In the case of Wood et al., trading as Philadelphia Steam Heating Company, v. United States in 1921, the U.S Supreme Court ruled on a dispute involving wartime contracts and compensation. The Philadelphia Steam Heating Company had entered into several contracts with the federal government during World War I to provide heating equipment for military facilities. However, after the war ended prematurely, many of these contracts were cancelled by mutual agreement but without any provision for compensating Wood et al. for losses incurred due to cancellation. They sued under the Dent Act (1919), which allowed contractors to recover costs from cancelled wartime agreements if they could prove that their profits would have been "reasonable". The court held that since there was no evidence presented showing what a reasonable profit might be or how it should be calculated in this context, it was impossible to determine whether or not such profits would have been made at all and thus denied recovery.

The dissenting opinion in the case of Wood et al., trading as Philadelphia Steam Heating Company, v. United States argued that the majority's decision to uphold a conviction for conspiracy to defraud the government was incorrect because it relied on an overly broad interpretation of what constitutes fraud. The dissenters believed that while some actions taken by the defendants may have been unethical or dishonest, they did not meet the legal definition of fraud because there was no clear evidence showing intent to deceive or cause financial loss. They also disagreed with how certain pieces of evidence were interpreted and felt that more weight should have been given to other factors such as whether any actual harm resulted from their actions.