United States v. Union Supply Co.

Citations

• 215 U.S. 50
• 30 S. Ct. 15
• 54 L. Ed. 87
• 1909 U.S. LEXIS 1730

Syllabus

<p>.Where corporations are as much within the mischief aimed at by a pencil statute and as .capable of willful breaches of the law as individuals the statute will not, if it can be reasonably interpreted as including corporations, be interpreted as excluding them.</p> <p>Where a penal statute prescribes two independent penalties, it will be construed as meaning to inflict them so far as possible, and, if one is impossible, the guilty defendant is not to escape the other which is possible.</p> <p>Section 6 of the act of May 9,1902, c. 784, 32 Stat. 193, imposing certain duties on wholesale dealers in oleomargarine and imposing penalties of finé and imprisonment for violations applies to corporations, notwithstanding the penalty of imprisonment cannot be inflicted on a corporation.'</p>