Court Opinion

ID: 9452007
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:28:50.938084+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:01.395656
License: Public Domain

DAVIS, Judge
(concurring in the result) :
I do not join in the court’s opinion because, first, of the apparent holding that retention of the equipment involved here would have violated the Espionage Act even if the items were all unclassified, and, second, of the wholly unnecessary reliance on the “use warranty”. I concur in the judgment because the items were in fact classified and, that being so, plaintiff is entitled, under our prior decision in this case, 289 F.2d 651, 153 Ct.Cl. 550 (1961), to recover only what he paid.
I have the gravest doubt that the controlling provision of the Espionage Act (now 18 U.S.C. § 793) could ever apply to surplus materials or equipment which the armed services sold after properly declassifying or failing to classify them. The crucial fact of declassification (or initial failure to classify) would seem to show, in itself, that the purchaser need not fear that he would trespass on the Act by keeping the goods. This is a serious criminal provision and we must be very cautious in extending it to surplus items which the public (including the purchaser) has been told, in effect, by the Defense Department need not be kept from unfriendly hands and eyes but may be revealed to all.
It is unnecessary, however, to decide that point since the equipment here was actually classified (as the court also holds, correctly but alternatively). The trial commissioner has found the items classified and I see no adequate reason for rejecting that factual conclusion. Plaintiff has made much of a listing (“46ACX”) said to show that one of the major pieces of equipment was unclassified, but I am not at all persuaded that this listing applied to any of the goods involved in this case. There is no testimony to that effect; there are apparent divergences from the particular equipment before us; and there is considerable affirmative testimony that the items sold to plaintiff were in fact classified and never removed from that category.
As for the “use warranty”, our earlier decision must have decided that that clause was inapplicable — the issue was distinctly raised at that time, see 289 F.2d at 653, 153 Ct.Cl. at 553 — since the court held, implicitly, that if the equip*944ment did not relate to the national defense the plaintiff could receive market value, not merely his expenditures. If the “use warranty” limited recovery, whatever the event, to the plaintiff’s costs (which the defendant was even then willing to pay), there would be no need for an elaborate trial; the case could and would have been disposed of by summary judgment five years ago in 1961. Under the law of the case, therefore, the “use warranty” is irrelevant. It is also irrelevant becauses the court specifically held in 1961, without any reliance on the “use warranty”, that, if the property turned out to be related to national defense (within the meaning of the Espionage Act), the plaintiff was entitled to “a refund of his direct out-of-pocket expenditures in the abortive transaction.” 289 F.2d at 655, 153 Ct.Cl. at 556. That is exactly what the court awards today.