Court Opinion

ID: 9419130
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:46:29.506669+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:15.560551
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Frankfurter,
dissenting:
On January 3, 1939, this Court unanimously decided that the “actual damage or injury” caused the lessor through the disaffirmance by the trustees of the New Haven of the lease now in controversy was a provable claim. Connecticut Ry. v. Palmer, 305 U. S. 493. If Congress had intended to rule out the legal provability of a claim for damages arising through the disaffirmance of what remains of a 999-year lease it could easily have done so, instead of providing for proof of the damages flowing from the termination of such an unexpiréd lease. And if, upon the prior consideration of the status of this very lease, this Court had intended to rule that loss due to the disaffirmance of the unexpired term of 969 years is in the nature of things beyond rational proof, it surely would not have taken twelve pages to avoid saying so. Both Congress and this Court have thus sponsored the conviction that proof of some damage is not outside the adjudicatory process.
But what is to be assessed is the value of a terminated long-term lease and not the value of an included short-term. Therefore, neither the decision of the district court nor that of the circuit court of appeals in reversing it seems to me satisfactory. Although the two courts reached contradictory conclusions, their views appear to suffer from the same intrinsic vice. Starting with man’s inability to pierce into a future of 969 years, both courts *563deemed the present value of a leáse running for such a period beyond calculable, forecast. Therefore, Judge Hincks said in effect, when an end is put to the benefits accruing from such a lease, the loss to the lessor cannot be translated into dollars and cents. Judge Patterson, on the other hand, treated the lease as though it were a lease for an ascertainable, included short term,- and deemed eleven years as the limit for sure judgment. Since the lease is not a short-term lease, it is, according to the district court, nothing for purpose of giving rise to damages. Since the lease is for too long a term, we will snip off an included short term as though it were a short-term" lease, concluded the circuit court of appeals.
Both these dispositions result in avoidance, through over-simplification, of an extremely complicated problem 'which Congress has put up to the courts. Since neither the district court nor the circuit court of appeals applied the directions of this Court in Connecticut Ry. v. Palmer, supra, however difficult and subtle they may have been, neither disposition should stand. The case should.be sent back to the district court where an opportunity should be given to make proofs appropriate' to the nature of the problem to be solved, namely, ascertainment on a tough business basis of the damage that sprang into existence from the disaffirmance of the remaining 969-year term rather than from the disaffirmance of a supposed 11-year lease.