Case ID: us-ct-cl_21/html/0494-02.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "The Chief Justice", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

DANIEL M. McCLURE v. THE UNITED STATES.
    (17 C. Cls. R., 12; 116 U. S. R., 145.)
    Congress pass a special act referring a paymaster’s claim for relief from liability for missing funds. It provides that if the court “ shall be satisfied from the evidence that any of the moneys charged to him were not in fact received by him, or that other just and equitable grounds exist for credits claimed by him, it shall malee a decree” requiring the accounting officers to credit him, &c. The court finds from the evidence-that as to certain moneys charged to him and for which he receipted the court is not satisfied, &c.
    This case went up on the claimant’s appeal. Pending the appeal the claimant moves for an order on the court below to transmit to the Supreme Court “ all the evidence on which the cause was heard and determined,” or if such order cannot be made, that the cause be remanded ‘ ‘ with direction to make return to this court whether or not the evidence upon which said cause-was heard and determined does or does not establish and prove the several separate and distinct propositions of fact contained in the requests for findings of fact presented * * * to the said court before the trial of said cause; and upon the motion for a new trial or a rehearing of said cause, that the said court shall be directed to find specifically all the material facts involved in the case.”
    The Supreme Court hold that the act referring the case confers no equity jurisdiction and that the case is subject to the rules regulating appeals in ordinary judgments.
    The court refuses to remand the case in accordance with the motion, the object being to ask the court to determine questions of fact on the evidence.
   The Chief Justice

delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court, December 21, 1885.