“It is common knowledge of all lawyers and many business men that the highest bid is not always the best bid and that a lower bid may be the best bid when based on conditions sufficient to overbalance the difference between the two.”
How later courts described this case
- “It is common knowledge of all lawyers and many business men that the highest bid is not always the best bid and that a lower bid may be the best bid when based on conditions sufficient to overbalance the difference between the two.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
BUFFINGTON, Circuit Judge.
I concur in the conclusion reached by the court *214 but, in one particular, on different grounds. The act of Congress on ‘which this sale rests provides, “That any property sold under this act, except when sold to the United States, shall be sold only to American citizens, at public sale to the highest bidder, after public advertisement * * * unless the President stating the reasons therefor, in the public interest shall otherwise determine.” In my judgment Congress by this twelfth section of the act confided a personal trust and imposed a personal duty on. the President, It was the President who was to determine, and his determination involved his ascertainment of public necessity and his statement' of the reasons thereto moving him. In my judgment this personal presidential trust could not be delegated, and the delegation of it to Mr. Polk was not in accord with the statute, and therefore was without warrant of-law. But the President’s subsequent approval and ratification of what was done under the delegation constituted such personal ae-' tion by the President as validates the sale. I therefore concur in the conclusion reached.