158 Ct. Cl. 497 | Ct. Cl. | 1962
Plaintiff is a veteran who formerly worked as a wage board employee at the Atlanta General Depot of the Department of the Army. He appears in this court in his own behalf and it is difficult to decipher his precise claims. From the welter of allegations and materials set forth in his layman’s petition (as amended formally and informally), as well as from his motion, responses, and voluminous exhibits, we gather that primarily he (a) seeks pay for periods of uncompensated overtime he alleges he worked at the Depot, and (b) asserts that his involuntary retirement from federal employment for medical disability in October 1960 was invalid, that he was therefore never properly removed from the rolls of federal employees at the Depot, and that
Overtime: Section 23 of the Act of March 28, 1934, 48 Stat. 522, as amended, 5 U.S.C. § 6730, provides that for wage board employees of the Federal Government “the regular hours of labor shall not be more than forty per week; and all overtime shall be compensated for at the rate of not less than time and one-half.” Suits under this Act have several times been before the court and recoveries have been allowed, but the difficulty with the present demand is that plaintiff has not shown that he performed such overtime work com-pensable under the statute.
The regulations of the Atlanta General Depot (Depot Operating Procedure No. 690-15, dated October 11, 1956, paragraph 9) require that requests for overtime work be submitted on a designated form and processed in a prescribed manner;
The answer to a claim of this type, in the circumstances shown by this record, was given by the court some years ago when this same plaintiff sought overtime pay, in a like situation, while employed by the Civil Aeronautics Administration from 1948 to 1950. Gaines v. United States, 132 Ct. Cl. 408, 412-413. Construing comparable legislation and regulations, we held that no claim for such overtime pay could be allowed or recognized unless the work was actually authorized or approved by an appropriate government official. See also Post v. United States, 121 Ct. Cl. 94; Tabbutt v. United States, 121 Ct. Cl. 495; Gray v. United States, 136 Ct. Cl. 312. In other cases we have applied this principle to allow recovery even though there may have been no express order, authorization, or approval, and the administrative officials have refused to characterize the work as “overtime.” See, e.g., Farley v. United States, 131 Ct. Cl. 776; Anderson v. United States, 136 Ct. Cl. 365; Parks v. United States, 141 Ct. Cl. 415. But the court has not given judgment under this type of overtime legislation (relating to federal employees) unless the work or activity which is the basis of the claim has been authorized, approved, ordered, or confirmed by an authority empowered to do so. In this case, as in his earlier litigation, plaintiff has failed to show (or to raise a genuine question) that such authorization or approval was given, either expressly or in effect. Whatever may have been the propriety of granting plaintiff compensatory leave for time worked previously,
Disability retirement: The Civil Service Retirement Act, 46 Stat. 468, as amended, 5 U.S.C. § 2257(a), authorizes the Civil Service 'Commission to retire a disabled federal employee, “upon his own application or upon application by
In this court plaintiff attacks his involuntary retirement on many fronts, but it is clear that the scope of judicial review in connection with a disability retirement is very narrow. The Civil Service Retirement Act empowers the Commission to administer the retirement provisions and to issue the necessary and proper rules and regulations (5 U.S.C. § 2266); the Act also provides that questions of disability “shall be determined by the Commission and its
Certain of plaintiff’s points are hyper-technical arguments that the Commission or the Depot did not follow every jot and tittle of the applicable procedures (as plaintiff reads them strictly) — but without any showing that the alleged departures were substantial or important. Other contentions fly in the face of the Eetirement Act’s provision for an involuntary application by the employee’s agency; or contravene the ruling of the District of Columbia Circuit that no hearing is required by statute or regulation (236 F. 2d at 736, 738, 740); or disregard the principle that a court cannot substitute its judgment on medical evidence for the determination of the Commission (see 236 F. 2d at 736).
Only two arguments deserve further discussion. The first is that the Commission refused to make available to plaintiff himself the medical reports and information before it. This was done under the Commission’s regulation (5 C.F.E. 29.12 (a)(4)) that “[w]here the nature of the disability is reported to be a mental condition or other condition of such a nature that a prudent physician would hesitate to inform an individual found to be suffering from such a condition of its exact nature and probable nature,” a complete summary of the medical evidence will be made available only to a physician designated by the employee.
Plaintiff also charges that the Board of Appeals and Review did not consider medical and other evidence which he submitted to the Commission. But he presents no adequate basis for this suspicion and there is nothing in the record before us which supports the claim. On the contrary, the Board’s letter of October 10th to plaintiff discloses that its study of the case included “the representations in support of your appeal” and “a review of the total evidence of file.” If plaintiff failed to supply other materials which he desired to submit, it was not the Commission’s fault; he had ample opportunity.
Other claims: Plaintiff has included prayers for injunctive and other affirmative relief which is beyond the jurisdiction of this court. He also erroneously seeks to vindicate the claims for overtime compensation of other employees at the Atlanta General Depot. Finally, he puts great emphasis on certain personnel actions against him taken by the Depot, prior to his retirement, which the Civil Service Commission has reversed and corrected. He has been administratively paid the sums due as a result of these corrections and nothing further is owing.
Plaintiff’s motion for partial summary judgment is denied. Defendant’s cross-motion for summary judgment is granted. The petition will be dismissed.
It is so ordered.
These implementing regulations do not controvert the statute. Biggs v. United States, 152 Ct. Cl. 545, 287 F. 2d 908.
Plaintiff does not attempt to show that his claimed overtime work was authorized in accordance with the Depot procedure and regulations, or that it was directed or approved by the proper higher-echelon officials at the Depot.
The fact that plaintiff accepted compensatory leave tends to show that, if he worfced extra hours, he did so voluntarily. Cf. Baca v. United States, 150 Ct. Cl. 70, 85, cert. denied, 364 U.S. 892; Goode v. United States, 25 Ct. Cl. 261, 267.
The record contains affidavits by Commission doctors that tie medical evidence upon which the Commission’s decision was based should not, under the regulation, be disclosed to the plaintiff himself.
Plaintiff was informed by tie Commission on August 22d that “[s]hould your own physician need a medical report for his use it would be furnished to him on receipt of his request and accompanied by a signed authorization from you for us to give him such medical evidence.”