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Charles Harwood Moorman, son of William James and Margaret (Bush) Moorman, was born on April 24, 1876 at Big Springs, Meade County, Kentucky. He studied law with W. H. Marriott, an attorney at Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Admitted to the bar in 1899, Moorman began the practice law in Elizabethtown, setting up the law firm of Marriott & Moorman.
In 1906, Moorman moved to Louisville to become assistant district attorney for the Louisville & Nashville railroad. In 1915, he left L & N Railroad and opened offices of his own, but two years later left his practice in the care of Ernest Woodward and went to France to work with the American Red Cross. From November, 1917, to May, 1918, Moorman served as a volunteer with the American Red Cross until he received his commission as a captain in the Judge Advocate General Corps of the United States Army. In November, 1918, he was promoted to Major. Moorman was discharged from the army in May, 1919 and returned to the United States.
Moorman returned to Louisville and formed a law partnership with Ernest Woodward. The law firm was called Moorman & Woodward. In 1921, he was appointed judge of the Court of Appeals of Kentucky, the state's highest court. Moorman served in that position until January 8, 1924, when he was appointed to the United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky by President Calvin Coolidge.
After only a year, President Coolidge appointed Judge Moorman to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on January 13, 1925. During his years on the bench Moorman took part in many decisions of note. In 1928, in Cincinnati, he heard the case of Woodworth, Collector v. Kales.1 Although he did not write it, Moorman did concur in the opinion which resulted in the refund of a sizable sum from the federal government, which had overtaxed the defendant in the sale of stock in the Ford Motor Company.
Early in 1932 he wrote the opinion in the case of Swetland v. Curtis Airports Corporation,2 the pioneer federal case on the subject of the right of an owner of land to complain of trespasses upon his property by airplanes flying above it at a reasonable height so as not to interfere with his beneficial use of his property. The case involved a material modification of the old common law maxim that one who owns the land itself owns all that is above it, to the sky. Moorman's decision has been cited repeatedly and, so far as later annotations show, the doctrines laid down in the opinion are no longer questioned.
In the case of the National Labor Relations Board v. Fruehauf Trailer Company,3 Moorman and two other circuit judges set aside an order of the board to the trailer company, holding that Congress had no authority to regulate or control the relations between an employer engaged in manufacture and his employees unless those relations directly affected interstate commerce. However, in a review by the Supreme Court, the decision by the circuit court of appeals was reversed in a five-to-four opinion.4
In May, 1937, Moorman took part in a decision in Tennessee Valley Authority v. Tennessee Electric Power Company, which gave T.V.A. the right to continue the federal government's large electric power program in the Tennessee River basin.5 The judges dissolved a temporary injunction granted by a lower court to a group of private utilities and sent the case back for trial to determine the constitutionality of the TVA Act. The other two judges in the case held that the injunction was improvidently granted but that the case should be tried on its merits. Moorman concurred in holding that the injunction should not have been granted, but believed that the bill should be dismissed.
Judge Moorman was a member of the American and Kentucky Bar Associations, the Masonic order, American Legion, the Pendennis and Louisville Country Clubs.
On November 28, 1914, Judge Moorman married Lily Belknap, of Louisville. She was the daughter of Colonel Morris Burke Belknap, an executive of the Belknap Hardware & Manufacturing Company and the granddaughter of the distinguished Kentuckian, General S. B. Buckner. Judge and Mrs. Moorman were the parents of two sons, Morris Belknap and Charles Harwood Moorman. Judge Moorman died at his home in Louisville on January 26, 1938.
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