892
Opinion of Souter, J.
In Horowitz, the plaintiff sued to recover damages for breach of a contract to purchase silk from the Ordnance Department. The agreement included a promise by the Department to ship the silk within a certain time, although the manner of shipment does not appear to have been a subject of the contract. Shipment was delayed because the United States Railroad Administration placed an embargo on shipments of silk by freight, and by the time the silk reached Horowitz the price had fallen, rendering the deal unprofitable. This Court barred any damages award for the delay, noting that "[i]t has long been held by the Court of Claims that the United States when sued as a contractor cannot be held liable for an obstruction to the performance of the particular contract resulting from its public and general acts as a sovereign." 267 U. S., at 461. This statement was not, however, meant to be read as broadly as the Government urges, and the key to its proper scope is found in that portion of our opinion explaining that the essential point was to put the Government in the same position that it would have enjoyed as a private contractor:
" 'The two characters which the government possesses as a contractor and as a sovereign cannot be thus fused; nor can the United States while sued in the one character be made liable in damages for their acts done in the other. Whatever acts the government may do, be they legislative or executive, so long as they be public and general, cannot be deemed specially to alter, modify, obstruct or violate the particular contracts into which it enters with private persons. . . . In this court the United States appear simply as contractors; and they are to be held liable only within the same limits that any other defendant would be in any other court. Though their sovereign acts performed for the general good may work injury to some private contractors, such parties gain nothing by having the United States as their defend-
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