Case ID: us-ct-cl_10/html/0276-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Bichardson, J.,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

MARTIN’S CASE.
    Arthur Martin v. The United States.
    
      On the Proofs.
    
    
      A laborer in the Naval Academy has been, employed for some time at $2.50 a day, worhing twelve hours, when the Eight-hour law is passed. Ne is then informed by the admiral commanding that the previous hours must be continued at the same pay, or heviill be discharged. Ne continues as before, receives his pay monthly, and receipts for it without protest. Congress pass the Act May 18, 1872, directing the accounting officers to settle xoorlmen’s accounts on the basis of eight hours a day. Ne thenapplies to them for additional pay for the tzoelve hours’ service, and an allowance is made to him for a portion of the time. Ne accepts and ree&ipts without protest. During all of this time private employers in the same place were paying only $2 a day of twelve hours for the same service.
    
    I. The Eight-hour Laiv, (15 Stat. L.,77, Rev. Stat., § 3738,) which declares that “eight hours shall constitute a day’s work for all laborers, <fe.¡ nozo employed or who may hereafter be employed by or on behalf of the Government,” has no application to a special contract made since its passage, whereby a laborer agrees to work twelve hours a day at a rate agreed upon. The statute does not regulate compensation, nor prohibit laborers from making- contracts, nor from working more or less than eight hours, nor does it, where a laborer works more or less than eight hours by agreement, operate to increase or decrease his agreed wages.
    II. Where a Government laborer, after the passage of the Eight-hour Law, (15 Stat. L., 77, Rev. Stat., § 3738,) continues to work twelve hours a day and to receive and receipt in full for his wages, he is thereby precluded, from seeking more.
    III. Where a Government laborer presented his claim to the accounting officers of the Treasury for an allowance of increased pay under the Act May 18, 1872, (Rev. Stat., $ 3689,) which authorizes those officers to settle laborers’ accounts without reduction of pay by reason of there having been a reduction of hours under the Eight-hour Law, and they allow him for a portion of the time claimed, and he accepts and receipts therefor in full without protest, it is the final settlement of a disputable claim, and he is barred from seeking a further recovery. - 1
    
    
      The Reporters’ statement of the case:
    In the year 1866 or 1867 the claimant was employed by the foreman of the steam-heating and gas-works at the Naval Academy, at Annapolis, to work for the defendants at $2.50 a day, with, tbe understanding that during the season of steaming, which was' from the 1st of October to the 1st of June, his time of labor was to be twelve hours- a day. During the seasons of steam-heating he was fireman at the steam-boilers, and at other times he was employed in assisting in repairing pipes, digging and shoveling, or in ordinary labor and work.
    In July, 1868, upon the passage of the act constituting eight hours a day’s work for all laborers employed on behalf of the Government, called the “ Mght-hour Lmo,v (15 Stat. L., 77,) the claimant and other laborers at said academy spoke about that law to the foreman, who put on an additional man in the gas-works, (where the claimant was not employed,) and reduced the time of labor of the men in said gas-works to eight hours a day. Soon afterward the men told him they would rather have half a dollar a day additional than to have the eight hours’ work. Admiral Porter, then superintendent of the academy, was informed of what the men said, and he told the foreman that he would not give more pay¿ and that if any one would not work the full hours he would put some one in his place. The claimant was present and heard this conversation. Nothing more was said or done in the matter, and the claimant went on with his work, laboring the number of hours per day as before, according to the original understanding.
    For all of said labor the claimant was paid at the rate of $2.50 per calendar day, except that, for reasons which do not appear in evidence, he was paid at the rate of $2.25 per day for 74 days of twelve hours each in March, April, and May, 1870, and for 26 days of eight hours each in June, 1870. Payments at said rates were made to him at the end of each month during his service, and were received by him without protest or objection.
    While the claimant was so employed the pay of ordinary laborers at the Academy was $1.75 a day; and the firemen were paid $2.50 a day because the time was longer and the work harder. The wages of firemen in the works of the gas company, a private corporation, at Annapolis, has since the war been- $2 n, day of twelve hours’ labor, and they had more work to do than the claimant had while similarly employed by the defendants.
    In the year 1873 the claimant made a formal application in writing to the Fourth Auditor of the Treasury for arrears of pay, claimed as due him under the second section of the Act May 18, 1872, (17 Stat. L., 134,) between the 25th of June, 1868, and the 19th of May, 1869, on account of his said employment. The Auditor thereupon stated the account and allowed the claimant $205.63, which was admitted by the Second Comptroller, and that amount was paid to the claimant, who receipted for the same in writing, in full of the account.
    
      Mr. O. JS. Hovey for the claimant.
    
      Mr. John 8. Blair (with whom was the Assistant Attorney-General) for the defendants :
    The construction given to the Act May 18,1872, by the auditing officers of the Treasury was that not only those employés whose wages per day had been reduced when the hours of labor were changed were entitled to a settlement, but that those laborers who were working ten and twelve hours a day after the 25th June, 1868, were entitled to an additional compensation of 25 and 50 per cent, on the contractrprice for their labor. The meaning thus given is strained. The language of the act is unambiguous, and clearly refers to cases where the daily wages were reduced on account of the act. This construction was based upon the assumption that the wages paid are hourly, not daily; that, by retaining the old wages and the old hours, the hourly wages were reduced; but neither of these assumptions is correct. This man’s wages were exactly the same after as before the act, both hourly and daily; no “reduction” had been made in either of them; but' his real complaint was that they were not increased. The proclamation of the President and the subsequent act of Congress were expressly aimed at a reduction of the daily wages, but nothing is said in either of them about increase. Perhaps it would have been equitable for Congress to have made a similar provision for the purpose of increasing wages; that it did not do so is sufficient reason for the dismissal of this part of the claim.
    If the court has jurisdiction of the claim for $83.12 by virtue of the act of 1868, plaintiff was at liberty to file it either in court or in the Treasury Department. He was not bound to file it with the Fourth Auditor, and his doing so was' a “voluntary submission,” bringing it within the rule of the cases of 
      Mason (8 C. Cls. B., 125) and Justice, (8 0. 01s. B., 37.) It does not appear that he protested at the time he received the amount allowed him by the Auditor. If, on the other hand, jurisdiction does not attach by the act of 186S, it is not conferred by the act of 1872, for the latter creates neither an express nor an implied contract. It expressly provides a tribunal for the settlement of the claim, but gives no right of appeal from its decision. (Chorpenning’s Case, 3 0. 01s. B., 140.) Of the express agreement which the claimant made with the Government thire has been no violation. The hours of labor were an essen-tia1. element in this contract, for 75 cents was added to the ordinary wages on account of the extra hours. He was getting more than persons similarly employed in private workshops. Chis original agreement, expressly renewed after the passage »f the Eight-hour Law, prevents any implied change in its terms, "he claimant thereby waived any benefit he might have revived from it. If, by reason of mistake of his rights, claimant iccepted, in payment for his work, less than he was really tntitled to, the mistake was one of law, not of fact,- and the iourt has no power to relieve him from the force of it. The payments were intended by the paymaster to be in full of all labor done theretofore, and were so understood by him. and claimant, and were accepted by claimant as such. He is es-topped now from alleging such receipts were not in full.
    <lA receipt in full is merely evidence of the intent of the parties. That evidence may be supplied in other ways, and it would ordinarily be for the jury to say whether the one paid and the other received in the mutual understanding that it was final payment of the account presented.” (OomstocWs Case, 9 0. 01s. B., 141.) This act was not intended to apply to cases of special work, where the hours of labor constituted part of ■the contract and were part of the consideration. It only related to those laborers the duration of whose labor was fixed by the common custom of the country.
   Bichardson, J.,

delivered the opinion of the court:

• The claimant was employed by the defendants’ agents as fireman and laborer, at the Naval Academy at Annapolis, at wages of $2.50 per day, with the understanding that between October and June his time of working was to be twelve .hours each calendar day. Daring the other months he worked eight hours a day. Such was the petitioner’s contract, his work, and his pay when, on the 25th of June, 1868, Cong’ress passed the act (15 Stat. L., 77) declaring “ that eight hours shall constitute a day’s worhfor all laborers, worhmen, and mechanics now employed, or who may hereafter be employed, by or on behalf of the Government of the United States.” (Rev. Stat., § 3738.)

Upon the passage of that act the petitioner, with other laborers at the Academy, applied to the defendants’ agents to know what was to be done with reference to it, and was present wlen it was decided by the superintendent of the Academy that ;he wages would not be increased, and that if any of the men would not work the full hours he would put others in their piases. The claimant thereupon returned to his work and continued so employed until he was discharged, October 15,1872, a period o" more than fifty-one months, laboring each calendar day betweei October and June twelve hours, and at the end of each and ever month, during the whole time, he accepted payment for hi month’s work at the original contract price, without protest o. objection. This acquiescence of the claimant in the terms an nounced by the superintendent as those upon which alone he could continue in employment, his returning to his work and continuing as before, and his accepting $2,50 a day for each calendar day, in monthly payments, for more than four years afterwards, constituted, in our opinion, a renewal of the original contract by which he agreed to' receive that rate of pay for twelve hours’ work.

The question then arises, What is the effect of that act upon a special contract, made’ since its passage, wherein a laborer contracts to work for the United States twelve hours each cal-’ endar day, at a rate agreed upon, and accepts payment each month while in service at the contract rate ? We are of opinion that the act has no application to such a case. It does not regulate the compensation to be paid to employés, but leaves that to be determined by the contract of the parties or the rules of law; nor does it place laborers and mechanics under any disability to make contracts, nor prohibit them from working more than eight hours each calendar day, nor in any way prevent them from waiving its intended beneficial provisions. The claimant is entitled to pay for his labor. If he has entered into a special contract, he is bound by the whole of it, and cannot set up part and repudiate tbe rest. Having agreed to work twelve hours for $2.50, the statute does not operate to increase his pay by one-half for those twelve hours’ labor simply because they all come within one calendar day. If it does, then, if a laborer contracts to work six hours a day for $2.50, it would operate to deprive him of one-third of his agreed compensation, and compel him to accept two-thirds in payment of the amount agreed upon. It would be a forced and unreasonable construction, and one which we cannot adopt, to' hold that the act so operates upon special contracts as to give to a laborer a rate of compensation one-half greater or to compel him to accept a rate one-third less than that which he contracted for.

The claimant was either employed under a special contract, in which case the contract controls the rate of his pay, and he has been fully paid in accordance with its terms, as we have shown, or he was at work upon an implied contract, in which case he would be entitled to what his services were worth, and the facts show that they were worth no more than he has received. It appears that firemen employed in Annapolis in similar work, laboring twelve hours a day, were paid only $2 a day, while the claimant was receiving $2.50 for like work and the same hours of labor. No evidence is produced that his services were worth more, or that the current rate of pay to others for similar work was greater. Therefore upon neither the special contract nor a quantum meruit is the petitioner entitled to recover.

But the claimant seeks to recover extra compensation for each day that he worked twelve hours between June 25,1868, and May 19, 1869, under the provision of the Act May 18, 1872, directing the proper accounting officers, in the settlement of all accounts for the services of laborers-, workmen, and mechanics, between those dates, to settle and pay the same without reduction on account of reduction of hours of labor by the Eight-hour Lato, “when it shall he made to appear that such was the sole cause of the reduction of wages.” (Rev. Stat. § 3689, p. 732.)

The claimant’s wages and hours of labor remained the same after as before the passage of the Eight-hour Law. The accounting officers were made the judges of the fact and the cause of the reduction of wages, when claimed, and were authorized to settle accounts under that act. To them he submitted his claim, and by them it was allowed in part, and the amount allowed was received by the claimant and receipted for by him in full payment of the account. This was a disputable and disputed claim, and, the claimant having submitted the same to the officers authorized by law to pass upon and settle it, and having accepted the amount allowed by them and receipted the account in full, he is barred from any father recovery thereon. (Coni-sto ole’s Case, 9 C. Cls. R., 141, and the cases therein cited; Raneóos Case, 9 C. Cls. R., 400.)

Whatever benefits the Right-hour Lato might have conferred upon the claimant while employed at the Naval Academy, he neglected to avail himself of, and has waived and lost by his own acts, and cannot recover in this action.

The claimant’s petition is dismissed.

The Chief-Justice was not present when this case was submitted, and took no part in the decision.