Cite as: 516 U. S. 417 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
tracting officer would not agree to the open-ended indemnification alleged here. The Anti-Deficiency Act bars a federal employee or agency from entering into a contract for future payment of money in advance of, or in excess of, an existing appropriation. 31 U. S. C. § 1341.9 Ordinarily no federal appropriation covers contractors' payments to third-party tort claimants in these circumstances, and the Comptroller General has repeatedly ruled that Government procurement agencies may not enter into the type of open-ended indemnity for third-party liability that petitioner Thompson claims to have implicitly received under the Agent Orange contracts.10 We view the Anti-Deficiency Act, and the contract-as true and still find them inadequate. In addition, we are skeptical that any material information regarding these 30-year-old transactions remains undisclosed, yet still discoverable. Hercules, and presumably Thompson, had access to all discovery materials (including thousands of documents and scores of depositions) produced during the Agent Orange class-action litigation. See Motion of United States for a Protective Order Staying Discovery in No. 90-496 (Cl. Ct.), pp. 1, 3-4, n. 1.
9 The Anti-Deficiency Act, 31 U. S. C. § 1341, provides: "(a)(1) An officer or employee of the United States Government or of the District of Columbia government may not—
"(A) make or authorize an expenditure or obligation exceeding an amount available in an appropriation or fund for the expenditure or obligation;
"(B) involve either government in a contract or obligation for the payment of money before an appropriation is made unless authorized by law."
10 With one peculiar exception that the Comptroller General expressly sanctioned, "the accounting officers of the Government have never issued a decision sanctioning the incurring of an obligation for an open-ended indemnity in the absence of statutory authority to the contrary." In re Assumption by Government of Contractor Liability to Third Persons— Reconsideration, 62 Comp. Gen. 361, 364-365 (1983). Justice Breyer finds our reliance on the Comptroller General problematic because of a Comptroller General opinion that finds capped indemnity agreements not improper. Post, at 437-438. But the Anti-Deficiency Act applies equally to capped indemnification agreements. We do not suggest that all indemnification agreements would violate the Act, cf. infra, at 428-429 (citing
427
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