Court Opinion

ID: 9691431
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 20:31:45.789907+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:19.550019
License: Public Domain

MADDEN, Judge
(dissenting in part).
I am unable to agree with that part of the Court’s decision which sets off, against the salary lost by the plaintiff by reason of his wrongful dismissal, his earnings in the practice of law during the period that he was kept out of his position. When the Government wrongfully prevents an employee from doing his work, the time that *126this gives the employee is not Government time, in any real sense. It is time which the employee involuntarily has on his hands by reason of the Government’s wrong in refusing to let him use it in serving the Government. So I think the sections of the Judicial Code relating to offsets cited in the Court’s opinion are inapplicable.
The Court holds that the plaintiff was an “officer” of the United States. The Government concedes in its brief that if the plaintiff is allowed to recover, and if he was an “officer,” which it denies, there should be no deduction from his salary for outside earnings. The authorities are numerous and practically unanimous to that effect. They are collected in an annotation in 150 A.L.R. beginning at page 100. There is a considerable dearth of reasoning in the decisions as to why the law should be different for officers than for private employees discharged in breach of contract, or for public employees, not officers, discharged in violation of their rights. It is suggested in People ex rel. Benoit v. Miller, 24 Mich. 458, 9 Am.Rep. 131, that in many cases it would be financially profitable to be excluded from public office, hence it would, in effect, nullify the right to sue if the amount of damages for exclusion could be reduced by outside earnings. But whether a better reason could be suggested for the prevailing rule, or whether it rests upon some innate and inexpressible sense of expediency or of right, I would let the rule stand until someone asked us to change it, and at least tried to give us some reason for initiating the contrary rule.