Court Opinion

ID: 9463153
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:59:25.016005+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:57.272430
License: Public Domain

SWEIGERT, District Judge
(concurring):
I concur with Judge Sneed’s result mainly upon the ground set forth in Part II of his opinion.
In Bell v. United States, 366 U.S. 393, 81 S.Ct. 1230, 6 L.Ed.2d 365 (1961), the Su*1113preme Court pointed out that “[Cjommonlaw rules governing private contracts have no place in the area of military pay . [a] soldier’s entitlement to pay is dependent upon statutory right.” (Id. at 401, 81 S.Ct. at 1235). Quoting from In re Grimley, 137 U.S. 147, 151, 11 S.Ct. 54, 34 L.Ed. 636 (1890), the Supreme Court in Bell explained that this is so because, although enlistment is a contract, “[I]t is one of those contracts which changes the status; and, where that is changed, no breach of the contract destroys the new status or relieves from the obligations which its existence imposes” (366 U.S. at 402, 81 S.Ct. at 1235) — a drastic rule but one that may be justified by national defense considerations affecting the unique relationship between soldiers and their government.
In Carini v. United States, 528 F.2d 738 (4th Cir. 1975), the Fourth Circuit pointed out that even the plaintiffs before it conceded that the monthly salary they received was not fixed at the rates in effect at the time of the enlistment contracts and concluded from the above-quoted language of Bell that an enlistee’s monthly salary is “subject to the unfettered control of the Congress”. (Id. at 401, 81 S.Ct. 1230).
In Larionoff v. United States, 533 F.2d 1167 (4th Cir. February 17, 1976), petition for rehearing denied, 533 F.2d 1188 (April 21, and 29, 1976), the D.C. Circuit, referring to the government’s contention that enlistment documents must be construed to incorporate, not only the statutes in force at the time the agreement is signed, but future changes in those statutes as well, stated that “[T]he Government’s point on this issue is certainly accurate as to regular pay for enlistees . . . ” (Id. at 1190), indicating, as I read their opinion, a concession that regular pay of enlistees could be changed (up or down or, for that matter, abolished) by Congress during the enlistment term without releasing the soldier from his obligation to complete the terms.
If it be the law that even a soldier’s basic pay is subject to change or even elimination without changing his status as a soldier, then I have no difficulty in agreeing with the Fourth Circuit in Carini that special incentive pay in the form of a variable reenlistment bonus, which falls well within the definition of pay as broadly defined in 37 U.S.C. 101(21), is no less subject to the same drastic Congressional control during the term of enlistment than is regular pay.
If we misconstrue Bell, it will be for the Supreme Court to make the correction.
The only Supreme Court case cited to the contrary of Bell and Carini, is Lynch v. United States, 292 U.S. 571, 54 S.Ct. 641, 78 L.Ed. 1474 (1934). The difficulty with the citation of Lynch is that Lynch involved, not army enlistments, but war risk insurance policies under a 1917 Act which had been repealed by the Congress in 1933. The Supreme Court specifically distinguished such insurance policies from pensions and compensation allowances which are gratuities creating no vested right. (292 U.S. at 597, 54 S.Ct. 641.)
If the basic law governing army enlistment pay is as stated in Bell and Carini, it follows that statutory reduction or abrogation of the variable reenlistment bonus here involved was something that reenlistment soldiers must be held to have anticipated during their enlistment period — however mistaken and disappointed their expectations.
In this view of the ápplicable law, the actual language of the reenlistment contract is not determinative of the issue presented. However, even that language (as Judge Sneed points out) does not militate against the conclusions I reach mainly upon another ground.