United States v. Henry W. Matthews and Nettie Matthews, Doing Business Under the Firm Name and Style of Yuba Livestock Auction Company

244 F.2d 626 UNITED STATES of America, Appellant, v. Henry W. MATTHEWS and Nettie Matthews, Doing Business Under the Firm Name and Style of Yuba Livestock Auction Company, Appellees. No. 15245. United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit. May 13, 1957. George Cochran Doub, Asst. Atty. Gen., Samuel D. Slade, Alan S. Rosenthal, Attys., Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., Lloyd H. Burke, U. S. Atty., San Francisco, Cal., for appellant. Weis & Weis, Alvin Weis, Yuba City. Cal., for appellees. Before STEPHENS, POPE and LEMMON, Circuit Judges. LEMMON, Circuit Judge. 1 Some readers of a comparatively recent Supreme Court decision may discern a trace of nostalgia for Swift v. Tyson 1 and its holding that state law should govern Federal courts only in matters "strictly local", and not as "to question of a more general nature". 2 Be that as it may, almost exactly one hundred years after Swift, in a case involving a fraudulently cashed Government check, the Supreme Court said: 3 "In our choice of the applicable federal rule we have occasionally selected state law. [Case cited.] But reasons which may make state law at times the appropriate federal rule are singularly inappropriate here.…

Some readers of a comparatively recent Supreme Court decision may discern a trace of nostalgia" for Swift *627 v. Tyson 1 and its holding that state law should govern Federal courts only in matters “strictly local”, and not as “to question of a more general nature”.

Be that as it may, almost exactly one hundred years after Swift, in a case involving a fraudulently cashed Government check, the Supreme Court said:

As Professor Arthur E. Sutherland, of Harvard University, has observed in an article in the Stanford Law Review of December, 1955: 3

is whether, under the Farmers’ Home Administration Act of 1946, hereinafter “the Act”, 4 the appellees are liable in conversion for the full value of the mortgaged livestock here involved, less any amount refunded to the appellant out of the proceeds of the sales.

1. Statement of Facts

With the exception of the appellant’s assertion that the chattel mortgagor’s “debt to appellant is still due and owing in a sum exceeding $1,526.22, and cannot be satisfied out of [the mortgagor’s] current assets”, the appellees accept the appellant’s statement of facts. Omitting any reference to the amount that the mortgagor now owes the appellant and to…

(concurring specially).

I agree that appellant should have judgment. In United States v. Kramel, 234 F.2d 577 , the Eighth Circuit held that state law governs in a case like this. The present case does not require a decision in conflict with that one, for if state law governs the California law makes appellee liable, and if federal law governs, it also requires judgment for appellant as Judge Lemmon properly concludes. Since the federal and the state law are the same we need not decide between them.