United States v. Boecker/Opinion of the Court

The several provisions bearing on the subject, in the act of July 20th, 1868, under which the bond sued on in this case was taken, show the importance attached by the statute to the place as designated in the notice required to be given by the distiller before commencing business. Here the bond, it is to be presumed, followed the notice. The designation of the place is made important to the distiller, to his sureties, and to the government, in several respects. If the place be not as designated in the notice the distiller is outside of the law and liable to the penalties denounced by the sixth section. If it be within six hundred feet of premises authorized to be used for rectifying, he is liable to suffer as prescribed in the eighth section. The premises having been specified in the notice, the surety, before executing the bond, and the assessor, before taking it, may examine and determine how far, in the event of liability on the part of the principal, the property would be available as security for the government and indemnity for the surety.

If the proposition of the counsel for the United States were sustained, the designation of the place, as in this bond, instead of affording a limitation and a safeguard to the surety, might prove but a delusion and a snare, and subject him to liabilities which he could not have foreseen, and to the hazard of which he would not knowingly have exposed himself. In such cases, the United States having a lien, the surety is entitled to the benefit of it. He might be willing to bind himself where the lien was upon one piece or parcel of property, and unwilling where it was upon another. His ultimate immunity or liability might depend wholly upon the value of the premises. He had the option to assume the risk or not. This element may have controlled the exercise of his election.

Viewing the subject in the light of these considerations, we cannot assent to the view expressed by the counsel for the government. On the contrary, we think this term of the bond is of the essence of the contract. It is hardly less so than the amount of the penalty. One defines the place where the liability must arise, the other the maximum of that liability for which the sureties stipulated to be bound. The former can no more be held immaterial than the latter. No distillery having been carried on at the place named, the contract never took effect. The event to which it referred did not occur. There could consequently be no liability within the letter or meaning of the contract. It was as if the agreement had been for the good conduct of a clerk while in the service of B., and the clerk never entered his service, but entered into the service of another. Distilling begun and carried on elsewhere was no more within the obligation of the sureties than if it had been begun and carried on there or elsewhere by a person other than Boecker. No other place than that named is, under the circumstances of this case, within the letter, spirit, or meaning of the bond. The specification has no elasticity. It cannot be made to extend to the locality where the distillery here in question was placed. In Miller v. Stewart, this court said: 'Nothing can be clearer, both upon principle and authority, than the doctrine that the liability of a surety is not to be extended by implication beyond the terms of his contract. To the extent, and in the manner, and under the circumstances pointed out in his obligation he is bound, and no further. . . . It is not sufficient that he may sustain no injury by a change in the contract, or that it may even be for his benefit. He has a right to stand upon the very terms of his contract, and if he does not assent to any variation of it and a variation is made, it is fatal.'

To the same effect is Ludlow v. Simond. There is no more learned and elaborate case upon the subject.

The leading English case is Lord Arlington v. Merricke.

These authorities are conclusive of the case before us. It is needless to analyze and discuss them. Others, without number, maintaining the same principle, might be referred to. Many of those most apposite to this case are cited in the argument of the counsel for the defendants in error. The rules of the common law upon the subject are as old as the Year Books. Those rules were doubtless borrowed from the earlier Roman jurisprudence, known as the civil law. They obtain throughout the States of our Union. The adjudications everywhere are in substantial harmony.

The question here was not as to the law in the abstract, but as to its application to the facts of the case.

A careful examination has satisfied us that the learned judge upon the trial below instructed the jury correctly.

JUDGMENT AFFIRMED.