Stanford

The plaintiff manufactures, sells and ships by United States mail novelty pistols which combine the features of a “cap pistol” and a “BB gun”. The defendant is the Postmaster of Alhambra, California, and he has refused to accept the plaintiff’s product for delivery through the United States mails on the ground that the pistols are firearms within the meaning of 18 U.S. C.A. § 1715, which .provides:

The plaintiff seeks a declaratory judgment determining its product not to be non-mailable and for an injunction to restrain the defendant from refusing to accept it for mailing.

The defendant has resisted the action on the grounds:' (1) That the Postmaster General, whose official residence is in the District of Columbia, is an indispensable party; (2) that the plaintiff’s product is in fact a firearm within the meaning of 18 U.S.C.A. § 1715 , supra.

Until 1947, the question of when a superior officer was an indispensable party to a suit instituted against his subordinate was a perplexing problem which resulted in what- appeared to be two inconsistent lines of cases. In 1947 the Supreme Court decided the case of Williams v. Fanning, 332 U.S. 490 , 68 S.Ct. 188, 189 , 92 L.Ed. 95 , and…