Tambasco v. Reconstruction Finance Corporation‪.‬

This is an action by a livestock slaughterer to recover subsidy payments he claims as due him for the months of September and October, 1946, and for a declaratory judgment and an injunction preventing defendant from invalidating payments for May and June, 1946, and attempting to recover them. Defendant has taken its position invalidating the subsidies on the ground that plaintiff had slaughtered in excess of his assigned quota and hence had forfeited his right to the subsidies. Plaintiff asserts that his quota was established on an historical use basis - as a percentage of the weight slaughtered by him in the like monthly period in 1944 - under Control Order 2, 11 F.R. 4657, issued by the Price Administrator and that this order was invalid because of the provisions of the War Mobilization and Recoversion Act of 1944, 50 U.S.C.A.Appendix, § 1651, setting production for non-war use which "shall not be made dependent upon the existence of a concern or the functioning of a concern in a given field of activity at a given time." Plaintiff based the jurisdiction of the district court, notwithstanding the wellknown restrictions of attacks on the validity of price regulations to the Emergency Court of Appeals under § 204(d) of the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942, 50 U.S.C.A.Appendix, § 924(d), on the amendment of 1944, adding § 2(m) to that act, 50 U.S.C.A.Appendix, § 902(m). The district court held, however, that this amendment did not give it jurisdiction of this action and dismissed the action. This appeal followed.