Boston & Maine Railroad v. United States

Each of the plaintiffs transported freight for the United States, submitted its bills therefor, and was paid the amounts shown on the bills. These bills were based upon the applicable minimum charge for freight cars of the length actually used for the transportation. In the cases here involved, the Government’s agents had ordered shorter cars, and the shorter cars ordered would have been long enough to contain the goods actually shipped. Years later, when the General Accounting Office got around to auditing the railroads’ bills, it concluded that the railroads should have charged only for…