Press Release, Veto Message from President Harry S. Truman to the United States Senate

258 #2456 2 HOLD FOR RELEASE HOLD FOR RELEASE HOLD FOR RELEASE JUND 21, 1950 Givi To be held in STRICT CONFIDENCE and no portion, synopsis or intimation to be given out or published until the READING of the President' Message has begun in the Senate. Extreme care must therefore be exercised to avoid premature publication. CHARLES G. ROSS Secretary to the President TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES: I return herewith, without my approval, the enrolled bill (S. 764) "To confer jurisdiction upon the Court of Claims to hear, determine, and render judgment upon the claim of the Forest Lumber Company. " This claim arises out of a contract between the Superintendent of the Klamath Indian Agency, for and on behalf of the Klamath Indians, and the Forest Lumber Company of Kansas City, Missouri, approved by the Assistant Secretary of the Interior on July 25, 1922. The contract covered the sale of an estimated stand of 450 million board feet of timber, principally western yellow pine, at an initial basic price of $.08 per thousand feet board measure. The agreement provided for an increase of the stumpage price by rée-year periods based on the rise of the lumber market. The price of the timber was raised to 15.48 on April 1, 1928, which was an increase of forty cents per thousand feet, board measure. The Forest Lumber Company protested this increase, claiming NARA that it was unauthorize runder the terms of the contract, but the Department of the Interior concluded that the increase was fully justified in the light of conditions then existing, and that the contract provided sufficient authority for the action which had been taken. The Forest Lumber Company paid the increase which amounted to a total of 4,772.62, and subsequently filed claim No. 1-391 against the United Statés in the United States Court of Claims. The Court of Claims held that the Forest Lumber Company was entitled to recover and awarded judgment in the above amount (86 Ct. Cl. 183 et seq.) This decision was reversed by the United States Suprem Court on the ground that the case was not within the jurisdiction conferred upon the Court of Claims by section 145(1) of the Judicial Code (now incorporated in section 1491 of Title 20 of the United States Code), That section provided that the Court of Claims should have jurisdiction over claims 'founded upon any contract, express or implied, with the Government of the United States * The Supreme Court held that the contract in question was not a contract of the United States within the moaning or this language (305 U. S. 415). Subsequently, the Departmen of the Interior carefully reviewed the merits and equities of the case, including factors which apparently had not boen brought to the attention of the Court of Claims. Upon the basis of this roviow, the Department came to the conclusion that, while technical irrogularitics may have been committed in the administration of the contract involved, those irregularities were encouraged by and were beneficial to the claimant. It also concluded that the total offect of the manner in which the contract had bech adninistered was not shown by the record to have caused any pecuniary damago to the claimant. eds (over)