Opinion
File No. 8247.
Opinion filed December 30, 1939.
Commerce — Constitutional Law.
The constitutional rights of a partnership operating a livestock marketing agency and claimed to have become a federal public utility by virtue of Packers and Stockyards Act were not violated by judgment holding partnership liable to chattel mortgagee for conversion of sheep which were covered by mortgage and which were sold through marketing agency without mortgagee's consent while mortgage was filed in county of mortgagor's residence where sheep had been kept. Packers and Stockyards Act 1921, 7 U.S.C.A. §§ 181-229.
Appeal from Circuit Court, Minnehaha County; Hon. Lucius J. Wall, Judge.
Action in trover by the First National Bank of Pipestone against Raymond E. Siman and others, as co-partners, carrying on business under the firm name of Steele-Siman Co., to recover the value of sheep described in a chattel mortgage executed by a third party in favor of plaintiff and which sheep were sold through defendants' marketing agency without plaintiff's consent while mortgage was filed in county wherein third party resided and where the sheep had been kept. From a judgment for plaintiff and an unsatisfactory order, defendants appeal.
Judgment and order affirmed.
Caldwell Burns, of Sioux Falls, and Myers Snerly, of Chicago, Ill., for Appellants.
Krause Van Buren, of Dell Rapids, for Respondent.
This case is before this court a second time. See First National Bank of Pipestone v. Siman et al., 65 S.D. 514, 275 N.W. 347. Following the filing of the remittitur on the prior appeal, the appellants, who were defendants below, amended their answer and alleged that, by virtue of the Packers and Stockyards Act, 42 Stat. 159, 7 U.S.C.A. §§ 181 to 229, the Steele-Siman Company became a federal public utility and, as such, its constitutional rights were violated by the decision on the prior appeal. The federal questions raised and the arguments presented are similar, if not identical, to those presented to the Minnesota court in the case of Mason City Production Credit Association v. Sig Ellingson Co., 205 Minn. 537, 286 N.W. 713, in which case the Supreme Court of the United States denied a petition for writ of certiorari, 308 U.S. 599, 60 S.Ct. 130, 84 L.Ed. 501, and a petition for a rehearing, 308 U.S. 637, 60 S.Ct. 178, 84 L.Ed. 529.
We are content to rest our decision of the federal questions involved upon the reasoning of the Minnesota court in the Ellingson case. The trial court in this case having found against the appellant, it follows that the judgment and order appealed from should be, and are, affirmed.
All the Judges concur.