Case: Hiram K. Hazlett v. The United States
Abbreviation: Hazlett v. United States
Decision Date: 1880-12
Docket Number: 
Citation: 16 Ct. Cl. 450
Volume: 16
Reporter: United States Court of Claims Reports
Court: United States Court of Claims
Jurisdiction: United States
Parties: Hiram K. Hazlett v. The United States.
Judges: 
Pages: 450–459

Head Matter:
Hiram K. Hazlett v. The United States.
On the Proofs.
The contract in suit hinds the contractor to transport such military, Indian, and government stores, $-c., as shall he turned over to him hy “the ofiicers or agents of the Quartermaster’s Department.” Indian supplies we turned over to him hy the Quartermaster Department. These he transports and is paid therefor, and ultimately the Interior Department refunds to the War Department the cost of transportation. But the great mass of Indian supplies is transported hy the contractors of the Indian Bweau over the claimant’s route amd within the life of his contract.
I. 'Where the Quartermaster Department enters into a contract, the subject-matter of -which is the transportation of “ such military, Indian, and government stores" as may Returned overto the contractor for transportation “hy the officers or agents of the Quartermaster Department," the contractor is not bound to transport and has no right to the transportation of Indian stores which are not in the custody of the Quartermaster Department.
II. Upon no principle of interpretation can a contract be extended from matters within the jurisdiction and control of the department of the government which made it to matters over which that department has no control and which by law are confided to the administration of another.
The Reporters’ statement of the case:
So much of the contract as is necessary to an understanding of the case will be found in the opinion. The following are tlie facts as found by the court:
I. General D. H. Rucker, assistant quartermaster-general United States Army and chief quartermaster Military Division of the Missoiu'i, by order of the Quartermaster-Gen eral of the United States Army, advertised tliatproposals would be received at bis office, Chicago, 111., till 12 m., Tuesday, February 1,1870, for the transportation of government troops, military, government, and Indian supplies between certain points named on the Missouri River, during the time from March 20, 1870, to October 31, 1870.
The claimant submitted proposals in answer to said advertisement of General Rucker for the transportation on the Missouri River, which, with other bid's, were forwarded to the Quartermaster-General of the United States Army, and under instructions from him the contract ivas made with the claimant, which is annexed to and forms part of the petition.
The contract was approved by the Lieutenant-General commanding the said military division and by the Quartermaster-General.
II. The claimant entered upon the performance on his part without delay, and ivas prepared to execute, and did execute when so requested, all the duties devolved by the contract upon him, and transported large quantities of military and other supplies, for which he was duly paid by the defendants officers.
III. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs did, on the 26th day of September, 1870, enter into a written contract, without advertisement, with the Northwest Transportation Company, at higher rates than the claimant’s contract, by which it was agreed that the defendants should deliver to them all the Indian stores and supplies to be transported as they should require over the same route, to and from the same posts and agencies within the said military division for the year 1870 j and the officers of the Indian Bureau did, from and after the 12th day of September, deliver to the said company the greater part of the said Indian stores and supplies which they required to have transported to and from the said different posts and agencies, and refused to give such Indian stores and supplies to the said claimant, to be by him transported under the contract with him during the time from March 20 to October 31,1870, at which refusal of the officers of the Indian Bureau the claimant duly protested.
IV. The Indian stores and supplies transported by the said Northwest Transportation Company during the time of said contract, from March 20 to October 31, 1870, amounted to 3,723,728 pounds, wbicb tbe claimant offered to transport but was not permitted to transport, wbicb would bave entitled bim todemand and receivefortbe transportation of tbe same, under Ms contract, tbe sum of $120,730.58.
V. Tbe claimant had made great outlay in preparing to do tbe said transportation during tbe time from March 20 to October 31, 1870, and be was fully prepared to do tbe same in all respects in compliance with bis contract.
YI. If tbe claimant bad been permitted to do tbe said transportation upon tbe terms and conditions stipulated by bis said contract, be would bave realized a largo profit therefrom, to wit,, after deducting from tbe contract price wbat it would bave cost tbe claimant to perform by transporting said goods, and also a reasonable sum for bis release from tbe care, trouble, responsibility, and risk of performing, be would have realized as profit tbe sum of $80,548.
YII. It does not appear that cither tbe Commissioner of Indian Affairs or tbe Secretary of tbe Interior had actual knowledge of tbe fact that tbe contract in suit existed with tbe claimant relating to tbe transportation of Indian stores and supifiies by or through tbe officers of tbe Quartermaster Department; nor did they expressly authorize General Rucker to enter into a contract for tbe transportation of Indian stores or supplies; nor did they ratify such contract, unless its ratification be implied from tbe following facts and circumstances:
Tbe Indian Bureau directed that two lots of Indian supplies be forwarded in April and May, 1870, amounting to 221,242 pounds; which was accordingly done by Quartermasters Gil-liss and Fury at Sioux City, Iowa, turning them over to tbe claimant for transportation, and they were by Mm transported (under bis contract with tbe Quartermaster Department to include tbe transportation of tbe Indian supplies) to Whetstone andBig Cheyenne Agencies, and tbe Indian Bureau reimbursed tbe War Department for this transportation.
Tbe Commissioner of Indian Affairs and tbe Secretary of tbe Interior directed tbe Secretary of War, June 21, 1870, to turn over tbe Army subsistence stores collected at tbe instance of tbe Commissioner of Indian Aifairs for tbe Indians at Forts Rice, Stevenson, Buford, and Shaw to tbe Indian agents at tbe Grand River and Fort Bertliold Agencies, and that tbe cost of transporting tbe stores from the forts to the agencies would be paid by the Indian Bureau.
The claimant transported, September 27,1870, 82,720 pounds of Indian stores and supplies from Fort Bice to Grand Biver Agency, for which he was paid accordingly.
VIII. The contract in suit was duly filed in the returns office of the Department of the Interior the 12th March, 1870.
Mr. T. H. V. McPherson for the claimant:
There is a distinction in the books between public and private agents on the point of personal responsibility. If an agent on behalf of government makes a contract and describes himself as such, he is not personally bound, even though the terms of the contract be such as might in case of a private nature involve him in a personal obligation. (Hodgson v. Dexler, 1 Or., 345; 2 Kent, 633, and the numerous authorities cited.) An adoption of the agency in one part, with a knowledge of all tbe circumstances, operates as an adoption of the whole act, for an act cannot be affirmed as to so much as is beneficial and rejected as to the remainder. (2 Kent, 633; 2 Str., 859; 1 Parsons on Contracts, 51, 52, and the authorities cited.)
It may be generally stated that whenever an agent having proper authority makes a contract for or on behalf of his principal, that contract becomes obligatory on the principal, and the other contracting party has ordinarily the same rights and the same remedies against the principal as if he had personally made the contract. (Story on Agency, § 442, and the authorities cited; Paley on Agency (Lloyd), 343, 347; 2 Kent, 629, 630.)
The principal is bound by the acts and contracts of his agent, done with his consent or by his authority, or adopted by his ratification. (Story on Agency, § 418, and authorities cited; Paley on Agency (Lloyd), 324.)
And the rules of law that a subsequent ratification of an act done as agent is equal to a prior authority are so well understood as to require no more than a mere statement of them. And it is equally well settled that the law upon this subject applies to the act of the sovereign ratifying the act of its officers. (Buron v. Dcnnum, 2 Exchequer, 188; Secretary of State of India v. Sahaba, 13 Moore’s P. O. C., 22; Fremont v. The United, States, 2 O. Gls. B., 476; Beeside v. United States (ib., 29); Udell v. Atherton, 7 H. & Nor., 184.)
If an agent makes a contract on behalf of his principal, whether with or without authority, the principal cannot appro-bate and reprobate the contract. He must adopt it altogether or not at all; he cannot at the same time take the benefit which it confers and repudiate the obligation which it imposes. (Bris-tow v. Whitmore, 9 House of Lords, 0., 418, per Lord Kings-down; Brown v. United States (6 O. 01s. B., 171, 197, 199.)
Where a public officer is held out as having authority to do an act, or is empowered in his capacity as a public, officer or agent to make the declaration or representation for the government, and which is z'elied on as the ground of relief, the government is bound by the acts and declarations of the agent. (Lee v. Monroe, 7 Oranch, 366, 368; Story Agency, § 307, a., 12 O. Gis. B., 24, 25.
When the claimant contracted with the authorized agent of the defendants, according to law, to transport their stores, supplies, &c., which was subsequently ratified by the defendants, it is binding on them during the lifetime of the contract to deliver all the class of stores and supplies stipulated for in the contract which they required transportation for, unless upon failure of the claimant to perform his part of the contract, which does not appear. The defendants were bound to deliver to the claimant all the said Indian supplies agreeably to the provisions of the contract, and upon failure to do so they became liable for damages for the breach of the contract to the extent which it would have cost to transport the said Indian supplies under the contract which were delivered by the defendants to the Northwest Transportation Company during the time of the claimant’s contract, less the cost of transportation of the same. It cannot be maintained or established that the Quartermaster’s Department, the authorized agent of the defendants, had no authority to make a contract with the claimant for the transportation of the supplies of the Indian Department.
The argument that one department of the government has no concern with the business of another department has no application or force in this case, where both departments derive their authorityfrom the defendants, as principal, and especially where there is no law to prevent one agent or department of the government accepting or taking advantage of a contract made by another agent or department of the government, when the latter department, in the language of the Secretary of War, “through the existing arrangements of the Quartermaster» Department is able to transport at less cost and with greater promptness and certainty than any other means at the command of the Indian Department.”
The fact that the Indian Office reimbursed the War Department for moneys paid the claimant for transporting Indian supplies under Quartermaster’s Department contract with the claimant made to include the transportation of the Indian supplies is a ratification of the contract by the Indian Bureau.
Mr. Assistant Attorney-General Simons for the defendants:
The claimant understood that it would be judicially noticed ■that to contract for transportation of Indian supplies was not within the lawful authority of a quartermaster, and that it was necessary to show by what especial authority this quartermaster assumed to so contract for defendants. He therefore avers that the contract “ was authorized by the concurrent action thereto of the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary-of War.” This, it is contended, he entirely fails to prove, and so to maintain his action.
Nothing can be plainer than that G-eneral Bucher was not authorized to enter into any contract for transportation of Indian supplies, but, on the contrary, was explicitly directed to forward such stores as should be turned over to the Quartermaster’s Department for transportation (which, as has been shown, included food only) under existing contracts for the transportation of military stores and supplies, and which direction exactly conformed with the proposition made and accepted between the two departments.
It is undeniable that no such contract as this is in effect claimed to be was ever contemplated by either department. The Indian Bureau is charged by law, under the Secretary of ■the Interior, with the duty of contracting for the purchase and transportation if Indian supplies of all kinds under the'several .annual appropriations therefor, and the court will take notice that its ordinary and regular course of action is and has been to make annually contracts for those purposes in pursuance of the law. But the arrangement above mentioned sprang out of a special and extraordinary appropriation made under peculiar circumstances, which, sufficiently appear from the act and correspondence of the parties. • The Indian Bureau had in view a specific object, namely, to malee some arrangement to feed certain of the Indians during the fiscal year beginning July 1, 1869, for which this $2,000,000 appropriation was made from that fund; and as the War Department was already in charge of and feeding them, it was a natural plan to use that agency so far as possible to accomplish that particular object, and not otherwise. Consequently the Indian Bureau properly went on making its usual contracts in the matter of all Indian supplies, with only this special exception.
But if for.any reason it is thought that General Rucker,, under his instructions, had authority to contract thereafter, it still follows that the contract which he made is to be construed and governed by the terms of the original compact under which he was bound to act.
That, as has been shown, was a purely interdepartmental arrangement, by which the War Department undertook to buy and transport an extra quantity of rations by its own machinery of officers and contracts, and deliver the same at such points as should be designated by the Indian Bureau for its account. It was competent for that bureau to purchase of the War Department rations deliverable at certain posts and agencies, and the rations were not properly Indian supplies until received as such. General Rucker had no authority, therefore, to contract for the transportation of such rations as Indian stores or supplies, and a fortiori he could not make a contract for transportation of all Indian supplies in usurpation of the rights and powers of the Indian Bureau.

Opinion:
Nott, J.,
delivered the opinion of the court:
This action was brought in April, 1876; a number of depositions have been taken by the claimant; the executive departments have been subjected to the expense and trouble of furnishing a cumbrous mass of documents; and the case comes to a hearing upon a bulky printed record of more than 200 pages. Yet, it is manifest that there is no issue of fact between the parties; that the whole controversy is to be found in one or two questions of law, and that the case might have been determined as well upon demurrer.
The court takes this opportunity to express its regret at the needless expense and needless delay which in many cases embarrass rather than aid the administration of justice, and it expresses this regret the more freely in the present case because the unnecessary burden has been borne by both parties. If' the petition here had been made definite and certain, as it might have been on motion, and if the defendants had then demurred to it, with a reservation as to the assessment of damages should the case be determined against them, the entire controversy might have been intelligently considered five years ago, and much labor and expense have been saved.
The controversy in this case primarily depends upon the construction which should be given to a single article of the contract in suit. That contract was made by an officer of the Quartermaster Department $ and the article referred to, so far-as it needs construing, is in these words:
"Aiíticle I. That the said Hiram K. Hazlett shall furnish all the steamboat transportation required by the United States Government for officers and soldiers on the Missouri Eiver at any time from March 20, 1870, to October 31, 1870, and shall receive at any time during said period from the officers or agents of the Quartermaster Department all such military, Indian, and government stores, supplies, wagons, and stock as may be offered or turned over to him for transportation, in good order and condition, by said officers or agents of the Quartermaster Department, and transport the same with dispatch, and deliver them in like good order and condition to the officer or agent of the Quartermaster Department designated to receive them."
Of this article of the contract, the claimant maintains:
1st. That it casts a reciprocal obligation upon the defendants, and binds them to furnish exclusively to the claimant for transportation all of the material which it binds him to transport.
2d. That it extends to all Indian supplies whatsoever for which the government might need transportation over the designated route during the designated period; and, hence, that it was a breach for the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to transport supplies by his own contractors, and that for such breach; tbe claimant is entitled to recover tlie profits which he would have made if permitted to perform.
As to the first proposition, we are not disposed to doubt that the contract comes within the decision of the Supreme Court in Speed's Case., (8 Wall., 77), and is not to be determined by the decision of the court of Queen's Bench in Churchward v. The Queen (1 L. It. Q. B., 173), and we are not unmindful that the Supreme Court has intimated, of a similar transportation contract, almost identical in terms, that the government would be responsible in damages if it had sent through other parties those supplies which it could compel the claimant to carry under his contract. (Caldwell's Case, 19 Wall., 264, 270.)
As to the second proposition it seems clear — it indeed seems to us too plain for discussion — that the contract only required the claimant to "receive" Indian supplies from " the officers or agents of the Quartermaster Department," and only required him to "transport" such as should be turned over to him "by said officers or agents of the Quartermaster Department." The contract does not extend in terms to Indian supplies in the custody and possession of any other bureau or department of the government, and upon no principle of interpretation can its subject-matter be extended from matters within the jurisdiction and control of the department which made it to matters over which that department had no control, and which by law are confided to the administration of another bureau. In the contemplation of the contract the claimant was bound to transport such goods as should be turned over to him by the Quartermaster Department, and he was not bound to transport goods which the Quartermaster Department idid not turn over to him; conversely he had a right to transport such goods as came to the official care and custody of the Quartermaster Department, and he had no right to the transportation of goods which were never in the custody of the Quartermaster Department, over which it had no legal control, and of the existence of which in contemplation of law it had neither knowledge nor responsibility. When the parties entered into this contract both knew that there would be government supplies coming to the official care and custody of the Quartermaster Department for which it would require river transportation, and that there would be other government supplies which would never come to the actual or official custody of the Quartermaster Department, over which it could exercise no legal control, and for which it could require no transportation. The contract referred to the former; the present action relates to the latter. In our opinion the defendants have been guilty of no breach, and the claimant has suffered no damages.
It is proper to add that the defendants have produced a large mass of official correspondence tending to show that General Bueker's authority in making a contract for the transportation of Indian supplies was limited to certain supplies specially appropriated for by the Aet 10 April, 1869 (16 Stat. L., 40, ch. 16, § 4); and that the claimant's counsel has submitted an elaborate argument to establish an implied ratification of the contract growing out of the action of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in authorizing the transportation of Indian supplies by the Quartermaster Department. But as, in the opinion of the court, the contract did not extend to supplies transported by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, it is needless to examine those questions.
The judgment of the court is that the petition be dismissed.