Caldwell's Case/Opinion of the Court

by Ward Hunt

United States Supreme Court

86 U.S. 264

Caldwell's Case

In the view we have taken of the case, it is unnecessary to consider a question largely discussed in the court below, and in the briefs of counsel here, to wit, whether the contract, although not in terms containing a stipulation binding the United States to deliver to the claimant all the stores and supplies it desired to transport between the points mentioned, was to be construed as having that effect. Our decision of the case rests upon other grounds, which are reached upon the assumption that the claimant is right in his construction of the contract, in that respect, but do not at all depend upon it.

By the second article of the contract of Caldwell, the claimant, he undertakes to transport 'from the posts, depots, or stations named in Article I,' or from 'any other posts, depots, or stations that may be established' on the west bank of the Missouri River, any number of pounds of supplies not exceeding 10,000,000 lbs. in the aggregate. The posts named in Article I are, Forts Leavenworth and Riley, in Kansas; Fort Kearney, Nebraska; Fort Sedgwick, Colorado; Fort Laramie, Dakota. The district named in said article within which other posts may be established is, the west bank of the Missouri River, north of Leavenworth and south of 42 degrees north latitude.

The posts from which the supplies were sent, which, it is said, should have been delivered to the claimant, were not those named in Article I, or either of them. They were Omaha at the outset, or starting-point, and Columbus, Lone Tree, and Kearney Station (not Fort Kearney), as the intermediate points from which wagon transportation was taken. These three points were railroad stations on the Union Pacific Railroad, and they were points to which the road was, from time to time, sufficiently completed for the purposes of railroad travel or transportation.

The judgment of the Court of Claims is based upon the theory that the expression in the contract, 'posts, depots, or stations,' includes railway depots or stations; that when a depot or station was established upon the Pacific road, as its construction advanced westwardly, such point became a post or station within the meaning of the contract. We are of the opinion that this was not the intention of the parties, but that military posts or stations alone were intended by them.

The contract was intended to aid the government in the transfer of its stores and supplies from one military post, station, or depot to another. While the same words in a contract, the subject-matter of which respected goods to be transported for individuals, and in time of peace, might be construed as claimed, such is not their fair and natural meaning in the contract we are considering. The term 'post,' in this instrument, means a military establishment where a body of troops is permanently fixed; 'station' means a place or department where a military duty is to be discharged, or the synonym of 'depot,' a place where military stores or supplies are kept, or troops assembled. To apply them otherwise would, we think, be giving a forced construction to language used in the presence of actual war, in reference to military stores, and in reference to their transportation from one military position to another, as the necessities of the army should require.

Columbus, Lone Tree, and Kearney are not 'on the west bank of the Missouri River,' and the contract limits the other posts, stations, or depots that may be established to that locality. The record shows that from Omaha to Columbus is ninety-two miles, to Lone Tree is one hundred and thirty-two miles, and to Kearney Station is one hundred and ninety-one miles, and there is no evidence that the Missouri River is, at any other point, nearer to the places named than is thus indicated. It would be quite a latitudinarian construction that would hold that these places are 'on the Missouri River.' The specifications of the points of departure are minutely described in Article I, and cannot be enlarged by the looser language used in Article III, where another subject is provided for, and the points of departure are mentioned in an incidental manner only.

The supplies now under consideration, it will be observed, were shipped from Omaha as the first or original point of departure. Omaha is situated on the west bank of the Missouri River, and was a station, or depot, where military stores and supplies were collected, and where troops were assembled at the time the claimant's contract was made. It is, nevertheless, not a point from which the supplies that were to be forwarded, were by the contract to be delivered to the claimant. Those points were the places named, to wit: Forts Leavenworth, Riley, Kearney, Sedgwick, and Laramie; the station, or depot, of Omaha not being named. Nor can it come under the words 'at such points or places at which posts or depots shall be established during the continuance of this contract, on the west bank of the Missouri River,' as it was a post, or depot, established long before the making of the contract, and was in full operation as a post or station when the contract was made.

The reason for this careful omission of Omaha, both from the expressed points of departure and those afterwards to be formed, is found in the fact that it was the eastern terminus of the Union Pacific Railroad. The building of this road was then going on. It was well known to the United States anthorities that it would be rapidly extended westwardly, and that it would be a speedy and cheap means of transporting its supplies. The contract with the claimant required the supplies to be transported at the rate of ten miles a day with mule trains and fourteen miles a day with ox trains, and at the expense of $1.45 per 100 lbs. for every hundred miles. The train upon the railroad would carry the supplies the same distance in an hour, and the expense would be diminished nearly as much as the speed would be increased. All this was well known to both parties. Hence when the road was completed to Columbus it was used by the government for that distance, and when successively completed to Lone Tree and Kearney, it was used to those places. That the United States under such circumstances intended to deprive itself of the power to use this new and more useful mode of transportation can scarcely be credited. It has not done so in terms, and, we think, that there is no fair reason to suppose that it has done so by implication.

The whole matter results in this: The government is responsible in damages if it has sent its supplies through other parties than the claimant from the posts of Leavenworth, Riley, Kearney, Sedgwick, or Laramie, or from other stations or posts thereafter established on the west bank of the Missouri River. The points from which it is proved to have sent supplies by other means than through the claimant are not among those named, nor are they military posts, nor are they on the west bank of the Missouri River. Omaha is not among the posts named, nor is it one established after the making of the contract. Hence there has been no breach of the contract, and there is no liability in damages.

The judgment awarding damages in the sum of $35,689.01 is REVERSED, and the case is remitted to the Court of Claims, with directions to

DISMISS THE PETITION.

Notes