Superior Oil Co. v. Mississippi ex rel. Knox

delivered the opinion of the Court.

This is a suit by the State of Mississippi to collect a tax on distributors of gasoline of three and four cents respectively per gallon sold, according to the statute in force at the time of the sales. The defence was that the sales were in interstate commerce. The Supreme Court of the

The facts are as follows. The Superior Oil Company, a corporation created and doing business in Mississippi, sold gasoline to packers in Biloxi in that State and delivered it at the packers’ wharves. The latter loaded the oil upon their own fishing boats and sent it out to the neighborhood of Grants Pass, Louisiana, where they delivered, it to shrimp fishermen for use in fishing. The fishermen brought their catch back to Biloxi, sold it to the packers and were charged with the cost of the oil in account. The appellant received in each case from the purchaser what is called a bill of lading, signed by the master of the boat on which the oil was loaded and reading in part: “ Consigned to Gussie Fontaine Pkg. Co. [or other purchasers]. Destination: Grants Pass, La. By boat Frank Louis, owned or operated by Gussie Fontaine Pkg. Co.” The instrument then provided that “ the property consigned herein remains the property of said Superior Oil Company until it shall be delivered to consignee or consignee’s agent at point of destination”, with provisions throwing all risks upon the purchasers. The seller of course paid no freight. The document seems to have had no other use than, as the Supreme Court of Mississippi said, to try to convert a domestic transaction into one of interstate commerce. There was no consignee at the point of destination. The goods were delivered to the so-called consignee before they started, and were in its hands throughout. There was no point of destination for delivering of the oil but merely a neighborhood in which the packers that had bought it and already held it expected to sell it again. The document hardly can affect the case, because it is “ not within the power of the

The importance of the commerce clause to the Union of course is very great. But it also is important to prevent that clause being used to deprive the States of their lifeblood by a strained interpretation of facts. We may admit that this case is near the line. There was a regular course of business known to the appellant, that took the gasoline into another State, and if by mutual agreement the oil had been put into the hands of a third person, a common carrier, for transportation to Louisiana the mere possibility that the vendor might be able to induce the carrier to forego his rights might not have been enough to keep the transaction out of interstate commerce. A. G. Spalding & Bros. v. Edwards, 262 U. S. 66 , (a case of foreign export, see Sonneborn Brothers v. Cureton, 262 U. S. 506 , 520, 521). But here the gasoline was in the hands of the purchaser to do with as it liked, and there was nothing that in any way committed it to sending the oil to Louisiana except its own wishes. If it had bought bait for fishing that it intended to do itself, the purchase would not have been in interstate commerce because the fishing grounds were known by both parties to be beyond the State line. A distinction has been taken between sales made with a view to a certain result and those made simply with indifferent knowledge that the buyer contemplates that result. Louisville & Nashville R. R. Co. v. Parker, 242 U. S. 13 , 14. Kalem Co. v. Harper Brothers, 222 U. S. 55 , 62. The only purpose of the vendor here was to escape taxation. It was not taxed in Louisiana and hoped not to be in Mississippi. The fact that it desired to evade the law, as it is called, is immaterial, because the very meaning of a line in the law

Judgment affirmed.

Mr. Justice Van Devanter and Mr. Justice Butler dissent.