forwarders arrange the terms of carriage for shippers with carriers, they may be the active agents who bring about the very types of agreement or arrangement the section contemplates the Commission shall have power and opportunity to outlaw. Consequently jurisdiction by the Commission over forwarders would seem essential to effectuate the policy of the Act and the absence of jurisdiction well might prevent giving full effect to that policy.

Section 16 forbids various forms of discrimination, as well as other practices, on the part of any common carrier by water 'or other person,' which an independent forwarder readily may commit or induce. It is suggested, however, that whatever discriminations might be practiced necessarily would be in pursuance of an agreement between a carrier and a forwarder who, it is well to point out again, acts as agent of the shipper; and that since Congress has given the Commission jurisdiction over the carriers, it is to be presumed that such jurisdiction was thought to be sufficient.

Whether or not the premise is correct, the conclusion does not follow. That the Commission may have jurisdiction over one of the two parties to a discriminatory agreement or arrangement hardly means that it shall not have jurisdiction over both. Indeed, unless the jurisdiction includes both, it may be ineffective as to the one covered; for the Commission then might lack the necessary means of obtaining or checking upon information (cf. § 21) necessary to ascertain the existence of a discrimination or to take other action commanded by the statute. Morever, some of the practices forbidden appear to be peculiarly if exclusively susceptible of commission or inducement by forwarders, brokers and shippers' agents, all specifically mentioned in the section.

The purpose of § 17, in relevant part, is to provide for the establishment, observance and enforcement of just and reasonable regulations and practices relating to or in connection with the receiving, handling, storing or delivering of property. By the nature of their business, independent forwarders are intimately connected with these various activities. Here again, unless the Commission has jurisdiction over them, it may not be able effectively to carry out the policy of the Act.

Section 20, which for the most part was copied from § 15(11) of the Interstate Commerce Act, forbids the disclosure of confidential information by a common carrier by water or other person, when the information might be used to the detriment or prejudice of a shipper or consignee, or of a carrier, or might improperly disclose his business transactions to a competitor.

Finally, § 21, which is immediately involved in this case, requires the filing of reports, records and documents relating to the business of persons subject to the Act.

The intimate relationship of the forwarder to both shipper and carrier, essentially that of go-between, gives him not only unique sources of information, perhaps in its totality available to no one else, but also unique opportunity to engage in practices which the Act contemplates shall be subject to regulation, some of which we have emphasized in quoting the statutory provisions. The statute throughout is drawn in very broad terms. It forbids direct or indirect accomplishment of the outlawed acts. It broadly covers specific practices, including false billing, classification, weighing, and the manner of placing insurance, § 16, as well as general practices resulting in forbidden evils, §§ 15, 17, which forwarders, affiliated or independent, are favorably placed to bring about. It mentions forwarders specifically, not only in § 1, but elsewhere, e.g., § 16, without suggestion of distinction between independent and affiliated operators. To include the latter but exclude the former would be incongruous, not only for want of any such explicit suggestion, but because inclusion of one without the other would create a statutory discrimination tending in time to force out the affiliated forwarder and, with that achieved, to remove forwarding entirely from the reach of the regulatory plan. We do not believe that Congress had in mind such a self-defeating scheme. Almost as well might it have exempted all forwarders in the first place. Nor do we think the design of the Act was merely by indirection to forbid carriers or their affiliates to act as forwarders.

The legislative history clearly supports this view, although for explicit statement it is scanty. No discussion concerning the meaning of 'any person (not a carrier) carrying on the business of forwarding * *  * in connection with a common carrier by water' appears except in the statement of the manager of the bill in the House of Representatives. When dealing with the breadth of the term 'other person subject to the act,' he said: 'Hence, if this board (the United States Shipping Board) effectually regulates water carriers, it must also have supervision of all those incidental facilities connected with the main carriers * *  * .' 53 Cong.Rec. 8276. Certainly this language is not indicative of intent to give a narrowly restricted scope to the definition's coverage. Quite the opposite is its effect.

The more significant legislative history, however, appears in the metamorphosis which this provision of § 1 underwent during the process of enactment. A predecessor bill (H.Rep. 14337, 64th Cong.) worded the definition as follows: 'The term 'other person subject to this act' means any person not included in the term 'common carrier by water' and carrying on the business of forwarding, ferrying, towing, or furnishing transfer, lighterage, dock, warehouse, or other terminal facilities in or in connection with the foreign or interstate commerce of the United States.' (Emphasis added) As this was revised in the bill which was enacted (H.Rep. 15455, 64th Cong.), two changes occurred, apart from adding explicit mention of wharfage as among the terminal services. One was to eliminate the words 'ferrying, towing, * *  * transfer, lighterage.' The other was to substitute 'in connection with a common carrier by water' for 'in or in connection with the foreign or interstate commerce of the United States.'

Had this latter wording been retained there could not have been the remotest basis for suggestion that independent forwarders were not covered, as there could have been none with reference to any of the other businesses or services mentioned. But, for a reason wholly unrelated to narrowing the class of forwarders and others not carriers who had been included, the original concluding phraseology was changed. That language was obviously inexact when applied, as the Shipping Act did apply, to carriage by water and incidental activities. Taken literally, the broad wording would have included forwarders and others furnishing terminal facilities in connection with shipments by rail. Obviously it was to eliminate this incongruity, and not to constrict the classes of 'other persons' previously enumerated, that this change was made.

That it had no other purpose appears, moreover, from the elimination of 'ferrying, towing * *  * transfer, lighterage,' which shows that when Congress wished to cut down the classes originally covered it did so attentively and explicitly. These eliminated persons were included originally, along with forwarders and others, not simply to reach affiliates of carriers, but broadly to provide 'for equal treatment to all shippers and water carriers by transfer and lighterage concerns when forming a link in interstate or foreign commerce.' (Emphasis added.) Nothing in the hearings, the committee reports, or the debates, upon the original or the substituted bills, suggests either an original intention to restrict to carrier affiliates the coverage of forwarders or other furnishers of terminal or 'link' service or a later intention to change the initial broad coverage by so restricting it. Silence so complete cannot be taken as the voice of change. The original congressional purpose clearly was to reach all who carry on the specified activities whether in or out of affiliation with a carrier. That purpose remained unaltered by anything which took place in the course of transition from the first to the final form in which the bill was enacted.

Indeed, we held as much in the cases of State of California v. United States and City of Oakland v. United States, supra. The decision was that the Commission has jurisdiction over state and municipally owned businesses furnishing terminal facilities. The ruling would include a fortiori privately owned independent businesses of the same type. It would be a strange reading of the 'other person' provision if forwarders alone were required to be affiliated in order to come within its terms, all others covered in both the original and the final forms of the legislative proposals being either independent or affiliated. Yet this is, in effect, appellees' exact contention and the view taken by the District Court. As has been noted, that court misconceived the facts in the Oakland case and thus perhaps, at the time of entry of its final order, the full scope and effect of our decision. At any rate, since Congress has indicated no intention to single out forwarders for regulation only when they are affiliated with a carrier, while at the same time broadly covering terminal operators and others, we are not free to inject such a distinction.

What has been said disposes of the principal contentions and issues. Appellees however offer other arguments, founded chiefly in the absence of prior established administrative practice, but also in the history of interstate commerce legislation affecting nonwater transportation and in decisions relating to that legislation. We regard these considerations as inapposite to the problem raised by this case in connection with the quite different wording, coverage, history and, to some extent, policy of the Shipping Act, for reasons already set forth in part and for others briefly indicated in the marginal notes attached to this paragraph.

It remains only to notice the further objections that the case does not involve the use of forwarders by carriers to evade regulations applicable to carriers; and that to hold independent forwarders 'subject to the Act' will bring them under its regulatory provisions, in other words, will make them 'subject to the Act.'

Needless to repeat, it is precisely because we think the latter effect is required by the considerations already set forth that our conclusion has been reached. Moreover, support for it is given by the very terms of the specific regulatory provisions cited to contradict it, as we have pointed out. The ground need not be traversed again. The cited provisions, like § 1 are broad and general. They strike at evils as likely to be perpetrated by independent forwarders as by any of the 'other persons' admittedly covered by the Act. They afford no suggestion of application narrowed to affiliated forwarders or of other distinction between them and independent forwarders, such as invariably and in the clearest terms Congress has stated whenever it has dealt with forwarders by land.

The common sense of all this, of course, is that Congress knew what it was about in both instances. We cannot ignore its repeated demonstrations of that fact. To do so would be to rewrite the statute, injecting limitations of affiliation no more rightfully within our function than inserting others of physical participation in the transportation service proper or of financial responsibility for it. These admittedly cannot go in, although there would be as much warrant for adding them as for putting in affiliation.

Statutes may be emasculated as readily and as much by unauthorized restricted reading as by one unduly expansive. And the wisdom of the regulation of forwarders with the corresponding restriction of competitive freedom in the business is the concern of Congress, not of this Court. We leave the statute as Congress enacted it.

It is inherent in the view we take of the statute that more is involved than merely a carrier's attempt to immunize itself against the Act's penalties by using a forwarder to evade the regulations made binding on carriers. In that respect forwarders are obviously no different from other persons, for the Act does not permit such evasion by a carrier whether through the use of forwarders or any other persons. What is more important is that the Act is designed and in terms undertakes not only to prevent such evasion by carriers through denying them immunity when they hide behind forwarders; it also denies immunity to the forwarders themselves when they commit the acts or practices carriers and others subject to the Act are forbidden to perform.

The judgment is reversed and the cause is remanded for further proceedings in conformity with this opinion.

Reversed and remanded.

Mr. Justice JACKSON took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.

Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER dissenting, with whom Mr. Justice BLACK and Mr. Justice DOUGLAS concur.