Court Opinion

ID: 9636969
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:51:07.632984+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:51.742454
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting in part).
I agree that there must be a remand for consideration of possible new statutory defenses. And if the further remand here *734ordered were to supply full findings after a new hearing, I should not have objected in the light of the deficiencies of this record and the admonitions of Kennedy v. Silas Mason Co., 68 S.Ct. 1031; though the missing facts (as to the use of the Greenland base) do seem peculiarly in the knowledge of the defendants and their real principal, the United States- of America, and the same questions did not appear unanswerable in Curtis v. McWilliams Dredging Co., City Ct., 78 N.Y.S.2d 317, 320-322. But the directed remand limits the new findings to be made beyond what I conceive to be proper. My understanding is that the Greenland base was in substantial use sometime before this contract of employment was made.1 And such use, I believe, would in any event include that properly termed “commercial,” though, as applied to a recognized air base for the transportation of supplies, personnel, and everything needed for Europe and the war front, the suggested dichotomy between commercial and military use seems to me fanciful and unreal. This, then, was quite literally the expansion of an already existing air base and hence participating work was within the coverage of the Act.
On this basis I should not draw a nice distinction between reconstruction of a hangar or messhall and the addition of a new one (though apparently not even that distinction would defeat plaintiff, in view of the extensive activities actually performed in Greenland). Involved, in any event, was the- remaking of an air base to fit the disclosed needs. I am bound to admit that certain expressions — though perhaps not the decisions — in our cited cases do suggest further limitations; but the cases cited from the Third, Sixth, and Ninth Circuits seem to me more nearly to reflect the intent of-the Act as interpreted by the Supreme Court. 60 Harv.L.Rev. 154.

 See Col. Bernt Balchen, War below Zero: The Battle for Greenland, 1944, 5, 6, 9, 14, 15, 19, 20; New International 1942 Year Book, 255; New International 1943 Tear Book, 297; Northeast Airlines, Inc., et al., North Atlantic Route Case, 6 CAB 319, June 1, 1945, approved by the President, July 5, 1945; Det Danske Luftfartselskab A/S (Danish Air Lines), Foreign Air Carrier Permit, 6 CAB 799, March 1, 1946, approved by the President, April 2, 1946. See also Executive Agreement of Dec. 16, 1944, between the United States and the Danish Government, effective Jan. 1, 1945, for the mutual use of the Greenland Air Base, 58 Stat. 1458.