
    GEORGE E. JOHNSON, Administrator, v. THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. MARGARET R. SHECKELS ET AL. v. THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.
    [31 C. Cls. R., 395; 165 U. S., 330.]
    
      On the defendants1 Appeal.
    
    Tlie suit is Brought under the act of 1880. The defendants set up a counterclaim for an overpayment at hoard rates when the contractor was entitled only to contract rates. The claimants now come in under the act 13th February, 1895, which allows to all contractors the rates established and paid by the board of public works.
    The court below decides:
    1. The Act 13th February, 1895 (28 Stat. L., 664), requires this court to allow to all claimants under the District Claims Act, 1880 (21 Stat. L., 284), the rates established and paid by the board of public works, and in effect sets, aside former decisions and leaves nothing for the court to do but earry-out its mandate.
    2. Where judgment upon a counterclaim falls by reason of the statute, a claim for interest thereon falls with it. The rule of law is .that - ' ‘ when the principal of a debt is extinguished by payment the interest is also extinguished. The rule applies with equal force where the principal is extinguished by a statute.
    The decision of the court below is reversed ou the ground that the court, following the act 1880, found that the amounts due the claimants under the act 1805 were due and payable at periods nearly twenty years previous to the latter act, and that as the effect of the latter act must be regarded as a gratuity, a gift wholly without consideration, the statute itself must receive a strict construction, such as shall not be enlarged by inference or implication, and that under such construction the amount found due was due and payable only from the time when the act which gave it was passed.
   Mr. Justice Pecicham

delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court, February 15,1897.  