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Opinion of the Court
standard), he sued in the Court of Claims on allegations that he had been underpaid by more than $4.3 million. Earlier the same day, the plaintiff had filed a suit in Federal District Court "for the recovery of the same amount for the same gold bullion surrendered." Id., at 439. The Court of Claims observed that "[t]he only distinction between the two suits instituted in the District Court and in this court is that the action in the District Court was made to sound in tort and the action in this court was alleged on contract." Id., at 440. Because the two actions were based on the same operative facts, the court dismissed the Court of Claims action for lack of jurisdiction, finding it to be "clear that the word 'claim,' as used in section 154, . . . has no reference to the legal theory upon which a claimant seeks to enforce his demand." Ibid.
These precedents demonstrate that under the immediate predecessor of § 1500, the comparison of the two cases for purposes of possible dismissal would turn on whether the plaintiff's other suit was based on substantially the same operative facts as the Court of Claims action, at least if there was some overlap in the relief requested.6 See Skinner & Eddy, supra; Corona Coal, supra. That the two actions were based on different legal theories did not matter. See British American Tobacco, supra. Since Keene has given us no reason to doubt that these cases represented settled law when Congress reenacted the "claim for or in respect to which" language in 1948, see 62 Stat. 942, we apply the presumption that Congress was aware of these earlier judicial interpretations and, in effect, adopted them. Lorillard v. Pons, 434 U. S. 575, 580 (1978); cf. United States v. Powell, 379 U. S. 48, 55, n. 13 (1964) (presumption does
6 Because the issue is not presented on the facts of this case, we need not decide whether two actions based on the same operative facts, but seeking completely different relief, would implicate § 1500. Cf. Casman v. United States, 135 Ct. Cl. 647 (1956); Boston Five Cents Savings Bank, FSB v. United States, 864 F. 2d 137 (CA Fed. 1988).
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