Case ID: us-ct-cl_54/html/0199-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Justice Holmes", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

WILLIAM H. SAGE, HENRY M. SAGE, AND JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, EXECUTORS OF DEAN SAGE, DECEASED, v. THE UNITED STATES.
    [Not reported in C. Cls. R.; 250 U. S., 33.]
    Judgment was rendered in favor of the defendants in the court below. On appeal the judgment was reversed, and the Supreme Court decided:
    A suit against a collector of internal revenue to recover money wrongfully collected as taxes is personal, notwithstanding the statutory provisions for preliminary appeal to the commissioner, appearance by the district attorney, and payment by the United States in certain cases; and, since the United States is not privy to the judgment, a recovery of part in a suit for the whole against the collector, and satisfaction of the judgment by the United States, does not bar a suit against the United States for the remainder in the ' Court of Claims.
    Claims already presented to the commissioner under the act of June 27, 1902, chapter 1160, section 3, 32 Statute, 406, for taxes on contingent legacies erroneously collected under section 29 of the war revenue act of June 13, 1898, and satisfied In part only through a suit against the collector, need not be presented anew in order to obtain, as to the residue, the benefit of the refunding act of July 27, 1912, chapter 256, 37 Statute, 240.
    The act of July 17, 1912, supra, created new rights; and, as to a claim within it which previously had been presented to the commissioner under the act of June 27, 1902, the six-year limitation on suit in the Court of Claims (Rev. Stats., sec. 1069) began to run not earlier than January 1, 1914, the outside limit fixed by the act of 1912 for presenting claims, and, semble, not before the subsequent making or refusal of application for repayment to the Secretary of the Treasury.
   Mr. Justice Holmes

delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court May 19, 1919.