Page:Delaware v. Pennsylvania (2023).pdf/17

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Cite as: 598 U. S. ____ (2023)

13

Opinion of the Court

banking and financial organizations and business associations engaged in issuing and selling money orders and traveler’s checks do not, as a matter of business practice, show the last known addresses of purchasers of such instruments.” §2501(1). The operative provision of the statute (§2503) then adopts the precise alternative rule of escheatment that Pennsylvania suggested in the face of inequitable escheatment caused by a company’s business practices.

In short, the FDA’s text provides a solution for the problem of the inequitable distribution of escheats, and that solution expressly eschews requiring entities like Western Union to keep adequate records. See §§2501(5), 2503. Inadequate recordkeeping is thus highly relevant to the interpretive question of when the FDA, rather than the common law, should apply to the escheatment of the intangible property at issue.^[1]

It is uncontested that the Disputed Instruments share the inadequate recordkeeping feature of money orders that the FDA identifies. See §2501(1). Therefore, if the common

↑ To be sure, the parties and the Special Master conceive of the interpretive question before us as how to define the statutory term “money order,” or whether the Disputed Instruments look enough like a money order to fall within the statute. That is, indeed, one way to view the task at hand. But the text and history of the FDA also suggest an alternative framing. Against the backdrop of the operation of our common-law rules and in light of Congress’s effort to abrogate them, the interpretive question becomes when should the FDA, rather than the common law, apply to particular abandoned intangible property (here, the Disputed Instruments). And the statute’s text suggests at least a partial answer: when “the books and records of banking and financial organizations and business associations engaged in issuing and selling” the instruments at issue “do not, as a matter of business practice, show the last known addresses of purchasers of such instruments,” such that, absent application of the FDA, the products would not be distributed “as a matter of equity among the several States.” §§2501(1), (3), (4). This answer follows not only from the FDA’s codified findings, but also from §2503, insofar as the text applies both to instruments that can be defined as “money orders” (in light of their inherent features) and also to instruments that are “similar” to money orders for escheatment purposes.

[1] To be sure, the parties and the Special Master conceive of the interpretive question before us as how to define the statutory term “money order,” or whether the Disputed Instruments look enough like a money order to fall within the statute. That is, indeed, one way to view the task at hand. But the text and history of the FDA also suggest an alternative framing. Against the backdrop of the operation of our common-law rules and in light of Congress’s effort to abrogate them, the interpretive question becomes when should the FDA, rather than the common law, apply to particular abandoned intangible property (here, the Disputed Instruments). And the statute’s text suggests at least a partial answer: when “the books and records of banking and financial organizations and business associations engaged in issuing and selling” the instruments at issue “do not, as a matter of business practice, show the last known addresses of purchasers of such instruments,” such that, absent application of the FDA, the products would not be distributed “as a matter of equity among the several States.” §§2501(1), (3), (4). This answer follows not only from the FDA’s codified findings, but also from §2503, insofar as the text applies both to instruments that can be defined as “money orders” (in light of their inherent features) and also to instruments that are “similar” to money orders for escheatment purposes.

[1]