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Opinion of the Court
acted to accomplish. Keene fails to explain how the original statute would have applied to the cotton claimants, whose tort actions brought in other courts were beyond the jurisdiction of the Court of Claims, just as tort cases are outside the jurisdiction of the Court of Federal Claims today.8 Keene's theory was squarely rejected in British American Tobacco,9 and it must be rejected again this time.
8 It is not that Keene has not tried to meet the objection. Keene assumes, contrary to the plain text, that the statute here is not jurisdictional, arguing instead that it was meant to supplement the formalistic 19th-century concept of res judicata. According to Keene, res judicata would not have barred a cotton claimant from instigating an action against a federal officer who had acted for the Government, even though the claimant had lost an otherwise identical action against the Government itself (and vice versa), the difference between the named defendants being significant at that time. On the assumption that the statute eliminated nonidentity of parties defendant as a barrier to the application of res judicata, Keene then argues that causes of action were treated as identical in those days if the same evidence was used to prove multiple claims. On this view of the law, Keene concludes, multiple cotton claims would have been treated as the same, and the statute would have barred the Court of Claims suit, just as Congress intended. Reply Brief for Petitioner 7. Even on its own terms, however, this argument fails, for the Court of Claims in 1868 had no jurisdiction to try a tort action for conversion, however similar it might have been for res judicata purposes to the statutory action within that court's jurisdiction. Accordingly, under Keene's claim-splitting theory, the conversion action would not have been treated as identical with the statutory action; each would have survived, leaving the statute useless to solve the problem Congress was addressing.
9 Keene claims that its view represents "well-established law," citing Allied Materials & Equipment Co. v. United States, 210 Ct. Cl. 714 (1976) (per curiam), and Casman v. United States, supra. Brief for Petitioner 15. In Casman, however, the plaintiff was seeking completely different relief in the Court of Claims and the District Court, and later cases have read Casman as limited to that situation. See Johns-Manville Corp., 855 F. 2d, at 1566-1567; Boston Five Cents Savings Bank, FSB v. United States, 864 F. 2d, at 139. Although it is not clear whether the plaintiff in Allied Materials was seeking completely different relief in the District Court, the Court of Claims simply applied Casman without much explanation. Neither Casman nor Allied Materials discussed, much less purported to overrule, British American Tobacco Co. v. United States, 89 Ct. Cl. 438 (1939), a case that undoubtedly is well established. See, e. g.,
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