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Walsh v. United States

151 Ct. Cl. 507, 1960 U.S. Ct. Cl. LEXIS 163, 1960 WL 8497
CourtUnited States Court of Claims
DecidedDecember 1, 1960
DocketNo. 146-56
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 151 Ct. Cl. 507 (Walsh 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
Walsh v. United States, 151 Ct. Cl. 507, 1960 U.S. Ct. Cl. LEXIS 163, 1960 WL 8497 (cc 1960).

Opinion

MaddeN, Judge,

delivered the opinion of the court:

These plaintiffs, 91 in number, are or were administrative enrollees in the United States Maritime Service, assigned for duty to the United States Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York. Their pay was reduced in 1954, and they contend that the reduction was in violation of section 216(a) of the Merchant Marine Act of 1936, as amended, 53 Stat. 1182-1183, 46 U.S.C. § 1126(a), which provided, as to the United States Maritime Service:

The ranks, grades, and ratings for the personnel of said service shall be the same as are now or shall hereafter be prescribed for the personnel of the Coast Guard.

This court on March 5,1958, overruled the motions of both parties for summary judgment. 141 Ct. Cl. 569. That meant that the case should go to trial for a determination of the facts. It was conceded that the reevaluation of positions [509]*509which, resulted in the 1954 reductions in pay was not made on the basis of Coast Guard standards, but was made on the basis of the standards used for classifying civilian Government positions covered by the Classification Act of 1949, 63 Stat. 954, 958, 5 U.S.C. §§ 1071,1101 (b). In our opinion we said:

Unless the status assigned to the positions in the reevaluation happened to coincide with that of comparable positions in the Coast Guard, we think the reevaluation was illegal and that persons who were prejudiced by it may recover. 141 Ct. Cl. at 573.

We refer to our earlier decision for the background and history of the case.

When the Academy was established in 1942 the personnel was assigned ranks, grades or ratings, presumably on the basis of the qualifications of the enrollees and of the needs of the Academy. When the reevaluation of positions occurred in 1953, the positions of 44 enrollees were upgraded, those of 101 were left unchanged, and those of 128, including the 91 plaintiffs, were downgraded. The positions were graded, as we have seen, by the standards of the civilian civil service, and then Avere given the maritime rating such as, for example, Chief Petty Officer, Petty Officer 3d Class, or Seaman, the pay of which would correspond to the pay of a classified civil sendee employee holding a comparable position.

The only witness on the subject of how enrollees doing tasks in the Coast Guard comparable to those done in the Merchant Marine Academy by the plaintiffs would be rated was Commander Pfeiffer of the Coast Guard. His qualifications and his testimony are described in finding 18. The situations in the two services are in many respects not comparable. In the Coast Guard the table of organization authorized by statute allows so many officers and men of each rank. These officers and men are then assigned to do whatever needs to be done to operate the Coast Guard Academy. If a teacher of French is needed, and a Captain is competent and is not otherwise engaged, he might be assigned to that job. But in other circumstances an Ensign, if competent, [510]*510might be assigned. The assigned officer wonld get the pay of his rank, which would not be affected by the job to which he was assigned.

If we assume that there is no particular grade or pay attached to any job in the Coast Guard Academy, we would have to concede that the mandate of Congress that “the ranks, grades, and ratings * * * shall be the same as * * * for the personnel of the Coast Guard” is impossible of administration, unless it be construed as a command to the Maritime Administration to set up a table of organization comparable to that of the Coast Guard Academy, and then pay the men according to their rank regardless of what job they are assigned to. Congress did not mean that, because in the same section 216(a) which contains the language on which the plaintiffs rely, is the following statement:

The Commission1 is authorized to determine the number of persons to be enrolled in the said service, to fix the rates of pay of such persons, and to prescribe such courses and periods of training as, in its discretion, is [sic] necessary to maintain a trained and efficient merchant marine personnel.

Immediately after that sentence comes the sentence on which the plaintiffs rely.

Although Commander Pfeiffer’s testimony shows that there may be many occasions in the Coast Guard in which the rank and salary of the officer or man has little relation to the work which, at least for the time being, he is doing, we have no doubt that, on the whole, there is in the Coast Guard as in all other rationally operated organizations, a correlation between rank and salary, on the one hand, and duties, on the other. Commander Pfeiffer’s testimony confirms this, since he was able, with regard to many of the plaintiffs, to determine, from their self-prepared job descriptions, what grade or rank a Coast Guard person having those duties would normally hold. In such cases, if the grade given on the 1954 reevaluation was lower than the Coast Guard grade would have been, the plaintiff is entitled to recover the difference in pay between the two grades.

[511]*511As to nine of the plaintiffs, the kind of work which they did at the Merchant Marine Academy was not done by Coast Guard service personnel at the Coast Guard Academy, but was done by wage board employees at the rates of pay prevailing in the area. Presumably the reevaluation of these positions by civil service standards in 1954 set the wages by proper wage board standards. In any event, it is not possible to apply the Coast Guard standards prescribed by section 216 (a) to these nine plaintiffs.

In the cases in which Commander Pfeiffer stated that the proper Coast Guard rating would have been one or the other of two possible ratings, as, for example, in the case of the plaintiff Burke, where the rating might have been either PO-3 or PO-2, our decision will be based upon the lower of the two possible ratings, i.e., in the example given above, the PO-3.

As to those members of the teaching staff who, according to Commander Pfeiffer’s statement, would, if they had occupied similar positions in the Coast Guard, have been eligible for promotion, we suppose that they would have received these promotions if Coast Guard standards had been applied. The promotions will be regarded, in our decision, as having been made.

The Government urges that the plaintiffs did not exhaust their administrative remedies by appealing to the Civil Service Commission. The contention is not valid. The Government does not contend that any of the plaintiffs except those who were veterans had any right to appeal to the Civil Service Commission. The plaintiff Jarett, whose case was typical of those of the veterans, did appeal and his appeal was rejected by the Commission. The other veteran plaintiffs were aware of this fact. We think they were not required to go through obviously useless motions in order to preserve their rights.

The plaintiffs named in the paragraph of finding 19 which precedes the table are entitled to recover, and judgment will be entered to that effect. The amount of recovery will be determined pursuant to Buie 38(c). The remaining plain[512]*512tiffs are not entitled to recover and the petition as to them will be dismissed.

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Bluebook (online)
151 Ct. Cl. 507, 1960 U.S. Ct. Cl. LEXIS 163, 1960 WL 8497, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/walsh-v-united-states-cc-1960.