Oil Co v. United States

• Decision Date: 27 March 1950
• Docket Number: No. 18,STANDARD-VACUUM,18
• Citation: 70 S.Ct. 545,339 U.S. 157,94 L.Ed. 731
• Parties: OIL CO. v. UNITED STATES
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

339 U.S. 157

70 S.Ct. 545

94 L.Ed. 731

STANDARD-VACUUM OIL CO.

v UNITED STATES.

No. 18.

Argued Oct. 13, 1949.

Decided March 27, 1950.

Mr. Albert R. Connelly, New York City, for petitioner.

Mr. Newell A. Clapp, Washington, D.C., for respondent.

Mr. Justice MINTON delivered the opinion of the Court.

On December 5, 1947, petitioner filed suit in the Court of Claims to recover just compensation for certain of its properties in the Philippine Islands which the United States had allegedly requisitioned for military purposes. On March 24, 1948, petitioner filed an amended petition, including for the first time the claims here involved, the Seventh and the Fifteenth. A second amended petition was filed June 1, 1948. In the Seventh claim of the amended petition, petitioner alleged that the United States on or about December 18, 1941, requisitioned and took certain petroleum products and other personal and real property of petitioner located in the Philippine Islands. The Fifteenth claim of the amended petition contained an allegation, inter alia, that during the period from December, 1941 to January, 1942, respondent took and disbursed certain other petroleum products of petitioner located at another place in the Philippine Islands.¹ In the interim between the filing of the first and the second amended petitions, on April 12, 1948, the United States had filed a motion to dismiss the Seventh and Fifteenth claims on the ground that it appeared on the face of the amended petition that the claims sued upon each accrued more than six years prior to the filing of the amended petition, that the claims were therefore barred by § 156 of the Judicial Code,² and the Court of Claims was without jurisdiction to hear said claims. The court allowed this motion to stand directed against the second amended petition. After hearing argument, the court sustained the motion to dismiss, and did dismiss the Seventh and Fifteenth claims. 80 F.Supp. 657, 658, 112 Ct.Cl. 137. We granted certiorari, 336 U.S. 935, 69 S.Ct. 745, on the assumption that the record presented the question whether deprivation of access to information bearing on the existence of petitioner's claims during the Japanese occupation of the Philippine Islands could or did affect the operation of the six-year statute. But since the record does not properly present that question, we cannot answer it.

The case reaches us upon pleadings that allege only the fact of taking in 1941 and 1942, more than six years before the Seventh and Fifteenth claims were filed by petitioner. We do not intimate that any facts could have the effect of relieving petitioner from the limitation of the statute, nor what facts should be alleged that could have that effect.

It might be assumed in favor of petitioner's pleadings what is judicially known, that the Japanese were, for all practical purposes, in complete control of the Philippine Islands by May 1942 and continued in control until sometime subsequent to October 1944, when the United States Army returned. But it cannot be assumed that petitioner was deprived of information about its property before and during that period. The pleadings do not so inform, and certainly a court could not know judicially the facts of petitioner's information or lack of information. Then there is the period from the United States reoccupation in 1945 to March 24, 1948. With respect to this period of United States control of the Islands, nothing is alleged by petitioner concerning its deprivation of or access to information about the taking of its property at the times set forth in the...