CONSTITUTIONAL LAW - UNREASONABLE SEARCH AND SEIZURE - UNAUTHORIZED EXAMINATION OF TELEGRAMS

Authors

Peter S. Boter, University of Michigan Law SchoolFollow

Abstract

A special committee of the United States Senate, appointed to investigate lobbying activities in connection with the so-called "holding company bill" sought to obtain from telegraph companies, under blanket subpoena duces tecum, all telegrams passing through their offices in Washington from February 1, 1935 to September 1, 1935. When the telegraph companies expressed reluctance to comply with the subpoenas, the Senate Committee sought aid from the Federal Communications Commission. The commission by formal resolution detailed a member of its staff to work with an examiner of the Senate Committee in the examination and copying of the telegrams. Among the messages so examined and copied were messages sent by the appellant, and he sought to restrain acquisition and use of these messages. Held, that the bill was rightly dismissed in the district court for want of jurisdiction as to the Senate Committee; but that the action of the commission was in principle a trespass which a court of equity could have enjoined were it still in progress, but there being no present action by the commission or contemplated future action, such as the bill complained of, an injunction would not be decreed. Hearst v. Black, (D. C. App. 1936) 87 F. (2d) 68.

Recommended Citation

Peter S. Boter, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW - UNREASONABLE SEARCH AND SEIZURE - UNAUTHORIZED EXAMINATION OF TELEGRAMS, 35 Mich. L. Rev. 1383 (1937).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol35/iss8/18