# Mississippi Valley Generating Co. v. United States

> United States Court of Claims · July 15, 1959 · 175 F. Supp. 505

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9611199

## Case

- **Full name:** MISSISSIPPI VALLEY GENERATING CO., on Its Own Behalf and to the Use of Others v. UNITED STATES
- **Court:** United States Court of Claims
- **Decided:** July 15, 1959
- **Citations:** 175 F. Supp. 505; 147 Ct. Cl. 1; 1959 U.S. Ct. Cl. LEXIS 116
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Bryan
- **Judges:** Madden, Bryan, Reed, Jones
- **Cited by:** 4 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- **Red flag:** Reversed on other grounds by United States v. Mississippi Valley Generating Co., 364 U.S. 520 (1961).
- Negative treatments: 1
- Distinguished by: 0
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9611199

## Opinion text

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.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9611199. Public record. Not legal advice.