United States v. Hendee
| Decision Date | 23 January 1888 |
| Citation | 124 U.S. 309,31 L.Ed. 465,8 S.Ct. 507 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES v. HENDEE |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
[Statement of Case from pages 309-312 intentionally omitted] Atty. Gen. Garland, Asst. Atty. Gen. Howard, and F. P. Dewees, for appellant.
John Paul Jones and Robert B. Lines, for appellee.
George E. Hendee brought suit in the court of claims for compensation as a pay-master in the navy beyond what he had been allowed and paid for his services. He recovered a judgment in that court for the sum of $8,178.01, of which $6,313.77 was not disputed. The disposition of the remainder, of $1,864.24, depends upon whether the period of time from October 10, 1861, to November 30, 1862, during which he served as a pay-master's clerk, should be counted for the purpose of increasing his salary under the longevity provisions of the statutes. This amount the accounting officer refused to allow, upon the ground that a pay-master's clerk is neither an officer nor an enlisted man in the navy, and as a consequence the time of an officer who has been such a clerk is not entitled to be computed under the provisions of the act of March 3, 1883, on that subject. That statute provides as follows: 'And all officers of the navy shall be credited with the actual time they may have served as officers or enlisted man in the regular or volunteer army or navy, or both, and shall receive all the benefits of such actual service in all respects in the same manner as if all said service had been continuous and in the regular navy in the lowest grade having graduated pay held by such officer since last entering the service.' 22 U. S. St. at Large, 473. In the opinion of the chief justice, rendered in the court of claims, the single issue raised is the question of law whether or not a pay-master's clerk is an officer of the navy within the meaning of said act.
We have just decided, in the case of U. S. v. Mouat, ante, 505, that a paymaster's clerk is not, in the constitutional sense of the word, an officer of the United States; but we added also that congress may have used the word 'officer' in a less strict sense in some other connections, and in the passage of certain statutes might have intended a more popular signification to be given to that term. And in regard to the act of 1883, we think that its proper construction requires that the officer, when subsequently coming to compute what increase shall be made to his statutory salary by reason of his previous service, has a right to count other service than that rendered in the character of an officer, as defined by the constitution of the United States. Its language is, that 'all officers of the navy shall be credited with the actual time they may have served as officers or enlisted men.'
The claimant here is an officer of the navy, and is therefore to be credited with the actual time that he served as an officer or enlisted man in the regular or volunteer army or...
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