1.
The Twenty per Cent.
Cases, 13 Wall. 576, affirmed, and the liberal view
there taken of the joint resolution of 28th February, 1867,
allowing to certain persons in the civil service of the United
States at Washington an additional compensation of twenty percentum
upon their respective salaries as fixed by law or, where no salary
is fixed by law, upon their pay respectively, for one year from the
30th of June, 1866, declared to be the true view and applied to
other cases essentially like those.
2. But not applied to the case of a person hired at Washington
to do service out of Washington, nor to a contractor who contracted
to deliver finished work, and who employed another to do it for
him.
3. An Act passed on the 12th of July, 1870, repealing "all acts
and
joint resolutions, or parts thereof, and all
resolutions of either House of Congress granting extra pay," the
act "to take effect on the 1st day of July, 1870," did not affect
the rights given by the joint resolution above mentioned.
On the 28th of February, 1867, Congress passed this joint
resolution: [
Footnote 1]
"That there shall be allowed and paid . . . to the following
described persons, now employed in the
civil service of the
United States at Washington as follows: to civil officers,
temporary and all other clerks, messengers, and watchmen, including
enlisted men detailed as such, to be computed upon the gross amount
of the compensation received by them, and
employees, male
and female, in the executive mansion, and in any of the following
named departments, or
any bureau or division thereof,
to-wit: State, Treasury, War, Navy, Interior, Post Office,
Attorney-General, Agricultural, and including civil officers, and
temporary and
all other clerks and employees, male and
female, in the offices of the coast survey, naval observatory,
navy yard, arsenal, paymaster-general, including the division of
referred claims, commissary-general of prisoners, bureau of
refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands, quartermaster's, capitol
and treasury extension, city post office, and commissioner of
public buildings, to the photographer and assistant photographer of
the Treasury Department,
Page 87 U. S. 180
to the superintendent of meters, and to lamplighters under the
commissioner of public buildings,
an additional compensation of
twenty percentum on their respective salaries as fixed by law, or
where no salary is fixed by law, upon their pay respectively, for
one year from and after the 30th day of June, 1866. Provided,
That this resolution shall not apply to persons whose salaries, as
fixed by law, exceed $3,500 per annum."
On the 12th of July, 1870, [
Footnote 2] Congress passed an act in these words:
"All acts and joint resolutions, or parts thereof, and all
resolutions of either house of Congress granting extra compensation
or pay, be, and the same are hereby repealed, to take effect on the
1st day of July, 1870."
Under the said joint resolution of 28th of February, 1866,
fourteen different persons filed at different times -- some of them
after the passage of the repealing act -- claims in the court below
for the twenty percent given by the statute.
The first was employed by the bureau of yards and docks, as a
machinist in the navy yard at Washington, upon daily wages at the
agreed sum and price of $3.25 per day.
The second and third as coppersmiths on the Treasury extension,
upon daily wages. Under specific appropriations for the
construction of the Treasury extension, contracts were entered into
for finished work, comprehending both materials and labor --
materials separately, and labor by the day separately. The services
in these two cases were rendered under the latter contracts.
The fourth and fifth as watchmen upon the capitol extension, at
daily wages, their compensation changing during the year.
The sixth as a laborer upon monthly wages in the quartermaster's
department in the City of Washington.
The seventh was employed in the Treasury extension as a laborer
upon daily wages, working for part of the time at $1.75 per day,
and for another part at $2 per day.
The eighth by the authority of the surgeon-general of
Page 87 U. S. 181
the army, as a carpenter at the depot for receiving and
distributing medical supplies in Washington.
The ninth was a watchman, laborer, and teamster by the
quartermaster's department at Washington.
The tenth was a laborer by the commissary department at
Washington.
The eleventh was a laborer, upon daily wages, at the Washington
arsenal.
The twelfth was in the secret service division of the Treasury
Department, in the capacity of detective, at a monthly salary of
$150 per month.
The thirteenth, one Hoffman, was employed by one of the
quartermasters on duty in the department at Washington, by the day,
as sexton
at the Arlington Cemetery, near Washington, but in
Virginia, and there rendered his services.
The fourteenth, one Bell, was a plate-printer in the Bureau of
Engraving and Printing in the Treasury Department. He was paid the
market price for his work, the price being neither a salary nor a
per diem compensation, but a fixed rate for the work done
-- that is to say, per one hundred sheets of face printing and per
one hundred sheets of back printing. In the performance of his
duties, he employed and paid an assistant, but the pay of the
assistant was received directly from the disbursing officers of the
Treasury, and was deducted by them from the amount earned by the
claimant. The amount paid him after such deduction was $1,184.30,
for twenty percent of which the court below entered judgment.
Each of the fourteen claimants was paid the highest rate of
wages commonly paid for services such as his.
The Court of Claims gave judgment,
pro forma, in all
the cases, for the claimants, and the government brought the cases
here.
The meaning of the joint resolution of February 28, 1867, it may
be well here to state, had been a matter of question in this Court
on a previous occasion in the cases known as
The Twenty Percent
Cases, [
Footnote 3] and
the Court then said that
Page 87 U. S. 182
persons are
"properly in the civil service if they were employed by the head
of the department or of the bureau or any division of the
department charged with that duty and authorized to make such
contracts and fix the compensation of persons employed, even though
the particular employment may not be designated in any
appropriation"
act. It added that
"many persons not employed as clerks and messengers of the
departments are in the public service by virtue of an employment by
the head of the department or by the head of a bureau of the
department authorized by law to make such contracts, and such
persons are as much in the service, within the meaning of the joint
resolution, as the clerks and messengers employed in the rooms of
the department building. "
Page 87 U. S. 183
MR. JUSTICE CLIFFORD delivered the opinion of the Court.
Additional compensation is claimed by the respective appellees,
as employees in the civil service of the United States in this
city, by virtue of the joint resolution of the 28th of February,
1867, which provides that twenty percent additional compensation
shall be allowed and paid to certain classes of such employees in
Washington, as therein designated.
Civil officers whose annual salaries do not exceed $3,500 and
all clerks, whether temporary or permanent, and messengers and
watchmen, are specifically named in the resolution,
Page 87 U. S. 184
including enlisted men detailed as such, and the provision is
that the additional allowance shall be computed upon the gross
amount of the compensation received by such employee as fixed by
law, or where no salary is fixed by law, upon the pay of the
employee for that fiscal year, and that the benefit of the
resolution shall extend to employees, male and female, in the
executive mansion and in any of the following named departments, or
any bureau or division thereof, to-wit: State, Treasury, War, Navy,
Interior, Post Office, Attorney-General, and Agricultural, and
including civil officers and all clerks and employees, male and
female, in the offices of the coast survey, naval observatory, navy
yard, arsenal, paymaster-general, bureau of refugees, freedmen, and
abandoned lands, quartermasters, capitol and Treasury extension,
city post office, and commissioner of public buildings; to the
photographer and assistant photographer of the Treasury Department,
to the superintendent of meters, and to lamp-lighters under the
Commissioner of Public Buildings.
Judgments rendered by the Court of Claims involving
controversies of a like character were removed into this Court by
appeal on a former occasion, [
Footnote 4] when it became the duty of this Court to
examine the joint resolution in question and to determine what in
the judgment of the Court is its actual scope and true intent and
meaning as applied to the several cases then before the court.
Attempt was then made in argument to convince the Court that the
words of the resolution, "in the civil service of the United
States," as there employed, should be restricted to persons filling
offices or holding appointments established by law, but the Court
rejected that narrow construction of the phrase and unanimously
decided that neither a commission nor a warrant of appointment is
necessary to entitle an employee to the benefits of the joint
resolution, provided he was actually and properly employed in the
executive mansion, or in any of the departments, or in any bureau
or division thereof, or in any of the offices specifically
Page 87 U. S. 185
designated in the said joint resolution; that persons so
employed here are properly to be regarded as employees in the civil
service of the United States within the true intent and meaning of
that phrase as there used if they were employed by the head of the
department or of the bureau or any division of the department
charged with that duty and authorized to make such contracts and
fix the compensation of the person or persons employed, even though
the particular employment may not be designated in an appropriation
act.
Such was the unanimous opinion of the Court as to the true
construction of the joint resolution under consideration on that
occasion, and the Court, with equal unanimity, adheres to that
conclusion in the cases before the Court.
Many persons not employed as clerks or messengers of a
department are in the public service by virtue of an employment by
the head of a department or by the head of some bureau of a
department or division thereof authorized to make such contracts,
and such persons are as much in the civil service of the United
States within the meaning of the joint resolution as the clerks and
messengers employed in the rooms of the department building.
[
Footnote 5]
Much discussion of that topic, however, is unnecessary, as the
question was explicitly determined in our former decision, to which
reference is made for a full exposition of the present views of the
court upon that subject.
Grant all that, still it is insisted that the joint resolution
has been repealed since that decision was made, and that the effect
of the repealing act is to bar the right of recovery in all of the
cases under consideration, in support of which proposition
reference is made to the fourth section of the Appropriation Act of
the 12th of July, 1870, which enacts that all acts and joint
resolutions or parts thereof, and all resolutions of either house
of Congress granting extra compensation
Page 87 U. S. 186
or pay, be and the same are hereby repealed, to take effect on
the 1st day of July in the same year. [
Footnote 6]
Two propositions are submitted by the United States, based upon
that repealing act, to show that the respective appellants in these
cases cannot recover:
(1) That the repeal of the joint resolution prevents the
officers of the Treasury from paying the additional compensation
after the date of its passage.
(2) That the repealing act, even if the resolution created an
implied contract and gave jurisdiction to the Court of Claims to
enforce it, divested the Court of Claims of all jurisdiction in
such controversies.
Both of the propositions, as it seems to the Court, overlook the
material facts of the case, all of which are undisputed. They are
as follows:
(1) That the joint resolution ceased to be operative at the end
of the fiscal year in which it was enacted.
(2) That such additional compensation is allowed only for that
year.
(3) That the claims in these cases are only for such additional
compensation during that fiscal year.
(4) That the joint resolution ceased to be operative at the
close of that fiscal year.
(5) That the right to such additional compensation became fixed
and vested when the year's services were faithfully performed.
(6) That the repealing act, which it is supposed constitutes a
bar to the cause of action in these cases, did not become a law
until more than three years after the right to the additional
compensation had become fixed and vested, and the joint resolution
had ceased to be operative in respect to prospective services.
Viewed in the light of these suggestions, grave doubts arise
whether the repealing act in question applies at all to the joint
resolution, as it is difficult to believe that Congress would deem
it necessary to repeal a provision which had expired by its own
limitation more than three years before they acted upon the
subject.
Mere supererogation, however, it is said, cannot properly be
imputed to the national legislature, and there would be
Page 87 U. S. 187
much force in the suggestion if the joint resolution had at that
time been in operation and had been the only provision of the kind
to which the descriptive words of the repealing act would apply,
but the fact is plainly otherwise, as there are several acts of
corresponding import which were in full force at that date, and
which, it must be admitted, are unquestionably included within
those descriptive words. [
Footnote
7]
Enough appears in the repealing act itself to show that Congress
did not intend to give it any retroactive effect, except as therein
provided, as the act expressly enacts that the provision in
question shall take effect on the 1st day of July next before the
day it was approved, which affords a demonstration that Congress
never intended that it should retroact to any other or greater
extent. [
Footnote 8]
Courts of justice agree that no statute, however positive in its
terms, is to be construed as designed to interfere with existing
contracts, rights of actions, or with vested rights unless the
intention that it shall so operate is expressly declared or is to
be necessarily implied, and pursuant to that rule courts will apply
new statutes only to future cases unless there is something in the
nature of the case or in the language of the new provision which
shows that they were intended to have a retroactive operation. Even
though the words of a statute are broad enough in their literal
extent to comprehend existing cases, they must yet be construed as
applicable only to cases that may hereafter arise, unless the
language employed expresses a contrary intention in unequivocal
terms. [
Footnote 9]
Such a law, if passed by a state and construed to have the
effect claimed for it in this case by the appellants, would be
unconstitutional and void; but it is not necessary to discuss any
such proposition in this case, as there is not a word in the
repealing act to support the conclusion that Congress
Page 87 U. S. 188
intended to rescind any antecedent contract or to enact any bar
to the right of recovery in such cases where the service had been
faithfully performed before the repealing act was passed.
Apply those rules to the cases before the court and it is clear
the appellees in the first twelve are entitled to recover, as the
finding of the court below shows that the claimant in each of those
cases is included within the joint resolution as construed and
defined by this Court.
But the other two claimants, to-wit, Hoffman and Bell, are not
entitled to recover, the former because he was employed as sexton
at the Arlington Cemetery, in the State of Virginia, and not "in
Washington," and because, consequently, his claim is not within the
words of the joint resolution. Nor is the latter, because he was
not in the civil service of the United States within the meaning of
that provision, as he was a plate-printer, working under a contract
as an agreed rate "per one hundred sheets of face printing and per
one hundred sheets of back printing." He employed an assistant, for
whose compensation he was responsible, but the finding of the
subordinate court shows that the assistant was paid directly by the
disbursing officer and that the sum thus paid was deducted from the
gross earnings of the claimant. Suffice it to say that the claimant
was a contractor, and that he employed another to do most or all of
the work, and in the judgment of the Court, such a contractor is
not entitled to the additional compensation allowed and directed to
be paid by the joint resolution under consideration.
Judgment affirmed in the first twelve cases.
Judgment reversed in the last two cases, and the causes
remanded with directions to dismiss the respective
petitions.
[
Footnote 1]
14 Stat. at Large 569.
[
Footnote 2]
16 Stat. at Large 250, ยง 4.
[
Footnote 3]
80 U. S. 13
Wall. 576.
[
Footnote 4]
Twenty Percent
Cases, 13 Wall. 576.
[
Footnote 5]
United States v. Belew, 2 Brockenbrought 280;
Graham v. United States, 1 Nott & Huntington 380;
Commonwealth v. Sutherland, 3 Sergeant & Rawle
149.
[
Footnote 6]
16 Stat. at Large 250.
[
Footnote 7]
12 Stat. at Large 587; 14
id. 206; 15
id.
77.
[
Footnote 8]
16
id. 250.
[
Footnote 9]
Potter's Dwarris 161;
Wood v. Oakley, 11 Paige 403;
Butler v. Palmer, 1 Hill 325;
Jarvis v. Jarvis, 3
Edwards 466;
McEwen v.
Bulkley, 24 How. 242;
Harvey
v. Tyler, 2 Wall. 329;
Blanchard v.
Sprague, 3 Sumner 535;
United States v.
Heth, 3 Cranch 399.
MR. JUSTICE SWAYNE, in whose opinion concurred the CHIEF
JUSTICE, and MR. JUSTICE DAVIS, dissenting from the judgment in the
first twelve cases:
I dissent from the judgment of the Court in these cases in
Page 87 U. S. 189
favor of the claimants, and will give my views as briefly as may
be. When the resolution giving the twenty percent was passed,
nearly eight months of the year to which the allowance related had
elapsed. The allowance was a mere gratuity. Hence there was no
vested right arising from the resolution, and there could be none.
But the resolution was operative in each case until the claimant
was paid. When repealed, the gratuity which it gave fell with it.
The repeal necessarily had that effect. I see no reason for giving
the repealing section a more limited construction. It was intended
to take away from all those who had not then been paid, the right
to be paid thereafter. I think, therefore, that the judgments of
the Court of Claims should be reversed.
