Court Opinion

ID: 9419205
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:47:38.809833+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:42:04.106366
License: Public Domain

*310Mr. Justice Murphy,
concurring:
I concur in the opinion of the Court insofar as it relates to duress and coercion and the non-severability of the “bonus for savings” clauses, but desire to add a brief further statement of my views.
In voting for affirmance of the judgment, I do not wish to be understood as expressing approvalof an arrangement like the one now under review, by which a company engaged in doing work for the Government in time of grave national peril — or any other time — is entitled to a profit of 22 per cent, under contracts involving little or no risk and grossing many millions of dollars. Such an arrangement not only is incompatible with sound principles of public management, but is injurious to public confidence and public morale. The fact that such cases were common during the last war, as evidenced by the circumstances recited in the opinion of the Court, provides no justification to my mind for such a practice then or now. No man or set of men should want to make excessive profits out of the travail of the Nation at war, and government officials entrusted with contracting authority, and the Congress bestowing such authority, should be alert to prevent it.
The question before the Court for decision, however, is not whether an arrangement like the one presented for review accords with our conceptions of business morality or with correct administration of the public business. Having made a bargain, the Government should be held to it unless there are valid and appropriate reasons known to the law for relieving it from its obligations. It is the duty and responsibility of the courts, not to re-write contracts according to their own views of what is practical and fair, but to enforce them in accordance with the evidence and recognized principles of law.
In my opinion the elements of duress and coercion have not been established in this case. The doctrine that *311“necessitous men are not free men,” a doctrine evolved by the English courts of chancery in the eighteenth century for the protection of harassed debtors,1 is not applicable to the Government of the United States, armed as it is with both an actual and a potential arsenal of powers adequate to protect its interests in dealings with private persons.
I am also of opinion that the “bonus for savings” clauses are integral parts of the contracts in question and part of the entire consideration moving to Bethlehem in exchange for its promise to build ships. To characterize these clauses as severable and supported by consideration only if Bethlehem promised to increase its efficiency is ingenious, but requires us to close our eyes to the actualities of the record before us and to ignore fundamental contract law.
Nor can I accept the proposition that the “bonus for savings” clauses are properly interpreted as meaning that Bethlehem was to receive one-half of the “savings” only insofar as Bethlehem could prove that the “savings” were due to its increased efficiency. Such an interpretation, it is true, would prevent Bethlehem from benefiting by reason of purely fortuitous “savings.” However, in the absence, as here, of fraud, mistake, or that overreaching which we label “duress” and “coercion,” contracts should be interpreted as they are written, not as they might or should have been written in the light of after-thought and subsequent experience. The language of the “savings” clauses does not limit Bethlehem’s participation in “savings” to those attributable only to its own efforts. The Master found that “Bethlehem was to participate in savings however earned.” The suggested interpretation, ignoring the language of the contracts and the expressed *312understanding of the parties, gratuitously rewrites the contracts to accord with notions of fairness acquired in the light of subsequent developments.
It is understandable that one may be indignant at Bethlehem’s claim, but such indignation does not justify the distortion of established legal principles to relieve the Government of its approval of a hard bargain. It cannot be left out of consideration that the Government entered into the agreements with full understanding of their terms. Surely there is much to be said in favor of the Government’s standing behind obligations, even though quite onerous, which it incurred with knowledge of the circumstances. The possibility that the Government may be relieved of bargains twenty-four years after agreeing to them is not conducive to mutual trust and confidence between citizens and their government.
The judgment should be affirmed.

 Vernon v. Bethell, 2 Eden 110, 113. And see Wood v. Abrey, 3 Maddock’s Chan. 216; Underhill v. Horwood, 10 Ves. Jr. 209.