Case: WILLIAM FRYE WHITE, RECEIVER, v. THE UNITED STATES
Abbreviation: White v. United States
Decision Date: 1915-10
Docket Number: 
Citation: 51 Ct. Cl. 492
Volume: 51
Reporter: United States Court of Claims Reports
Court: Supreme Court of the United States
Jurisdiction: United States
Parties: WILLIAM FRYE WHITE, RECEIVER, v. THE UNITED STATES.
Judges: 
Pages: 492–493

Head Matter:
WILLIAM FRYE WHITE, RECEIVER, v. THE UNITED STATES.
[48 C. Cls. R., 169; 241 U. S. R., 149.]
The contract in this case relates to a filtration plant in the District of Columbia. The claimant contracts to build certain embankments and to fill in earth “ and all other fills and embankments shown by the plan or directed to be made by the engineer officer in charge.” The contractor is not ordered to build a roadway, but the engineers from time to time furnish him with lines showing the direction of the road and stakes showing the grade. The work is done under their inspection. Vouchers for it are given and he is paid about $12,000 on account of work done on said roadway and on estimates made by the Government engineers. It is then held that the Government was not liable under the contract for building the road, and in the final settlement the $12,000 previously paid is deducted and withheld.
The court below decides:
Where the provision in a contract for filling in earth is specific in character, it excludes every other kind of filling unless there be some clearly shown by specifications.
It is a well-settled rule that when there is a conflict between the contract and the specifications, the contract must govern; but if the deduction from the contract is only by inference and the specifications are clear and beyond question a different rule will prevail.
In this case the court compares the contract and the specifications and holds that though different in form they have a common object, and that no conflict exists between them.
Where a contractor was not required or authorized by the contract to construct a roadway, but did so with his waste material, which he had to dispose of; and he would have been compelled to pay for a place to deposit it on if he had not been allowed to construct the roadway with it, his doing so must be regarded as enjoyment of a privilege and not as work done under an implied contract. The officers of the Government who permitted it were justified in overseeing and directing the work to the end that it should not interfere with the general plan of the project.
The allowance for a time by the engineers in charge of this work as work to be paid for is not a practical construction of the contract, if it was, during the progress of the work, reversed. The rule prevails only where the contract is susceptible of more than one interpretation.
Where the work was voluntarily done by a party without authority, he can not recover upon quantum meruit if the work involved no extra expense to himself.
The decision of the court below is reversed.

Opinion:
Mr. Justice McKenna
delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court May 1,1916.