Wilhelm Reich et al. v. United States

government report · 1957

type:government report

year:1957

citation:Wilhelm Reich et al., Defendants, Appellants v. United States of America, Appellee, 239 F.2d 134 (1st Cir.). U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, docket no. 5160 (Magruder, Woodbury, Hartigan, JJ.).

LINK

https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/240860/wilhelm-reich-v-united-states/

SUMMARY

The First Circuit Court of Appeals decision affirming the criminal contempt convictions of Wilhelm Reich, Michael Silvert, and the Wilhelm Reich Foundation for violating the 1954 injunction against interstate shipment of orgone energy accumulators. Metadata (case name, citation, court, docket number, panel) confirmed directly against the CourtListener case-law database record (courtlistener.com/api/rest/v4/search, query 'Reich v. United States 239 F.2d 134'), which also returns an opinion snippet, authored by Circuit Judge Woodbury, opening with the same February 10, 1954 complaint date and statutory citation the FDA's own Notice of Judgment record recites, confirming the case is the appeal from that same underlying 1954 injunction. NOTE: the full opinion text could not be fetched directly (law.justia.com and openjurist.org both served a Cloudflare bot-check page; the bulk.resource.org mirror did not respond), and CourtListener's own dateFiled field (1957-02-25) conflicts with a secondary source's date for the appellate decision (see grounding log); no specific date for the appellate affirmance is asserted in the case body, only the citation and outcome.

NOTES

The appellate decision affirming Wilhelm Reich’s, Michael Silvert’s, and the Wilhelm Reich Foundation’s 1956 criminal contempt convictions for continuing to ship and rent orgone energy accumulators after the 1954 federal injunction. Confirmed via CourtListener’s case-law database (case name, citation 239 F.2d 134, First Circuit, docket 5160, panel of Magruder, Woodbury, and Hartigan, JJ.), which also surfaces an opinion snippet reciting the underlying 1954 injunction proceeding in the same terms as the FDA’s own Notice of Judgment record. Used here only for the citation and the fact of affirmance; the routine could not independently fetch the full opinion text (Cloudflare-blocked at two mirrors), so the case body does not quote from it and does not assert a specific date for the appellate ruling given an unresolved conflict between CourtListener’s dateFiled field and a secondary source’s date (see grounding log, research/notes/grounding-reich-orgone-accumulator-1940-1957.md).