Court Opinion

ID: 9446903
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:21:01.767482+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:49.421112
License: Public Domain

HUTCHESON, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
Of all the aids to construction of statutes or contracts, the one most likely to swallow up all the other aids, particularly the one which enjoins giving to words their usual, their ordinary, meaning, is the one which, enjoining a liberal construction, overtempts an opinion writer, where there is no restraining authority, to rewrite nearer to his heart’s desire the statute or contract under construction.
It is to be expected, therefore, that my brothers, finding neither authority nor language in the contract in support of their view, that the replacement cost of machinery and equipment rented to the prime contractor and lost by the sinking of the vessel in which it was being carried is within the terms of a Miller Act bond, should lean heavily on the greatly overworked cliche that the Miller Act is highly remedial and it is entitled to a liberal construction and application to properly effectuate the congressional intent to protect those who furnish labor or material to public works.
Confessing that I myself have often drawn comfort in other situations from the same cliche and that I have no objection to its use when it does not result, as it does here, in running a good principle into the ground,1 my objection to its use here is that it converts the surety on a Miller Act bond into a general insurer up to the limits of its bond of all property, without limit as to its value, leased or loaned to the prime contractor when it is lost or destroyed by him with or without his fault. With deference, this is a conversion which the Miller Act does not envisage and provide for and which, in my opinion, is clearly contrary to its intent and purpose to protect laborers and materialmen, a purpose which would be defeated if such persons were required to share the security of an inadequate bond with such bailors.
In addition to objecting to the conclusion of my brothers as come at too easily by the process of a construction which, as used here, is no more than a forced conclusion, I object, as a complete non sequitur and therefore a begging of the question, to the argument that, because the rental of the equipment is covered, the loss of it by sinking is also.
I vigorously dissent, therefore, as completely unwarranted, from the view that the Norfolk Southern case from the Fourth Circuit, holding as this court did in its well reasoned opinion in the Massachusetts Bonding case, infra, that repairs made necessary by the use of equipment on the project were covered by the bond, is authority for the very different holding of the majority here, that the replacement value of property bailed to and lost by the prime contractor was covered by the bond.
Finally, planting myself firmly on what was said and held in the well considered case from this circuit, Massachusetts. *613Bonding & Insurance Co. v. United States for Use of Clarksdale Mach. Co., 5 Cir., 88 F.2d 388, perhaps the leading case in this field, I categorically disagree with the conclusion of the majority that nothing is held or suggested in that case which is contrary to the sweeping addition which is made by the majority to the language of the bond and the statute here.
And now, having unpacked my heart with words as earnest as they are futile, I bring my ineffective disagreement with my erring brothers to a close with the comforting reflection that I have done the best I could to turn them from their way and that the blood of the decision is not on my head.
Rehearing denied; HUTCHESON, Chief Judge, dissenting.

. Cf. what was said and held by a court, of which my brother Tuttle was a member, in Guidry v. New Amsterdam Cas. Co., 252 F.2d 283, at page 235:
“While it is well settled in Louisiana that the statute should be given a liberal construction and the decision of each case must turn upon its own facts, it is equally well settled there that it is for the legislature and not the courts to extend the act and that it is essential to recovery that the plaintiff bring himself within it.”