Court Opinion

ID: 9447208
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:28:57.794703+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:56.733163
License: Public Domain

RIVES, Chief Judge
(specially concurring) .
As I read Clifford F. MacEvoy Co. v. United States, 1944, 322 U.S. 102, 64 S.Ct. 890, 88 L.Ed. 1163, it held simply that a materialman is not a “subcontractor” within the meaning of the proviso to 40 U.S.C.A. § 270b, which is very different from the issue presented in this case, viz., whether a subcontractor several times removed, a “sub-sub-subcontractor,” is such a “subcontractor.”
While I recognize that the dominant purpose of the Miller Act was to ameliorate certain procedural difficulties in the Heard Act and to permit a more prompt recovery under the payment bond, the legislative history cited in the following part of the MacEvoy opinion compels me to concur with the judgment of affirmance in this case:
“The proviso of Section 2(a), which had no counterpart in the Heard Act, makes clear that the right to bring suit on a payment bond is limited to (1) those materialmen, laborers and subcontractors who deal directly with the prime contractor and (2) those material-men, laborers and sub-subcontractors who, lacking express or implied contractual relationship with the prime contractor, have direct contractual relationship with a subcontractor and who. give the statutory notice of their claims to the prime contractor. To allow those in more remote relationships to recover on the bond would be contrary to the clear language of the proviso and to the expressed will of the framers of the Act.5 Moreover, it would lead to the absurd result of requiring notice from persons in direct contractual relationship with a subcontractor but not from more remote claimants.
322 U.S. 102, 107-108, 64 S.Ct. 890, 894.
Somewhat reluctantly, I concur.

“5 ‘A sub-subcontractor may avail himself of the protection of the bond by giving written notice to the contractor, but that is as far as the bill goes. It is not felt that more remote relationships ought to come within the purview of the bond.’ H.Rep.No. 1263 (74th Cong., 1st Sess.), p. 3.”