Homer Fritch v. United States

• Decision Date: 20 January 1919
• Docket Number: No. 64,64
• Citation: 63 L.Ed. 359,248 U.S. 458,39 S.Ct. 158
• Parties: J. HOMER FRITCH, Inc., et al. v. UNITED STATES
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

248 U.S. 458

39 S.Ct. 158

63 L.Ed. 359

J. HOMER FRITCH, Inc., et al.

v UNITED STATES.

No. 64.

Argued and Submitted Nov. 19, 1918.

Decided Jan. 20, 1919.

Mr. Assistant Attorney General Frierson, for the United states.

Messrs. Edward J. McCutchen, Ira A. Campbell, and A. Crawford Greene, all of San Francisco, for plaintiff in error.

Mr. Chief Justice WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.

Liability of the United States for the hire of a ship for two charter periods was asserted. The trial court allowed recovery for one period and rejected it for the other and the court below affirmed its action. The case is here because of alleged error committed in not allowing for both. The government insists that we have no jurisdiction because the judgment of the trial court was exclusively susceptible of being reviewed directly by this court; hence, that the court below had no jurisdiction and we must reverse and remand with directions to dismiss for want of jurisdiction. The contention is well founded, and we might content ourselves with referring to the authorities by which its correctness is conclusively established. As, however, some contrariety of opinion on the question is manifested in the decisions of the lower federal courts resulting either from a misconception of the governing principle upon which the right of direct review rests, or, it may be, caused by previous decisions of this court which if unexplained may continue to be the source of misconception, we briefly review and dispose of the subject from an original point of view.

When the United States made claims against it justiciable by conferring authority upon the Court of Claims to entertain and decide them, the grant was accompanied by a provision giving this court direct and exclusive jurisdiction to review the judgments of the Court of Claims rendered in the exercise of the new power given. When by the Tucker Act (Act March 3, 1887, c. 359, 24 Stat. 505) authority was conferred upon the Circuit and District Courts of the United States to exert, concurrently with the Court of Claims, the power to decide claims against the United States, the question arose whether the judgments of those courts rendered in the exercise of such jurisdiction were reviewable exclusively and directly by this court.

Determining the principle by which the question was to be solved, it was decided that in the absence of express provision or necessary implication to the contrary, the judgments of courts of the United States rendered as the result of the new power would be subject to be reviewed only by the exclusive method theretofore provided for the Court of Claims. Applying the principle of interpretation thus announced to the Tucker Act, it was held that judgments of the courts of the United States in suits against the United States under that act were reviewable only directly by this court. United States v. Davis, 131 U. S. 36, 9 Sup. Ct. 657, 33 L. Ed. 93.

Early after the adoption of the Judiciary Act of 1891 (Act March 3, 1891, c. 517, 26 Stat. 826) it was settled that the purpose of that act was to generally provide for and distribute the appellate power of the courts of the United States. McLish v. Roff, 141 U. S. 661, 12 Sup. Ct. 118, 35 L. Ed. 893; Lau Ow Bew v. United States, 144 U. S. 47, 12 Sup. Ct. 517, 36 L. Ed. 340; Bank v. Peters, 144 U. S. 570, 12 Sup. Ct. 767, 36 L. Ed. 545; Hubbard v. Soby, 146 U. S. 56, 13 Sup. Ct. 13, 36 L. Ed. 886. Subsequent to such decisions there was pending in this court a case brought by the plaintiff below by direct appellate proceedings to review the judgment of a Circuit Court of the United States, rejecting a claim against the United States sued upon in that court as a court of claims. On submission of a motion to dismiss or affirm, made by the United States without brief or argument by the appellant, the case was dismissed for want of jurisdiction, based upon authorities which were cited, establishing that the purpose of the act of 1891 was to distribute the appellate power of the courts of the United States—a ruling which implied that direct review by this court of judgments in suits against the United States rendered by the courts of the United States as courts of claims was taken away by the Act of 1891. Ogden v. United States, 148 U. S. 390, 13 Sup. Ct. 602, 37 L. Ed. 493.

In the next year the case of Chase v. United States, 155 U. S. 489, 15 Sup. Ct. 174, 39 L. Ed. 234, was decided. It came to this court on a direct writ of error to a Circuit Court of the United States, acting as a court of claims, to review a judgment rendered against the United States. Jurisdiction was disputed, not upon the ground that the power to review such a judgment by direct appeal no longer existed because of the act of 1891, but upon the sole ground that procedure by writ of error instead of appeal had been mistakably resorted to. The contention was held unsound, jurisdiction was taken, and the case was decided.

It is to be conceded that, either because of the implication resulting from the ruling in Ogden v. United States, supra, or because of what was deemed to be the controlling force of the accepted doctrine of the distribution of appellate power made by the act of 1891, the opinion obtained in some of the lower federal courts that the direct review by this court of judgments of courts of the United States acting as courts of claims, which prevailed under the Tucker Act, no longer existed, and that possibly these impressions continued to make themselves manifest until the error upon which they rested was demonstrated by the decision of this court in Reid v. United States, 211 U. S. 529, 29 Sup. Ct. 171, 53 L. Ed. 313.

In that case, acting upon the theory that the effect of the distribution of appellate power made by the act of 1891 controlled the previously existing right to review judgments of the courts of the United States acting as courts of claims, a case was brought directly to this court under the assumed authority of the...