Court Opinion

ID: 9664052
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:01:00.429178+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:01.676590
License: Public Domain

MADDEN, Judge
(dissenting).
I do not agree with the Court’s decision. The plaintiff contends that paragraph 6 of the contract gave it the right to add the O.P.A. increases to its bid prices. I think that, in the circumstances in which the contract was made, it did give the plaintiff that right. The plaintiff inquired whether paragraph 6 authorized such an adjustment and was told by the Chairman of the Board of Awards, who was speaking for the Government, that it did. The minds of the parties met on that basis, and the formal contract was later executed, still on that basis. The fact that the Chairman further said that “if any question came up in the future, if they wanted information about which we didn’t have, we’d submit the question to Washington for decision” seems irrelevant. The plaintiff had no question, and no duty to raise any question. He was satisfied with the interpretation placed upon the language of the contract by the other party to the contract.
The Comptroller General of the United States, in his denial of the plaintiff’s claim quoted in our finding 6, said: “In determining thé intention of the parties to a written contract, the question is not what intention may have existed in the minds of the parties, but what intention is expressed by them in language used in the writing.” I think that to make this statement correct ‘ as a statement of the law applicable to a specific case, in which both parties intended the same thing, the language used would have to be very plain and unambiguous, certainly much more so than the language of para*310graph 6 here in question. And even if the language used were perfectly plain and unambiguous, and the parties through mutual ignorance of the meaning of plain language said what neither one meant, the -contract would be reformed to express their agreed meaning.
Paragraph 6 is not a statute. It is, in any particular case such as this, merely the language which parties have used in making a contract. If it has a plain meaning to some one “in Washington”, it obviously did not have that plain meaning to this plaintiff dairyman in Kentucky, because he inquired what it meant. And it meant plainly to the Government Agent w-ho had been stationed in Kentucky to, inter alia, make contracts for the Government, the very opposite of what it was later said to mean “in Washington”. All of this seems to me to show that it was at least ambiguous enough to mean what the parties agreed that it meant, viz., that if prices were increased by the O.P.A. and the plaintiff paid those increases, its bid pri-ces to the Government would be increased accordingly.
The Government urges that, under the provisions of Veterans’ Administration Regulations Ml 1-200, the plaintiff could not have withdrawn his bid if he had received an adverse answer to his inquiry as to the meaning of paragraph 6, hence he was not misled by the favorable answer which he did receive, and hence cannot -have the advantage of it.
The law of contracts is that an offer not under seal, and not made for a consideration, is revocable until it is accepted. The Government frequently requires irrevocable bids, their irrevocability being guaranteed by a bid bond. In this case there was no such requirement. It is not explained to us how Regulations Ml 1-200 would be binding upon the plaintiff, a dairyman in Kentucky who had never -heard of them. Even if they were, they would not change the meaning of the language of a contract made by parties who were in complete agreement as to its meaning.
The Court’s conclusion is -based upon the proposition that the Chairman of the Board of Awards was not shown to have been given authority to alter the language of paragraph 6. He did not, of course, alter or purport to alter it. He only stated what it meant. Someone was required to say what the Government meant by language which it used which did not have a plain meaning. If the Government man with the imposing title, Chairman of the Board of Awards, did not even have authority to tell a milkman what certain words in a contract which he was sitting to award meant, he constituted a trap for the plaintiff and caught him. If his role was to say nothing, because he didn’t know enough to talk, he should have been told to keep quiet and not entrap innocent citizens.
The cases relied on in the Court’s opinion are not apposite. In Hawkins v. United States, 96 U.S. 689, 24 L.Ed. 607, the plaintiff’s claim rested upon an attempted clear variation of the contract by a subordinate official, when the contract expressly provided that it could not be varied except with the written consent of the Secretary of the Treasury. In Federal Crop Insurance Corporation v. Merrill, 332 U.S. 380, 68 S.Ct. 1, 92 L.Ed. 10, 17S A.L.R. 1075, the plaintiff sued upon a crop insurance policy, the acceptance of the application for which had expressly stated that it was made subject to the regulations of the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation.1 The regulations, published in the Federal Register and having the force of law, made the plaintiff’s crop uninsurable. In Munro v. United States, 303 U.S. 36, 58 'SJCt. 421, 82 L.Ed. 633, the plaintiff, relying upon a statement by the United States District Attorney, neglected to file his petition until after his claim was barred by the statute of limitations.
Of course none of these cases lends any support to a holding that -an agent authorized by t-he Government to invite bids and award contracts, does not have authority to. explain to lay bidders the meaning of non-statutory, ambiguous language in the proposed contract. If that is the law, another uncertainty is added to the status of a contractor with • the ■ Government, for which added uncertainty the Government will, of' course, pay dearly in the long run in the-additions which bidders must make to otherwise fair prices as insurance against un*311anticipated interpretations of their contracts.
The Court does not find that the contracting officer intended the words in question to mean anything different from what the Chairman of the Board of Awards told the plaintiff they meant. It is hard to imagine anything more irrelevant than the Court’s statement that the words would have meant something different to a lawyer. The only man who spoke for the Government must not have been a lawyer, since he did not read the words as the Court says a lawyer would have read them. The plaintiff was a milkman.
The Government should treat its citizens fairly. It has not done so in this case.
JONES, Chief Judge, agrees with this dissent.