Clark v. United States

• Decision Date: 01 October 1878
• Citation: 25 L.Ed. 481,99 U.S. 493
• Parties: CLARK v. UNITED STATES
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

99 U.S. 493

25 L.Ed. 481

CLARK v. UNITED STATES.

October Term, 1878

APPEAL from the Court of Claims.

The facts are stated in the opinion of the court.

Mr. Matt. H. Carpenter and Mr. John J. Weed for the appellant.

Mr. Assistant Attorney-General Smith, contra.

MR. JUSTICE SWAYNE delivered the opinion of the court.

This is an appeal from the Court of Claims. The facts of the case cannot be more clearly or compactly stated than they are presented in the findings of the court.

The findings are as follows:——

'In July and August, 1865, the petitioners, James S. Clark and Edward Fulton, were merchants and copartners doing business at New Orleans, under the firm name and style of J. S. Clark & Co., and Joseph C. Palmer was a merchant at Mobile.

'In said July and August the petitioners were the owners jointly of nine hundred bales of cotton, which arrived at Mobile in the last part of said July or the first part of said August, consigned by them to T. C. A. Dexter, supervising special agent of the Treasury Department for the department of Alabama.

'At the times above stated the government had charge of the railroads, and the cotton was consigned to Mr. Dexter to facilitate its arrival at Mobile, and on its arrival there it was claimed of him by the petitioners.

'In August, 1865, Mr. Dexter having received orders from the Treasury Department to ship all the cotton received by him, shipped the said nine hundred bales to New York, where it arrived and was sold by the United States, and the net proceeds thereof, amounting to $127,350, were paid into the treasury.

'The said Clark and Fulton resided in New Orleans, and said Palmer in Mobile, during the whole rebellion, and this petition was filed March 27, 1872.'

The United States rely upon two defences:——

1. That the petitioners did not, within two years after the suppression of the rebellion, prefer their claim in the Court of Claims.

This limitation is prescribed by the 'Act for the collection of abandoned property, and for the prevention of frauds in the insurrectionary districts of the United States,' passed March 3, 1863. 12 Stat. 863. It is confined to cases arising under that act.

2. That the petition was not filed in the Court of Claims within six years after the cause of action accrued.

This limitation is found in the tenth section of the act relating to the Court of Claims, also of March 3, 1863. 12 Stat. 765. That section enacts:——

'That every claim against the United States cognizable by the Court of Claims shall be for ever barred unless the petition setting forth a statement of the claim be filed in the court, or transmitted to it under the provisions of this act, within six years after the claim first accrues: Provided, that claims which have accrued six years before the passage of this act shall not be barred, if the petition be filed in the court or transmitted as aforesaid within three years after the passage of this act: And provided further, that the claims of married women first accrued during marriage, of persons under the age of twenty-one years, first accruing during minority, and of idiots, lunatics, insane persons, and persons beyond seas at the time the claim accrued, entitled to the claim, shall not be barred if the petition be filed in the court or transmitted as aforesaid within three years after the disability had ceased; but no other disability than those enumerated shall prevent any claim from being barred, not shall any of the said disabilities operate cumulatively.'

In the Revised Statutes of 1874, sect. 1009, the first proviso was dropped. It was then needless, the time of the saving thereby created with respect to the claims to which it related having before expired.

The counsel of the appellants have contended, in an argument of unusual research and ability, that the cotton in question was not captured or...