Opinion ID: 2959866
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Onboard the Clary

Text: The Clary, a 138.5 meters-long Singaporean flagged bulk carrier, was built in 1979. On the day of the collision, the Clary had been on a voyage from Savannah, Georgia to the Netherlands. In the moments leading up to the collision, there was only one man on the bridge: Second Officer Toncic. While the Clary’s bridge did not include an ARPA system, it did have a device that calculated closest points of approach, but only for vessels selected by Toncic. By 2:00 a.m., Second Officer Toncic noticed the Tricolor and the Kariba on his radar. By 2:02 a.m., if Toncic had plotted the point of possible collision, he would have noticed that only 3.1 miles separated the Clary from the point of collision with the Kariba. At 2:11:15 a.m., Toncic decided it was time to make his starboard turn in order to pass astern the Kariba and the Tricolor, as suggested by basic navigational rules. According to the findings of the district court, 6 Toncic then “moved away from his radar, plotted his position on the chart table,” then disengaged his autopilot and made a “dramatic” turn to starboard. In making his turn “dramatic,” Toncic had sought to ensure the maneuver would register on the radars of other ships. In their brief and at oral argument, counsel for the Clary stated an appropriately dramatic turn would be 50 or 55 degrees in magnitude. By the time the Clary turned to starboard, had the Kariba been able to maintain its westward course, the two ships would have been only about two miles apart while both were on a collision course. Two minutes later, Toncic heard “collision, collision, collision” on his VHF radio. Realizing the blips representing the Kariba and the Tricolor had coalesced and ceased to move, Toncic readjusted his course to sail northward, west of the collided ships. Toncic did not answer the distress call. Toncic later explained he thought the ships had only “kissed.” After passing through the area of the collision, Toncic erased his chart. At trial, Toncic admitted that “someone” had altered the Clary’s logbook pages so as to reflect that conditions were clear, and that there were two other men on deck at the time of the collision—an Able Bodied Seaman at the wheel, and a lookout. C. The Procedural Posture In June 2003, Otal Investments, Ltd., the owner of the Kariba (hereinafter, Otal and the Kariba together will be called the “Kariba”), filed a complaint in the Southern District of New York “seeking Exoneration from or Limitation of Liability.” See 46 U.S.C. App. § 183 et seq., replaced by 46 U.S.C. § 30505, et seq., and Fed. R. Civ. P. Supplemental Admiralty Rule F. In response to this complaint, numerous claimants filed claims against the Kariba, seeking damages for the loss of their cargo, which had sunk along with the Tricolor (hereinafter, the claimants will 7 be called the “cargo owners”). Meanwhile, the Kariba impleaded the Clary and the Tricolor as third-party defendants. The Kariba and the cargo owners settled their disputes before trial, and the Tricolor agreed to resolve its disputes against the Kariba in Belgium. For the district court, this left only the disputes between the Kariba and the cargo owners, on the one side, and the Clary and the Tricolor, on the other. After a bench trial, the court ruled in favor of the Clary and the Tricolor, finding the Kariba to have been the sole cause of the collision. See In re Otal Investments Ltd., No. 03-4304, 2006 Dist. LEXIS 5293 at  (S.D.N.Y. January 9, 2006). Both the Kariba and the cargo owners appealed from this judgment, seeking a reversal of the district court’s determination that the Kariba was solely liable. The Clary and the Tricolor seek to preserve that decision.