Arba Seymour Van Valkenburgh

Arba Seymour Van Valkenburgh (August 22, 1862–4 November, 1944), was an American jurist who served as a Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

He was born on a farm near Syracuse, New York, the son of Lawrence Van Valkenburgh and Sarah Ann Seymour. His parents moved to Michigan, and he attended public schools in Ypsilanti and graduated with an A.B. from the University of Michigan in 1884. He settled in Kansas City, Missouri, the following year, and began reading law in the offices of Dobson, Douglas and Trimble. In 1888 he was admitted to the Missouri bar and was in partnership with Delbert J. Haff from that time until his appointment as Assistant U.S. Attorney for the western district of Missouri in June 1898. He was appointed U.S. Attorney for that district in 1905, served until 1910, and for the next 15 years was U.S District Judge. In March 1925 became Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

As District Attorney he was called upon to prosecute the important "packers' rebate cases" involving Armour & Company, Swift & Company, Morris & Company, Cudahy Packing Company, and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad in a conspiracy to defeat the tariff regulations of the Elkins Act. Beginning the prosecutions in 1905, he secured convictions in the District Court and affirmations in the Circuit Court of Appeals (153 Fed. 1) and in the U.S. Supreme Court (209 U.S. 56) These were the first cases to be carried through the courts of last resort and it was through them that the Elkins Act was properly interpreted and made effective.

The following cases are representative of those tried before him while on the bench of the District Court:

* Smith vs. Kansas City Title & Trust Company, in which the Federal Farm Loan Act was sustained and the creation of land banks held valid, this ruling being affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court (255 U.S. 180).

* Missouri vs. Holland, sustaining the Migratory Bird Treaty between the United States and Great Britain and the Act of Congress enforcing it (258 Fed. 479, affirmed 252 U.S. 416).

* Chicago, Bulington & Quincy Railroad vs. United States, involving the interpretation of the Federal Safety Appliance Act (affirmed 237 U.S. 410).

* United States vs. Emery, Bird, Thayer Dry Goods Company, involving the interpretation of the Federal Corporation Tax Law of 1909 (198 Fed. 242, affirmed 237 U.S. 28).

* St. Joseph Railway, Light & Power Company, vs. Public Service Commissions, which defined certain important principles of valuation of public utilities and the regulation of rates by public authorities (268 Fed. 267).

After becoming Circuit Judge he participated in the decisions of more than 500 cases and wrote some 170 opinions. Important among these were:

* Wolf Bros. vs. Hamilton Brown Shoe Company, viewing important principles of the law of trademark and unfair competition (206 Fed. 611, affirmed 240 U.S. 251)

* United States vs. Utah Power & Light Company, involving public lands and water power rights (three opinions: 209 Fed. 554; 230 Fed. 328; 242 Fed. 924).

*Whitesides vs. Norton, which involved riparian rights and incidentally, the boundary line between Minnesota and Wisconsin (205 Fed. 5).

One of the most dramatic litigations in which he was called upon to sit was in the so-called St. Clair and Dallas County bond cases. There were controversies of thirty years' standing, involving issues of bonds for railroads which the issuing counties later repudiated, and so bitter had the contest grown that judges of the county court of St. Clair County had regularly gone to jail for contempt rather than rule on a tax levy, with which to retire the bonds. Van Valkenburgh outlined a basis of settlement in 1917 which met the approval of all contesting parties.

He presided at the trail of Earl Browder, the Communist leader, for refusal to register for the draft in World War I, conducted the trail of several important cases coming under the Espionage Act in the course of the nation's war with Germany in 1917-1918, and sentenced Carl Gleeser, a naturalized American citizen of German birth and publisher of the Missouri Staats-Zeitung, to five years in Leavenworth Penitentiary after Gleeser had pleaded guilty to violating the act for thirteen articles he had published.

Van Valkenburgh married on September 25, 1889, in Kansas City, to Grace Elizabeth Ingold, daughter of William A. Ingold, and died without issue in Kansas City.

References

The National Cyclopædia of American Biography, Volume 33. New York: James T. White & Company (1947) 76-77.