finding no breach of Corps’s duty of good faith and fair dealing because Corps — as a separate government agency— could not be charged with knowledge of location and wage-rate impact of unrelated project
How later courts described this case
- finding no breach of Corps’s duty of good faith and fair dealing because Corps — as a separate government agency— could not be charged with knowledge of location and wage-rate impact of unrelated project
- finding that Corps — as a separate government agency— could not be charged with knowledge of location and wage-rate impact of unrelated project
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
JONES, Chief Judge
(concurring in the result).
While still adhering to the views expressed in my opinion concurring in part in the previous opinion in this case, 172 F.Supp. 454 , 145 Ct.Cl. 387, 393 , in the present posture of the case I have no choice but to concur in the result.
It is true that the contract in terms stipulated that the wages should be at the minimum rate specified in the contract. Nevertheless, almost immediately the Government, by executive decree, froze the wages then being paid which made the minimum wages being paid by plaintiff the maximum wages that could be paid. Wage freeze order, dated January 26, 1951, was published in the Federal Register January 30, 1951 ( 16 Fed. Reg. 816 ).
Within a few days thereafter, the Government established a billion-dollar project in the same area and immediately began paying wages substantially in excess of the wages which plaintiff was permitted to pay. This act, of course, drained off all the available labor in that and in surrounding areas. This freeze remained in effect several months before the defendant finally made an exception to the so-called wage freeze which permitted plaintiff after that time to pay wages somewhat comparable to the wages being paid by the defendant in the adjoining project.
On August 2, 1951, the Wage Stabilization Board issued an order which lifted the wage freeze of January 25, 1951, and authorized the employers in the construction industry to pay wages not in excess of the wage rates determined to be prevailing in a given locality by the Secretary of Labor pursuant to the Act. This regulation lifting the wage freeze was published in the Federal Register of August 2, 1951 (16 Fed.Reg. 7565).
It seemed to me then and it seems to me now that plaintiff at least should have been permitted to recover the damages proximately flowing from the defendant’s direct action which made plaintiff completely helpless during these few months when the freeze order was in effect.
However, plaintiff apparently in an effort to concentrate on the much larger basis of recovery has abandoned this particular phase of its claim. This may have been due in part to the wording of the previous majority opinion. Nevertheless, if I understood correctly the plaintiff’s counsel’s statement in open court, this phase of the case is not now before us.
In the present state of the pleadings, evidence, and findings of fact I concur in the result.