National Casket Co. v. United States
| Decision Date | 16 March 1920 |
| Parties | NATIONAL CASKET CO. v. UNITED STATES. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York |
J Joseph Lilly, of New York City, for the motion.
Daniel S. Murphy, of New York City, opposed.
LEARNED HAND, District Judge (after stating the facts as above).
Section 10 of the Lever Act provides that under such circumstances 'jurisdiction is hereby conferred on the United States District Courts to hear and determine all such controversies ' Sections 12, 16, and 25 (Comp. St. 1918, Comp. St. Ann Supp. 1919, Secs. 3115 1/8jj, 3115 1/8ll, 3115 1/8q) provide in analogous situations that recovery shall be made under section 24, subd. 20, and section 145 of the Judicial Code (Comp. St. Secs. 991, 1136). Section 24, subd. 20, which confers jurisdiction on the District Court, was originally section 2 of chapter 359 of the act of 1887 (the Tucker Act) and sections 5 and 6 of that act (Comp. St. Secs. 1575, 1576) established a procedure by which such suits should be governed. The claimant files a petition in the District Court and serves a copy on the local district attorney and the Attorney General, after which the cause proceeds under the defense of the district attorney.
The United States now argues that under section 10 that procedure is necessarily not applicable, because of the change of expression between section 10 and the later sections, and that, as there is therefore no procedure defined by the act, claimants cannot move without a further enabling act of Congress. It argues, further, that if this be too strong a doctrine at least there is no warrant without some rule of court for the service of a summons on the district attorney, who is not to be deemed the representative of the United States, except as expressly provided by statute.
The first position seems to me quite in the teeth of the meaning of the act; somehow and somewhere there must be the right to obtain the relief sought; the statute very clearly intended that it should itself constitute the necessary consent of the sovereign to accept the determination of its own courts, and be self-sufficient. To say that nothing was accomplished is to defeat the obvious plan which Congress had in mind, and to support the position that the statute failed to effect what every one must know it meant to effect.
Yet it must be owned that to establish a procedure to meet the case involves some intercalation within the actual language used. It seems to me that in this dilemma the analogy of sections 5 and 6 of chapter 359 of the Laws of...
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Linguistics in law.
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