U.S. Supreme Court

United States v. Harris,177U.S. 305 (1900)United States v.Harris

No. 169

Argued March 5-6,1900

Decided April 9, 1900

177U.S. 305

CERTIORARI TO THE CIRCUITCOURT

OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRDCIRCUIT

Syllabus

A receiver of a railroad is not

"within the letter or the spirit of the provisions of the Act ofMarch 3, 1873, c. 252, 17 Stat. 584, entitled 'An act to preventcruelty to animals while in transit by railroad or other means oftransportation within the United States,'"

now incorporated into the Revised Statutes as sections 4386,4387, 4388 and 4389.

This was a suit brought in November, 1895, in the District Courtof the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania bythe United States against Joseph S. Harris, Edward M. Paxson, andJohn Lowber Welsh, receivers of the Philadelphia & ReadingRailroad Company, to recover a penalty in the sum of five hundreddollars for an alleged violation of sections 4386, 4387, 4388, and4389 of the Revised Statutes of the United States.

There was a verdict in favor of the United States, butafterwards, on a question reserved at the trial, judgment wasentered in favor of the defendantsnon obstante veredicto.78 F. 290. Thereupon a writ of error was sued out from the CircuitCourt of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and on March 14, 1898, thejudgment of the district court was affirmed. 85 F. 533. The causewas then brought to this Court on a writ of certiorari.

Page 177 U. S. 306

MR. JUSTICE SHIRAS delivered the opinion of the Court.

This was an action to recover penalties for an alleged violationof the laws of the United States relating to the transportation oflivestock, and the question involved is whether the defendants, whowere in charge and control of the Philadelphia & ReadingRailroad as receivers, appointed by the circuit court of the UnitedStates, were liable in such an action.

The act under which this suit was brought was passed March 3,1873, and was entitled "An Act to Prevent Cruelty to Animals whilein Transit by Railroad or Other Means of Transportation within theUnited States." It appears in the Revised Statutes as sections4386, 4387, 4388, and 4389, as follows:

"SEC. 4386. No railroad company within the United States whoseroad forms any part of a line of road over which cattle, sheep,swine, or other animals are conveyed from one state to another, orthe owners or masters of steam, sailing, or other vessels carryingor transporting cattle, sheep, swine, or other animals from onestate to another, shall confine the same in cars, boats, or vesselsof any description for a longer period than twenty-eightconsecutive hours, without unloading the same for rest, water, andfeeding for a period of at least five consecutive hours, unlessprevented from so unloading by storm or other accidental causes. Inestimating such confinement the time during which the animals havebeen confined without such rest on connecting roads from which theyare received shall be included, it being the intent of this sectionto prohibit their continuous confinement beyond the period oftwenty-eight hours, except upon contingencies hereinbeforestated."

"SEC. 4387. Animals so unloaded shall be properly fed andwatered during such rest by the owner or person having the custodythereof, or in case of his default in so doing, then by therailroad company or owners or masters of boats or vesselstransporting the same at the expense of the owner or person incustody thereof, and such company, owners, or masters shall in suchcase have a lien upon such animals for food, care, and

Page 177 U. S. 307

custody furnished, and shall not be liable for any detention ofsuch animals."

"SEC. 4388. Any company, owner, or custodian of such animals whoknowingly and willingly fails to comply with the provisions of thetwo preceding sections shall, for every such failure, be liable forand forfeit and pay a penalty of not less than one hundred dollarsnor more than five hundred dollars. But when animals are carried incars, boats, or other vessels in which they can and do have properfood, water, space, and opportunity to rest, the provisions inregard to their being unloaded shall not apply."

"SEC. 4389. The penalty created by the preceding sections shallbe recovered by civil action in the name of the United States inthe circuit or district court of the United States holden withinthe district where the violation may have been committed or theperson or corporation resides or carries on its business, and itshall be the duty of all United States marshals, their deputies andsubordinates, to prosecute all violations which come to theirnotice or knowledge."

The contention on behalf of the government is that by the words"any company," used in section 4388, Congress intended to embraceall common carriers, whether by rail or water, upon whom the dutywas imposed by section 4386 of unloading and feeding the animals;that the word "company" is used in a popular sense as signifyingthe person or persons, the association or corporation, carrying onthe business of a common carrier by rail or water; that, as shownby its title, the act in question was a humane one, designed toprevent cruelty to animals while in course of interstate transit;that the regulations were to be complied with whenever animals weretransported by rail or boat from one state or another, and thatwhoever had charge of the railroad or the boat had to see thatthese wholesome and humane regulations were obeyed, or had to paythe penalty for violating them.

To strengthen the argument that Congress intended to includeeven receivers when managing a railroad under an appointment by acourt, the government's counsel calls attention

Page 177 U. S. 308

to the provisions of the second and third sections of the Act ofAugust 13, 1888, 25 Stat. 436, c. 866, reading as follows:

"SEC. 2. That whenever in any cause pending in any court of theUnited States there shall be a receiver or manager in possession ofany property, such receiver or manager shall manage and operatesuch property according to the requirements of the valid laws ofthe state in which such property shall be situated, in the samemanner that the owner or possessor thereof would be bound to do ifin possession thereof. Any receiver or manager who shall willfullyviolate the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of amisdemeanor, and shall, on conviction thereof, be punished by afine not exceeding three thousand dollars or by imprisonment notexceeding one year, or by both said punishments, in the discretionof the court."

"SEC. 3. That every receiver or manager of any propertyappointed by any court of the United States may be sued in respectof any act or transaction of his in carrying on the businessconnected with such property, without the previous leave of thecourt in which such receiver or manager was appointed, but suchsuit shall be subject to the general equity jurisdiction of thecourt in which such receiver or manager was appointed so far as thesame shall be necessary to the ends of justice."

It is claimed that the effect of such legislation is to placereceivers upon the same plane with railway companies as respectstheir liability to be sued for acts done while operating asrailroad.

Upon the whole, the proposition of the government's counsel isthat the words "any company, owner, or custodian of such animals,"used in section 4388, are intended to cover all those who canpossibly violate the preceding two sections; that the words "everycompany" must therefore be held to include a railroad company,whether a person, a partnership or a corporation and whether actingindividually or through officers or receivers.

It may be conceded that it was the intention of Congress tosubject receivers of railroad companies, appointed such by courtsof the United States, to the valid laws and regulations of thestates and of the United States, whose object is to promote thesafety, comfort, and convenience of the traveling public. But

Page 177 U. S. 309

we are not now concerned with the general intention of Congress,but with its special intention, manifested in the enactments underwhich this suit was brought. Was it the purpose of Congress, whenprescribing a penalty for any company, owner, or custodian ofanimals who knowingly and willingly fails to comply with thedirections of the statute, to include receivers? Can we fairlybring receivers within the penal clause by reasoning from asupposed or an apparent motive in Congress in passing the act?

It was the view of the courts below that receivers were plainlynot within the letter of the statute, and not necessarily withinits purpose or spirit, and an attentive examination has brought usto the same conclusion.

It must be admitted that, in order to hold the receivers, theymust be regarded as included in the word "company." Only by astrained and artificial construction, based chiefly upon aconsideration of the mischief which the legislature sought toremedy, can receivers be brought within the terms of the law. Butcan such a kind of construction be resorted to in enforcing a penalstatute? Giving all proper force to the contention of the counselof the government that there has been some relaxation on the partof the courts in applying the rule of strict construction to suchstatutes, it still remains that the intention of a penal statutemust be found in the language actually used, interpreted accordingto its fair and obvious meaning. It is not permitted to courts inthis class of cases to attribute inadvertence or oversight to thelegislature when enumerating the classes of persons who aresubjected to a penal enactment, nor to depart from the settledmeaning of words or phrases in order to bring persons not named ordistinctly described within the supposed purpose of thestatute.

It may well be that Congress, in omitting to expressly includereceivers in these sections, intended to leave them subject to thecontrol and direction of the courts, whose officers they are. Itdoes not, therefore, follow that the statute in question would bewithout operation where railroads are in the hands of receivers.The owners and custodians of the stock would still remain subjectto the punishment prescribed.

Page 177 U. S. 310

We cannot better close this discussion than by quoting thelanguage of Chief Justice Marshall in the case ofUnitedStates v. Wiltberger, 5 Wheat. 76:

"The rule that penal laws are to be construed strictly isperhaps not much less old than construction itself. It is foundedon the tenderness of the law for the rights of individuals, and onthe plain principle that the power of punishment is vested in thelegislative, and not in the judicial, department. It is thelegislature, not the court, which is to define a crime and ordainits punishment. It is said that notwithstanding this rule, theintention of the lawmaker must govern in the construction of penalas well as other statutes. . . . But this is not a new independentrule which subverts the old. It is a modification of the ancientmaxim, and amounts to this, that though penal laws are to beconstrued strictly, they are not to be construed so strictly as todefeat the obvious intention of the legislature. The maxim is notto be so applied as to narrow the words of the statute to theexclusion of cases which those words, in their ordinary acceptationor in that sense in which the legislature has obviously used them,would comprehend. The intention of the legislature is to becollected from the words they employ. Where there is no ambiguityin the words, there is no room for construction. The case must be astrong one indeed which would justify a court in departing from theplain meaning of words -- especially in a penal act, in search ofan intention which the words themselves did not suggest. Todetermine that a case is within the intention of a statute, itslanguage must authorize us to say so. It would be dangerous indeedto carry the principle that a case which is within the reason ormischief of a statute is within its provisions, so far as to punisha crime not enumerated in the statute because it is of equalatrocity, or of a kindred character with those which areenumerated. If this principle has ever been recognized inexpounding criminal law, it has been in cases of considerableirritation, which it would be unsafe to consider as precedentsforming a general rule for other cases."

See likewise Sarlls v. United States,152 U.S. 570.

The judgment of the circuit court of appeals is

Affirmed.