Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad v. United States

151 F. Supp. 734, 138 Ct. Cl. 849, 1957 U.S. Ct. Cl. LEXIS 88
CourtUnited States Court of Claims
DecidedJune 5, 1957
DocketNo. 49213
StatusPublished

This text of 151 F. Supp. 734 (Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering United States Court of Claims primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad v. United States, 151 F. Supp. 734, 138 Ct. Cl. 849, 1957 U.S. Ct. Cl. LEXIS 88 (cc 1957).

Opinion

Opinion

fer curiam:

This case was referred by the court to C. Murray Bernhardt, a commissioner of this court, with directions to make findings of fact and recommendations for conclusion of law. The commissioner has done so in a report filed December 4, 1956, containing together with his findings an opinion giving reasons and citing precedents holding that plaintiff is entitled to recover. The court having considered the evidence and the briefs and argument of counsel adopts the findings and opinion of Commissioner Bernhardt which are printed below. Plaintiff is therefore entitled to recover and judgment is entered to that effect. The amount of recovery will be determined pursuant to Rule 38 (c).

It is so ordered.

Littleton, Judge, dissents.

OPINION BT THE COMMISSIONER

In Chicago and North Western Railway Company v. United States, 129 C. Cls. 439, it was held that shipments of scrap steel in 1944 and 1945 from surplus supplies accumulated by the Maritime Commission on the Pacific Coast to steel companies in the Midwest were not proven to be shipments of “military or naval property of the United States moving for military or naval and not for civil use” which, pursuant to section 321 (a) of the Transportation Act of 1940, 54 Stat. 898, 954 (49 U. S. C. 65), would be entitled to the application of land-grant rates for the transportation involved. Instead, the court concluded that the carrier was entitled to be paid at the full commercial rates. The instant case, with almost identical facts, is designed to test that result where the record is expanded to include evidence of end use, a deficiency in the earlier case commented on so pointedly by [851]*851the court as to suggest that evidence of ultimate use was of controlling importance.

During 1944 and 1945 the Maritime Commission sold to the Inland Steel Company, of Indiana Harbor, Indiana, and the Granite City Steel Company, of Granite City, Illinois, certain quantities of scrap steel which had been generated as surplus resulting from its World War II shipbuilding program on the West Coast. Plaintiff railroad, as the final delivering carrier of the scrap to the steel companies, charged and was paid for its transportation services at the full commercial rates. Subsequently, the General Accounting Office withheld from other sums due plaintiff an amount, claimed as an overpayment on the earlier transportation, representing the difference between the land-grant rate and the higher commercial rate. This is the sum in suit. Substantially all of the bills of lading which had been prepared by the Government to accompany the shipments contained an endorsement by the Maritime Commission that the scrap was military or naval property of the United States moving for military or naval and not for civil use. On most of the same bills of lading representing shipments to Inland Steel Company, but on none of those covering shipments to Granite City Steel Company, the originating carrier had endorsed its protest that in accepting the shipments for transportation it did not acquiesce in the shipper’s description of the property. These endorsements of themselves do not control the outcome of the case. Chicago and North Western Railway Company v. United States, supra, at page 442.

The scrap in question was in nation-wide short supply. The surplus which had been accumulated by the Maritime Commission from its West Coast shipbuilding program was allocated by the War Production Board to the various steel companies according to their need and their relation to the war effort. Without approval by the War Production Board it could not be sold by the Maritime Commission nor purchased from it. In its allocation orders authorizing the scrap shipments to Inland and Granite City, the War Production Board imposed the condition that “All material shipped shall be for resmelting purposes and for military •and naval use only.”

[852]*852Opinion by the Commissioner

Concurrently, the War Production Board, by means of production directives, exercised rigid control over the production programs of the steel companies to insure that military needs would be satisfied before any except essential civilian needs could be met. A war economy was superimposed on a civilian economy, but the former prevailed where shortages existed. The production directives instructed the individual steel mills as to the quantities and types of steel which they were to produce from month to month, as well as the uses to which the steel was to be put and those to whom it was to be sold. In required monthly reports to the War Production Board each steel company reported the details of its monthly production. The report form provided an elaborate breakdown of monthly production which, by utilization of a symbol system and a classification of using agencies, made it possible for the War Production Board to readily determine which uses were being satisfied and to what extent the steel companies were complying with their production directives. Judicious use of the monthly reports filed on these forms by the steel companies provided a fair idea of the proportionate spread of materials which went to satisfy military, naval, and civilian requirements. The authority of the War Production Board over the steel companies, through its powers of allocation and production control, effectively precluded them from use of raw materials, such as the scrap steel in this case, in any manner other than that directed.

The steel companies were required by the Renegotiation Act of 1943 (50 U. S. C. App. 1191) to renegotiate their wartime contracts made with the War and Navy Departments, Treasury, Maritime Commission, War Shipping Administration, Defense Plant Corporation, Metals Reserve Company, Defense Supplies Corporation, and the Rubber Reserve Company, the last four companies being subsidiaries of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. The War Contracts Price Adjustment Board, which was charged with the administration of the Renegotiation Act, perceived that some steel companies would have difficulty in segregating their sales for renegotiation purposes. That Board issued a memorandum in March 1945 to producers of controlled steel [853]*853products in which it described a method of segregation which would meet with approval as being obedient to the requirements of the Act. In brief, this method was keyed to the monthly reports of production by the steel companies to the War Production Board. While the Eenegotiation Act did not directly state that sales for military or naval use were renegotiate, and that civilian sales were not, the segregation of sales subject to renegotiation by Inland Steel Company and Granite City Steel Company, pursuant to the advice in the memorandum, were made on that basis. The percentages of military and naval production reported by those companies for purposes of the Eenegotiation Act were, and were intended to be, accurate reflections of the information they had previously reported to the War Production Board. In case of doubt as to which category a particular sale fell into, it was usually resolved in favor of being nonrenegotia-ble, so that the percentages of military or naval production reported by these companies could be regarded as a minimum.

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Related

Northern Pacific Railway Co. v. United States
330 U.S. 248 (Supreme Court, 1947)
Chicago & North Western Railway Co. v. United States
124 F. Supp. 359 (Court of Claims, 1954)
Pennsylvania Railroad v. United States
125 F. Supp. 233 (Court of Claims, 1954)
Northern Pac. Ry. Co. v. United States
101 F. Supp. 29 (D. Minnesota, 1951)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
151 F. Supp. 734, 138 Ct. Cl. 849, 1957 U.S. Ct. Cl. LEXIS 88, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/chicago-rock-island-pacific-railroad-v-united-states-cc-1957.