Case ID: us-ct-cl_63/html/0672-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Justice StoNe", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

SOUTHERN PACIFIC COMPANY v. UNITED STATES
    [60 C. Cls. 662; 272 U. S. 445]
    Judgment was rendered in part in favor of the United States in the court below. Upon certiorari the judgment was
    affirmed,
    the Supreme Court deciding:
    1. Military impedimenta were shipped by the War Department by expedited service over a railroad which was bound by land-grant acts to transport property of the United States “ at rates not exceeding 50 per cent of those paid by private shippers for the same kind of service.” The railroad had no tariff for such service available to the public at large, but had filed with the Interstate Commerce Commission a special tariff applicable to such Government shipments, which made no land-grant deductions. Meld, (1) that no contract of the United States to pay the special tariff rate could be implied from the fact that the shipments were made when the special tariff was the only one applicable on file, in the absence of proof that the contracting officers then knew of that tariff; (2) that the tariff having been filed without statutory authority, those officers were not chargeable, as a matter of law, with knowledge of it.
    2. To recover in the Court of Claims the reasonable value of service rendered the Government, the claimant must prove its value.
   Mr. Justice StoNe

delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court November 22, 1926.