Opinion ID: 1562287
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Claim of the Witherow Steel Company.

Text: As we have heretofore seen, the date of full settlement was April 15, 1921, and the suit at law on the contractor's bond was begun by the Kellogg Structural Steel Company in the court below on October 18, 1921. And the statute provided, as quoted above: Only one action shall be brought and any creditor may file his claim in such action and be made a party thereto within one year from the completion of the work under said contract and not later. Within such allowed time the Witherow Steel Company took no step to be made a party to such suit, and the statutory time limit to present its claim ended, as the statute was mandatory that the filing of claims could not be done later. To maintain its claim the Witherow Steel Company shows that on April 14, 1922, it also began an action at law on the bond in the court below, in assertion of its claim. Now it will be noted that the jurisdiction of the District Court of New Jersey here exercised arises, not by diversity of citizenship, or on any other of the usual grounds of federal jurisdiction, but is wholly statutory, and depends on subject-matter and location, viz.: He or they shall have a right of action, and shall be, and are hereby authorized to bring suit in the name of the United States in the Circuit [now District] court of the United States in which said contract was to be performed and executed, irrespective of the amount in controversy in such suit and not elsewhere. Such being the situation, no statutory authority for the Witherow Steel Company to use the name of the United States in this attempted second suit on the bond existed, and the court below had no statutory jurisdiction vested in it to entertain such suit. Certain it is the Witherow Steel Company, the use party in such suit, had to invoke the authorization of the statute to sustain the suit; but the statute it invoked, and by virtue of which it asserts the jurisdiction of the court, not only did not warrant a second suit, but expressly forbade it. Both by duplicating the first suit and by failing to file its claim in that first suit, the Witherow Steel Company left its claim in a situation where the power of the court below to enforce it was gone. It follows, therefore, that when that court, on November 9, 1922, more than 16 months after the final settlement of April 15, 1921, made a nunc pro tunc order, in which it was sought to restore to the Witherow Steel Company the status and rights which the statute had extinguished, it exceeded its powers. The claim of the Witherow Steel Company is therefore denied. The record will be remanded to the court below for due procedure in accordance with this opinion.