Record
Court opinion
1948-12-01
CourtListener (Free Law Project), text of the opinion
McBride v. Western Union Tel. Co., 171 F.2d 1 (9th Cir. 1948)
Ninth Circuit decision of 1 December 1948 holding that Western Union was justified, under its tariff, in refusing to restore race-track news service to the operator of Continental Press after California officers notified it that the drops were used for bookmaking.
- Date
- 1948-12-01
- Kind
- court-opinion
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- Rights
- Opinion of a United States court, a federal work in the public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. CourtListener (Free Law Project) hosts the text; it is not the source institution.
Chief Judge Denman wrote for a panel with Judges Healy and Orr (No. 11969); the opinion was amended on denial of rehearing on January 5, 1949. McBride sought to “compel the restoration to him” of Western Union’s service for “racetrack news between cities in eastern states and California cities,” and of the Morse instruments, “called drops,” that received it. The People of California and the state Public Utilities Commission appeared as amici curiae.
The court held that the district court “erred in holding that it had no jurisdiction over the person of McBride, but should be sustained on the evidence adduced in its holding that McBride is not entitled to a mandatory or any order” restoring the service. Under paragraph (8) of Tariff Regulation 219, it said, “The guilty use of the drop in receiving the messages is enough to show an illegal use of the wires’ service,” and the notifying officers were not “required to supply to the telegraph company the probative facts to be adduced in court.” For the purposes of the appeal it assumed that McBride’s own sending of the news was a legitimate business.
FCC chairman Wayne Coy cited this decision to the Kefauver Committee in June 1950 as “a recent case in point.” The district court’s opinion is filed separately.