Case ID: us-ct-cl_61/html/1028-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Justice SaNford", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

SOUTHERN PACIFIC COMPANY v. THE UNITED STATES
    [59 C. Cls. 36; 268 U. S. 263]
    Judgment was rendered in favor of the United States in the court below. On appeal the judgment was reversed, the Supreme Court deciding:
    1. Where a railroad, for transporting applicants for enlistment in the Army, discharged, retired, and furloughed soldiers, and civilian employees of the War Department, rendered its bills at land-grant rates, knowing that according to a ruling of the Comptroller of the Treasury such persons were to be regarded as “ troops of the United States ” for whose transportation only land-grant rates could be paid by disbursing .officers, and accepted payment of its bills on that basis without protest, held that, though the comptroller’s ruling was erroneous, tlie railroad was bound by acquiescence not recover tbe difference between the amount received and the larger amount which it would have been lawfully entitled to charge under its tariff.
    May 11, 1925.
    2. But aliter where the bills, though rendered at land-grant rates, bore a short form of protest: “Amounts claimed in this bill accepted under protest ”; or a form more extended and explanatory ; since by these the Government officers were sufficiently notified that payment at the lower rates .would not be accepted in final settlement.
    3. Where, however, the railroad tendered most of its bills with indorsed protests, but a considerable number during the same period without them, as to these latter it was bound by its acceptance of the land-grant rates.
   Mr. Justice SaNford

delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court