Case ID: us-ct-cl_58/html/0697-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Chief Justice Taft", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

EUGENE A. FREUND AND ALFRED F. ROEMMICH v. THE UNITED STATES; and THE UNITED STATES v. EUGENE A. FREUND AND ALFRED F. ROEMMICH.
    [56 C. Cls. 15; 260 U.S. 60.]
    Judgment was rendered against the United States for a portion of the sum claimed in the court below. On appeal the judgment was reversed, and the Supreme Court decided :
    Broad provisions in a Government contract, authorizing the Government to change the obligations imposed on the other party, should be interpreted, not as permitting Government officials to remold the contract at will, but as confined to what was fairly and reasonably within the contemplation of the parties when the contract was made.
    Where a contractor undertook a circuit mail-carriage service from and back to a city post office site via scheduled stations, with stops en route to collect mail from letter carriers, to be paid for at so much for every mile traveled, a stipulation in the contract authorizing the Postmaster General to establish service to and from like offices, stations, etc., to those named in the schedules, to be paid for at the contract rate per mile of travel, did not authorize substitution of a much heavier service, in transporting all mail between railroad stations and another post office site, involving increased equipment and expense, and paid for at the same mileage rate but without counting trips on which no mail was carried.
    
      Contractors wlio were encouraged by agents of the Post Office Department to enter into a mail-carriage contract and give a heavy bond, without notice of the department’s purpose to substitute a more onerous service under color of the contract but not within its terms, and who performed the new service, under protest, rather than incur the risk to themselves and their bondsmen of throwing up the contract, held not to have acquiesced in the change.
    A mail-carriage contractor who, under duress of the Post Office Department, performs service not called for by his contract, is entitled to recover, in the Court of Claims, the reasonable value of such service, including a fair profit.
   Mr. Chief Justice Taft

delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court November 13, 1922.