Court Opinion

ID: 96630
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2010-04-28 16:41:37+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:50:30.004123
License: Public Domain

205 U.S. 161 (1907)
UNITED STATES
v.
MITCHELL.
No. 180.
Supreme Court of United States.
Argued January 25, 1907.
Decided March 18, 1907.
APPEAL FROM THE COURT OF CLAIMS.
*165 Mr. Assistant Attorney General Van Orsdel, with whom Mr. George M. Anderson was on the brief, for appellant.
Mr. George A. King, with whom Mr. William B. King and Mr. Clark McKercher were on the brief, for appellee.
*168 MR. CHIEF JUSTICE FULLER, after making the foregoing statement, delivered the opinion of the court.
It is conceded by the Government that claimant is entitled to extra pay, so that the question is to what amount. Was he entitled to receive one month's extra pay of a captain of cavalry mounted ($166.66) or one month's extra pay of a second lieutenant of cavalry mounted ($125)?
We lay out of view the suggestion that if claimant were entitled to the extra pay of a second lieutenant of cavalry only, then that a certain sum or sums ought to be deducted as having been previously improvidently paid by the Auditor for the War Department. The United States filed no set-off or counterclaim, and we think we cannot overhaul the allowance by the Auditor for the War Department in the circumstances. Such payment, if made in error, did not determine the question before us within United States v. Hite, 204 U.S. 343.
The claim is made under section 7 of the act of April 26, 1898, 30 Stat. 364, 365, c. 191, reading as follows: "That in time of war every officer serving with troops operating against an enemy who shall exercise, under assignment in orders issued by competent authority, a command above that pertaining to his grade, shall be entitled to receive the pay and allowances of the grade appropriate to the command so exercised."
The main question is whether claimant exercised, "under assignment in orders issued by competent authority, a command above that pertaining to his grade?" When he assumed command of his company, August 26, 1898, he was the senior officer present, the captain and the first lieutenant being absent. Section 253 of the Army Regulations of 1895, then in force, provided: "In the absence of its captain, the command of a company devolves upon the subaltern next in rank who is serving with it, unless otherwise specially directed."
*169 This embodied the rule of succession by seniority prevailing in the ordinary course of military affairs, while, at the same time, it recognized that there might be exceptions, in respect of which special direction was required, and section 7 of the act of April 26, 1898, applied to such cases.
The exceptions spring from necessity, and where it is apparent that that does not exist, orders relied on as the basis for increased pay under section 7 are ineffectual for that purpose.
In Humphreys v. United States, 38 C. Cl. 689, the Court of Claims held that what the law contemplated was "necessary and not gratuitous assignments, and only such as would be for the good of the service and the vigorous prosecution of the war." Chief Justice Nott, speaking for the court, said: "It seems to the court incontrovertible that the words `under assignment in orders issued by competent authority' constitute the controlling limitation of the statute; and the limitation implies that the benefits of the statute extend only to cases where such an order is necessary to impose the burden of the higher command upon an officer." We concur in that view, and tested by it, Special Orders No. 44, dated August 24, 1898, whereby the lieutenant colonel of the First Ohio Volunteer Cavalry announced that First Lieutenant Forsyth was relieved of the command of troop E, and, as incident there to, that Second Lieutenant Mitchell was appointed to the command, cannot be considered as an "assignment in orders issued by competent authority," within section 7. That section was not enacted to give increased pay for the discharge of the ordinary duties of the service, but to give compensation for the greater risk and responsibility of active military command, and no assignment in orders when unnecessary to that end can make a case within the statute. Truitt v. United States, 38 C. Cl. 398, 406; Parker v. United States, 1 Pet. 293, 297. Here the additional duties discharged by Lieutenant Mitchell were "the ordinary incidental duties of military official life which go with such officer's commission." 38 C. Cl. 692.
*170 The attempted confirmation by Special Orders No. 97 must fail of effect under section 7 for like reasons.
Other questions argued at the bar need not be discussed.
Judgment reversed and cause remanded, with a direction to enter judgment in favor of claimant for $125.