210
Opinion of the Court
B
The statutory notion of comparable claims is more elusive. By precluding jurisdiction over the claim of a plaintiff with a suit pending in another court "for or in respect to" the same claim, § 1500 requires a comparison between the claims raised in the Court of Federal Claims and in the other lawsuit. The exact nature of the things to be compared is not illuminated, however, by the awkward formulation of § 1500. Nor does it advance the ball very far to recognize from the statute's later reference to "the cause of action alleged in such suit or process," that the term "claim" is used here synonymously with "cause of action," see Black's Law Dictionary 247 (6th ed. 1990) (defining "claim" as "cause of action"), since, as both parties admit, "cause of action," like "claim," can carry a variety of meanings. See Brief for Petitioner 18; Brief for United States 15; see also Johns-Manville Corp., 855 F. 2d, at 1560.
Fortunately, though, we can turn to earlier readings of the word "claim" as it appears in this statute. The phrase "any claim . . . for or in respect to which" has remained unchanged since the statute was first adopted in 1868, see Act of June 25, 1868, ch. 71, § 8, 15 Stat. 77, and prior encounters with § 154 of the Judicial Code of 1911, the immediate predecessor to § 1500, shed some light on the issue. Corona Coal Co. v. United States, 263 U. S. 537 (1924), was an action brought against the United States in the Court of Claims, seeking compensation for coal requisitioned by the Government. Before bringing its appeal to this Court, the plaintiff sued the President's agent in Federal District Court, "the causes of action therein set forth being the same as that set forth in the [Court of Claims] case." Id., at 539. After noting that the causes of action "arose out of" the same factual setting, we applied § 154 and dismissed the
Inc. v. United States, 962 F. 2d 1013, 1030, n. 5 (CA Fed. 1992) (Plager, J., dissenting).
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