“A covenant of a contract is a pledge— something ‘more than a promise and lesse [sic] than an Oath’ — to perform, or respond in damages.”
How later courts described this case
- “A covenant of a contract is a pledge— something ‘more than a promise and lesse [sic] than an Oath’ — to perform, or respond in damages.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
ALBERT V. BRYAN, District Judge
(concurring).
The very law points now mooted to defeat the contract as unauthorized were originally vouched by the Government to conclude it. These remain unbowed. Besides, admittedly every act now pleaded to impugn the contract, as the opinion of the court also well recounts, was “begun, continued and ended” in good faith and in the full knowledge of the Government. In truth there was no imposture.
To vitiate the contract as a potential imposture, the Government would invoke the biblical precept, embedded in public policy and statute, denouncing duplicity in agency. With this doctrine it would first condemn its own agent for pursuing aboveboard the honest directions of his Government. Then the principle would be interposed against the plaintiff notwithstanding that the Government’s agent was never the agent of the plaintiff or ever “interested” in the plaintiff’s “pecuniary profits or contracts” — notwithstanding, too, that the Government gave the plaintiff no choice but to deal through this agent. All this the court’s opinion patly demonstrates. Certainly *525 the principle is not so salutary it .must be vindicated by visitation upon an unoffending contractor.
A covenant of a contract is a pledge— something “more than a promise, and lesse than a Oath”- — to perform or respond in damages. The bargain good or bad, the United States faithfully keeps her covenants.