Case ID: la-ann_6/html/0490-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      Smdelx., J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Stephen Glover v. Dufour, Williams & Co.
    Where casks of wine had been so badly stowed, that in a gale of wind of no great violence, they were turned with the bungs down, so as to cause leakage through the vent holes left for the fermentation of the wine, Held,: that the vessel was not entitled to freight.
    APPEAL from the Fourth District Court of New Orleans, Strawbridge, J.
    
      W. II. Hunt, for plaintiff.
    
      W. O. Denég e, for defendant.
   The judgment of the court was pronounced by

Smdelx., J.

The action is for amount of freight and primage on a quantity of mats and quarter casks of wine, per bark Fanny, from Alicant to New Orleans. The defendants admit the delivery of the goods, but plead that two of the quarter casks were empty, seventeen -nearly empty, thirty had lost from four to fourteen gallons each, and the leakage arose from improper stowage.

The testimony shows, that there were vent holes in the bungs which would permit leakage if the bungs were turned down, but that this would not occur if the casks were stowed bung up, except such slight loss as might result from fermentation. The evidence satisfies us, as it did the district judge, that the unusual leakage which occurred was the consequence of the casks breaking loose from their stowage in a gale, and the bungs being thus more or less turned down. Then the question remains, were the casks badly stowed ? The district judge thought so; and a perusal of the evidence has not satisfied us that he drew a wrong conclusion. The gale does not appear to have been of such extraordinary violence as would have disarranged the casks in the manner described by the plaintiff’s own witness, if the stowage had been careful.

Judgment affirmed, with costs.