Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ The plaintiffs are not suing the United States but the Fleet Corporation, and if its act was unlawful, even if they might have sued the United States, they are not cut off from a remedy against the agent that did the wrongful act. In general the United States cannot be sued for a tort, but its immunity does not extend to those that acted in its name. It is not impossible that the Fleet Corporation purported to act under the contract giving it the right to take possession in certain events, but that the plaintiffs can show that the events had not occurred. ”

“ These provisions sufficiently indicate the enormous powers ultimately given to the Fleet Corporation. They have suggested the argument that it was so far put in place of the sovereign as to share the immunity of the sovereign from suit otherwise than as the sovereign allows. But such a notion is a very dangerous departure from one of the first principles of our system of law. The soverign properly so called is superior to suit for reasons that often have been explained. But the general rule is that any person within the jurisdiction always is amenable to the law. ”

“ If, in the judgments obtained in the various courts of the country Congress shall find such variety of view as not to commend them to its sense of fairness, it will be slow to recognize its obligation to pay them, and we shall have a repetition of the history of the French spoliation claims which for many decades occupied the attention of appropriation committees of Congress and wore out their patience with results that have put in the hearts of claimants a deep sense of the injustice of governments. ”

“ On the other hand, a construction which will bring into one tribunal, the Court of Claims, the hearing and decision of this class of cases, will secure uniformity and dispatch and these two elements will make for justice and peace, because Congress pays the judgments of the Court of Claims against the United States in due course. The result reached by the Court if it is to go as far as I fear it must, even with the careful limitation of the language of the judgment, will make the existing confusion as to the claims against the Fleet Corporation worse confounded. ”

“ The District Judge gave weight to the phrase in the general incorporation law of the District that corporations formed under it shall be capable of suing and being sued in any Court in the District. Code D. C. § 607. But we do not read those words as putting District corporations upon a different footing from those formed under the laws of the states. ”