Source: https://openjurist.org/258/us/549/sloan-shipyards-corporation-v-united-states-shipping-board-emergency-fleet-corporation
Timestamp: 2019-01-23 16:43:45
Document Index: 336421636

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 3', '§ 13', '§ 607', '§ 4', 'art, 245', '§ 5', '§ 1233']

258 US 549 Sloan Shipyards Corporation v. United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation | OpenJurist
258 U.S. 549 - Sloan Shipyards Corporation v. United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation
SLOAN SHIPYARDS CORPORATION et al.
UNITED STATES SHIPPING BOARD EMERGENCY FLEET CORPORATION et al. ASTORIA MARINE IRON WORKS v. UNITED STATES SHIPPING BOARD EMERGENCY FLEET CORPORATION. UNITED STATES SHIPPING BOARD EMERGENCY FLEET CORPORATION v. WOOD.
These provisions sufficiently indicate the enormous powers ultimately given to the Fleet Corporation. They have suggested the argument that it was so far put in place of the sovereign as to share the immunity of the sovereign from suit otherwise than as the sovereign allows. But such a notion is a very dangerous departure from one of the first principles of our system of law. The soverign properly so called is superior to suit for reasons that often have been explained. But the general rule is that any person within the jurisdiction always is amenable to the law. If he is sued for conduct harmful to the plaintiff his only shield is a constitutional rule of law that exonerates him. Supposing the powers of the Fleet Corporation to have been given to a single man we doubt if any one would contend that the acts of Congress and the delegations of authority from the President left him any less liable than other grantees of the power of eminent domain to be called upon to defend himself in court. An instrumentality of Government he might be and for the greatest ends, but the agent, because he is agent, does not cease to be answerable for his acts. Osborn v. Bank of United States, 9 Wheat. 738, 842, 843, 6 L. Ed. 204; United States v. Lee, 106 U. S. 196, 213, 221, 1 Sup. Ct. 240, 27 L. Ed. 171. The opposite notion left some traces in the law (1 Roll. Abr. 95, Action sur Case, T.), but for the most part long has disappeared.
If what we have said is correct it cannot matter that the agent is a corporation rather than a single man. The meaning of incorporation is that you have a person, and as a person one that presumably is subject to the general rules of law. The only serious question is whether special remedies have been provided by statute that displace those that otherwise would be at the plaintiff's command. The Acts of April 22, 1918, c. 62, § 3, 40 Stat. 535, and the Act of July 18, 1918, c. 157, § 13, 40 Stat. 913, 916, give compensation for a plant taken by the President under the powers conferred by the Act of June 15, 1917, c. 29, 40 Stat. 182, and otherwise, with a resort for claims exceeding $10,000 to the Court of Claims; in the later act, by a suit against the United States. But the taking possession of the plaintiffs' plants on December 1, 1917, is alleged to have been unlawful and it cannot be assumed at this stage that the act of the Fleet Corporation was in pursuance of any powers then delegated to it or was within the ratification of December 3, 1918. The plaintiffs are not suing the United States but the Fleet Corporation, and if its act was unlawful, even if they might have sued the United States, they are not cut off from a remedy against the agent that did the wrongful act. In general the United States cannot be sued for a tort, but its immunity does not extend to those that acted in its name. It is not impossible that the Fleet Corporation purported to act under the contract giving it the right to take possession in certain events, but that the plaintiffs can show that the events had not occurred. The District Judge gave weight to the phrase in the general incorporation law of the District that corporations formed under it shall be capable of suing and being sued in any Court in the District. Code D. C. § 607. But we do not read those words as putting District corporations upon a different footing from those formed under the laws of the states.
We attach no importance to the fact that the second contract, alleged to have been illegally extorted, was made with the Fleet Corporation 'representing the United States of America.' The Fleet Corporation was the contractor, even if the added words had any secondary effect. But the bill alleges that it was brought about by the wrongful act of the Fleet Corporation. The conclusion that we reach is that the District Court erred in dismissing the bill and we regard it as led up to and almost required by the decisions heretofore reached in The Lake Monroe, 250 U. S. 246, 39 Sup. Ct. 460, 63 L. Ed. 962, and United States v. Strang, 254 U. S. 491, 41 Sup. Ct. 165, 65 L. Ed. 368. See, further, Dakota Central Telephone Co. v. South Dakota, 250 U. S. 163, 177, 178, 39 Sup. Ct. 507, 63 L. Ed. 910, 4 A. L. R. 1623; Northern Pacific Railway Co. v. North Dakota, 250 U. S. 135, 152, 39 Sup. Ct. 502, 63 L. Ed. 897. The transfer of the property of the Fleet Corporation to the Shipping Board by the Act of June 5, 1920, c. 250, § 4, 41 Stat. 988, 990, may affect the value of the remedy afforded by the present suit but not the jurisdiction of the Court.
It is suggested that there will be lack of uniformity if suits can be brought in state courts. This consideration cannot control our conclusion from the statutes. But it is not very serious since such suits against this corporation can be removed to the Courts of the United States, Pacific Railroad Removal Cases, 115 U. S. 1, 5 Sup. Ct. 1113, 29 L. Ed. 319, and afterwards are subject to review here. Creswill v. Grand Lodge Knights of Pythias, 225 U. S. 246, 258, 32 Sup. Ct. 822, 56 L. Ed. 1074; Southern Pacific Co. v. Stewart, 245 U. S. 359, 38 Sup. Ct. 130, 62 L. Ed. 345; Id., 248 U. S. 562, 38 Sup Ct. 203, 62 L. Ed. 472. The change in the law by the Act of January 28, 1915, c. 22, § 5, 38 Stat. 803, 804 (Comp. St. § 1233a), extends only to railroads. The decree of the District Court must be reversed.
In the next case the Astoria Marine Iron Works sued in a state court for breach of a contract set forth. The suit was removed to the District Court and there dismissed upon demurrer on the same ground as the last—that the only remedy was in the Court of Claims. Astoria Marine Iron Works v. U. S. Shipping Board E. F. Corp., 270 Fed. 635. This contract was made on February 1, 1919, when the character of the Fleet Corporation had been more fully developed and determined than in the previous case, and purported to be made with the Fleet Corporation, 'a corporation organized and existing under the laws of the District of Columbia (herein called the 'Corporation') representing the United States of America, party of the second part.' Throughout the contract the undertakings of the party of the second part are expressed to be undertakings of the corporation and it is this corporation and its officers that are to be satisfied in regard to what is required from the Iron Works. It is recognized that it may be necessary for the United States to exercise complete control over the furnishing of supplies to the Iron Works and it is agreed that if required by the Corporation 'and/or the United States' the Iron Works will furnish schedules, etc. The whole frame of the instrument seems to us plainly to recognize the Corporation as the immediate party to the contract. The distinction between it and the United States is marked in the phrase last quoted. If we are right in this, further reasoning seems to us unnecessary to show that there was jurisdiction of the suit. The fact that the corporation was formed under the general laws of the District of Columbia is persuasive, even standing alone, that it was expected to contract and to stand suit in its own person, whatever indemnities might be furnished by the United States. The judgment in this case also must be reversed.
I differ with the majority in the first two of these three cases. The question presented is one of the interpretation of the will of Congress. No one can contend that Congress in using the Fleet Corporation for its purposes might not have given it express immunity from suit as a representative of the United States. What we have to decide is whether in the mass of urgent legislation in respect to the government's construction and operation of shipping made indispensable by the peculiar exigencies of the great war, Congress intended that this corporate agent should be subject to suit only as its principal is. I concede that the legislation originally creating this corporation, without express immunity from suit, naturally gives rise to the inference that Congress concluded that the greater freedom of action secured by carrying on business in corporate form was desirable and that in the absence of express provision for it, and in respect to what the corporation was originally intended to do, immunity cannot be reasonably implied from the relation of the government to the corporation and its interest in its business. As I read the record, however, the transactions in the two cases I am discussing, and which we have to consider, took place after the situation prompting the creation of this corporation had greatly changed and after much additional legislation. The power to do the things which were here done, and which are the subjects of these suits, is not to be found in the act creating the Fleet Corporation or in legislation expanding its original faculties. It was power vested directly in the President himself, the exercise of which he was given express authority to delegate to an agent, who might be the Fleet Corporation. The act conferring this presidential power provided a specific remedy for compensation to those whose property rights were invaded by its exercise through award by the President and immediate payment of part due thereunder, with the right to the claimant to litigate the justice of the whole award in the Court of Claims. The Fleet Corporation in the arrangements which it forced upon the claimants in these two cases to their detriment expressly declared that it acted as a representative of the United States. I think the proper construction to be put upon the facts and the law is that these suits are in fact against the United States and cannot be brought except in the manner and under the procedure provided by the statute for claims for compensation for acts done by authority of the President under the act vesting him with it.
I do not think that either the case of The Lake Monroe, 250 U. S. 246, 39 Sup. Ct. 460, 63 L. Ed. 962, or that of United States v. Strang, 254 U. S. 491, 41 Sup. Ct. 165, 65 L. Ed. 368, requires the conclusion reached herein by the majority of the Court, and, indeed, their opinion is not clear and unqualified in reference to the effect of those cases.
I should not think it necessary to record a difference with my brethren of the majority but for considerations of high public expediency which may properly weigh with us in construing a doubtful statute of Congress because they must have been in the mind of Congress in the enactment of the legislation. We are made aware of the very great number of suits pending and likely to arise out of the work of the Fleet Corporation and the enormous total involved in them. This was to be expected. Can Congress be supposed to have intended that these suits might be brought in 48 different states and in courts of first instance of those states with the lack of uniformity in the findings of fact and the conclusions of law likely to be encountered where trials are had by courts and by courts and juries in so many varying jurisdiction? Did it propose to allow the United States to be made liable in litigation anywhere or under any form of procedure without any regulation on its part to secure a reasonable limitation of its own as to the time within which such suits shall be brought? The Court suggests that judgments thus obtained will be good only against the Fleet Corporation and the claimants must run the risk of getting a judgment against a debtor which cannot pay. Congress has taken over all the assets of the Fleet Corporation so that such judgments will be valueless except as Congress shall conclude to pay them. If, in the judgments obtained in the various courts of the country Congress shall find such variety of view as not to commend them to its sense of fairness, it will be slow to recognize its obligation to pay them, and we shall have a repetition of the history of the French spoliation claims which for many decades occupied the attention of appropriation committees of Congress and wore out their patience with results that have put in the hearts of claimants a deep sense of the injustice of governments. On the other hand, a construction which will bring into one tribunal, the Court of Claims, the hearing and decision of this class of cases, will secure uniformity and dispatch and these two elements will make for justice and peace, because Congress pays the judgments of the Court of Claims against the United States in due course. The result reached by the Court if it is to go as far as I fear it must, even with the careful limitation of the language of the judgment, will make the existing confusion as to the claims against the Fleet Corporation worse confounded. It is to be hoped that if the ultimate view of the Court of the effect of the statutes under discussion is to spread this litigation all over the country with ineffective and doubtful results dependent on future approval of Congress, that Congress itself may by further remedial legislation avoid such an undesirable condition, unfavorable both to the United States and the litigants.
I am authorized to say that Mr. Justice VAN DEVANTER and Mr. Justice CLARKE concur in these views.