UNITED STATES v. SHANNON ET AL.
No. 47
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Argued November 27, 1951.—Decided January 14, 1952.
342 U.S. 288
John Grimball argued the cause for respondents. With him on the brief was C. T. Graydon.
MR. JUSTICE CLARK delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case brought here on writ of certiorari1 tests the validity under the Anti-Assignment Act,
The Boshamers owned, in addition to adjoining land which they leased to the United States, two one-acre tracts of land not under lease on which were located two houses and a barn. During January and February, 1945, these buildings were damaged by soldiers of the United States. On April 30, 1946, the Boshamers agreed to sell the entire tract—including both the leased and unleased
Respondents brought the present action under the Federal Tort Claims Act,
The Court of Appeals affirmed, believing that the assignment had resulted from a “mutual mistake as to the law,” and holding that:
“Relief is granted, not merely because [respondents] are assignees, nor even because the vendors have been made parties to the suit, but because of the mistake that led to the making of the assignment, which was a part of the consideration for the purchase price paid by [respondents] for the land conveyed to them. The relief is given to the assignees, not as a matter of law, but as a matter of equity because of the mistake involved and the hardship which would otherwise result.” 186 F. 2d 430, 434.
We cannot agree. In our view the judgment is based entirely on the assignment, which falls clearly within the ban of the Anti-Assignment Act. We have recently had occasion to review the Act‘s purposes. In United States v. Aetna Surety Co., 338 U. S. 366, 373 (1949), we stated that “[i]ts primary purpose was undoubtedly to prevent persons of influence from buying up claims against the United States, which might then be improperly urged upon officers of the Government,” and that a second purpose was “to prevent possible multiple payment of claims, to make unnecessary the investigation of alleged assignments, and to enable the Government to deal only with the original claimant.” Other courts have found yet another purpose of the statute, namely, to save to the United States “defenses which it has to claims by an as-
In the Aetna case, supra, this Court reaffirmed the principle that the statute does not apply to assignments by operation of law, as distinguished from voluntary assignments. There can be no doubt that in the present case the assignment was voluntary. The Boshamers were free to sell their land as well as their damage claim to whomever they pleased, or, had they chosen, they could have sold the land and the claim separately. The voluntary nature of the assignment is reflected in the fact that one of the respondents testified on cross-examination that he understood that he was “buying a claim against the Government.”10
That an assignment is voluntary is not an end to the matter, however. In the ninety-nine-year history of the Anti-Assignment Act, this Court has recognized as exceptions to the broad sweep of the statute two types of voluntary assignments (aside from voluntary assignments made after a claim has been allowed): transfers by will, Erwin v. United States, 97 U. S. 392, 397 (1878), and general assignments for the benefit of creditors, Goodman v. Niblack, 102 U. S. 556, 560-561 (1881). The first of these exceptions is justified by analogy to transfers by intestacy, which are exempt from the statute as being transfers by operation of law. It would be unwise to make a distinction for purposes of the Act between transfers which serve so much the same purposes as transfers by will and by intestacy. In similar fashion, the exception for voluntary assignments for the benefit of creditors has been justified by analogy to assignments in bankruptcy. See Goodman v. Niblack, supra. We find no such compelling analogies in the case at bar. On the contrary, this case
Nor are we persuaded by the special considerations which the Court of Appeals thought were controlling here. To hold the Anti-Assignment Act inapplicable because an assignment has been executed under a “mutual mistake of law” would require an inquiry into the state of mind of all parties to a challenged assignment, and would reward those who are ignorant of a statute which has been on the books for nearly a century. The all-inclusive language of the Act permits no such easy escape from its prohibition. In like manner, to hold the Act inapplicable because all possible claimants are before the court would be to draw a distinction on the basis of a purely fortuitous factor—whether an assignee, in his suit against the Government, can get personal service on his assignor. Even more important, this theory that an assignee can avoid the Act by joining his assignor as a party defendant or an unwilling party plaintiff, would not only subvert the purposes of the Act but flood the courts with litigation by permitting them to recognize assigned claims which the accounting officers of the Government would be obligated to reject. Since only a court can give the binding adjudication of the rights of all parties to the transaction—United States, assignor, and assignee—which it is claimed prevents any possible prejudice to
The Court of Appeals also felt that respondents’ claim should be upheld because “hardship” would otherwise result. If it were necessary only to balance equities in order to decide whether the Anti-Assignment Act applies—a view which this Court has many times repudiated—respondents would have little weight on their side of the scales. They paid the Boshamers $30 per acre for the land and buildings plus the claim; yet they admitted at the trial that land adjoining the Boshamer farm was worth $100 an acre or more, and that the Boshamer farm was one of the best in the county. Furthermore, we find here no “unconscionable” conduct on the part of the government agents. They had no part in the making of the assignment upon which respondents rely, and in fact the first dealing between respondents and the government agents occurred at least six weeks after that assignment had been executed.
The judgment is
Reversed.
MR. JUSTICE BLACK and MR. JUSTICE JACKSON dissent.
MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER.*
I would dismiss these writs of certiorari.
After the argument of these cases it became manifest that they were legal sports. Each presents a unique set of circumstances. Neither is likely to recur; both are individualized instances outside the scope of those con-
*[This opinion applies also to No. 46, United States v. Jordan, post, p. 911.]
The controlling purpose of the radical reforms introduced by the Judiciary Act of 1925, reinforced by an exercise of the Court‘s rule-making power in regard to the residual jurisdiction on appeal (see Rule 12 and 275 U. S. 603-604, 43 Harv. L. Rev. 33, 42 et seq.), was to put the right to come here, for all practical purposes, in the Court‘s judicial discretion. Needless to say, the reason for this is to enable the Court to adjudicate wisely, and therefore after adequate deliberation, the controversies that make the Court‘s existence indispensable under our Federal system.
From time to time some cases which ought never to have been here in the first instance are bound to reach the stage of argument, despite the process by which the wheat of worthy petitions for certiorari is sifted from the vast chaff of cases for which review is sought here, too often because of the blind litigiousness of parties or of the irresponsibility and excessive zeal of their counsel. Since the Judiciary Act of 1925, successive Chief Justices have repeatedly brought this abuse of the certiorari privilege to the attention of the Bar, but thus far without avail. When it is considered that at the last Term the Court passed on 987 such petitions, it is surprising, not that petitions are granted that escaped appropriate weeding-out—and, parenthetically, that a few are inappropriately denied—but that the process of rejection works as well as it does.1 And of course disposition of this volume of pe-
The fact that a case inappropriate for review escaped denial through a weeding-out process that is bound to be circumscribed, is no reason for compounding the oversight by disposing of such a case on the merits, after argument has made more luminously clear than did the preliminary examination of the papers that the litigation ought to be allowed to rest where it is by dismissing the writ. The reason for this was set forth on behalf of the Court by Mr. Chief Justice Taft:
“If it be suggested that as much effort and time as we have given to the consideration of the alleged conflict would have enabled us to dispose of the case before us on the merits, the answer is that it is very important that we be consistent in not granting the writ of certiorari except in cases involving principles the settlement of which is of importance to the public as distinguished from that of the parties, and in cases where there is a real and embarrassing conflict of opinion and authority between the circuit courts of appeal. The present case certainly comes under neither head.” Layne & Bowler Corp. v. Western Well Works, Inc., 261 U. S. 387, 393.
In fairness to the effective adjudication of those cases for which the Court sits, the Court has again and again acted on these considerations and dismissed the writ as “improvidently granted” after the preliminary and neces-
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, dissenting.
First. If the Shannons were the only plaintiffs in the action, I assume that the Anti-Assignment Act,
Second. The suggestion that the writ be dismissed as improvidently granted raises a recurring problem in the administration of the business of the Court. A Justice who has voted to deny the writ of certiorari is in no position after argument to vote to dismiss the writ as improvidently granted. Only those who have voted to grant the writ have that privilege. The reason strikes deep. If after the writ is granted or after argument, those who voted to deny certiorari vote to dismiss the writ as improvidently granted, the integrity of our certiorari jurisdiction is impaired. By long practice—announced to the Congress and well-known to this Bar—it takes four votes out of a Court of nine to grant a petition for certiorari. If four can grant and the opposing five dismiss, then the four cannot get a decision of the case on the merits. The integrity of the four-vote rule on certiorari would then be impaired.