Case ID: us-ct-cl_31/html/0457-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Justice Brown", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

ROBERT THORNTON v. THE UNITED STATES.
    (27 C. Cls. R., 342; 160 U. S. R., 654.)
    
      On the defendants’ Appeal.
    
    A private in the Marine Corps enlists at Mare Island, and is discharged at IJlashington at his own request. He seeks transportation thence to the place of his enlistment. The accounting officers refuse it under a rule of- long standing that traveling 'allowances are not made to soldiers discharged at their own request.
    The court below decides:
    1. A soldier discharged at his own request, before the expiration of the period of his enlistment, is. entitled to transportation or commutation thereof from the place of his discharge to the place of his enlistment.
    2. The Revised Statutes, § 1290, as amended by the Act 27th February, 1877 (19 Stat. L., p. 244), provide that when a soldier is discharged from the service, except “by way of punishment for an offense,” he shall be allowed transportation. The statute having expressly declared an exceprtion, another can not be supplied by construction.
    The decision of the court below is reversed on the ground that “ as the service was practically a continuous one, and his second discharge occurred at the place of his original enlistment, he was not entitled to his commutation for travel and subsistence to the place of his second enlistment.”
    January 6, 1896.
   Mr. Justice Brown

delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court