Court Opinion

ID: 9452572
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:45:04.006131+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:16.371917
License: Public Domain

McLAUGHLIN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
In this unnecessarily complicated case, the trial judge, on the mistaken idea that there was contradictory factual evidence regarding the stevedore’s negligence respecting the accumulation of peat moss on the floor of the tank, submitted that issue to the jury. The court did accurately confine the negligence problem to the peat moss accumulation. The removal of the cover itself over the hole in the hold does not enter into the situation before us. It was the concealment of the hole by the loose peat moss which prevented the plaintiff Jones from seeing it and caused him to inadvertently- step into the hole and to fall.
Jones was the sole witness who testified about the state of the tank before he fell. He said that “* * * on the floor itself there was about a foot of peat moss, * * * in some places there were more, of loose peat moss, and we — and I didn’t see the floor at all.” Asked “Was it possible to see the floor?” Jones replied, “No, sir, it wasn’t.” (Emphasis supplied). Describing the accident he said that “I was going back to get the last one (bale), when my leg disappeared in the peat moss, and as my left leg went in, my right leg went out from under *192me, and I, of course, had lost my complete balance.” The trial judge misunderstood the evidence of the ship’s Chief Officer Mulder who inspected the tank immediately after Jones’ fall. The Chief Officer said that in the center of the tank where the opening was, the depth of the peat moss, “I would say was about a foot.” (Emphasis supplied). By groping around he found the cover and asked how much peat moss was on the top of it, he answered, “Two or three inches.” It was this latter figure that the judge mistakenly noted as testimony from Mulder “that there was approximately 2 to 3 inches of loose peat moss in the area of the bilge box.”
An expert stevedore testified that it was not proper, safe stevedoring practice to allow loose peat moss to accumulate as had been testified to (and not denied), during discharge of such cargo. The stevedore-foreman on this particular unloading, testifying on behalf of the Philadelphia Company, stated that “We move peat moss if it gets too deep * * His method of removal was substantially that of the above mentioned expert.
It seems to me that soundly and fairly all of the fact evidence in this trial pointed to the glaring proximate fault of the stevedore company in the discharge of the peat moss cargo. That result cannot be impugned by the attempted brushing aside of the expert’s testimony as opinion evidence. The hard fact that plaintiff was hurt through the inexcusable carelessness of the stevedore was not dependent on acceptance or rejection of the clearly right judgment of the expert. He merely rounded out the entirely, undisputed factual showing of just what had caused plaintiff’s fall. His testimony was at most collateral to the dis-positive proof of the stevedore’s responsibility for the accident. On countless occasions negligence questions are, as they should be, referred to a jury but there are trials, of which this appeal is a prime example, where the evidence demands affirmative action from the court as a matter of law.
I would reverse the judgment of the district court.
Before STALEY, Chief Judge, and McLaughlin, kalodner, hastie, GANEY, SMITH, FREEDMAN and SEITZ, Circuit Judges.
OPINION OF THE COURT
PER CURIAM:
The judges who heard the appeal on reargument being equally divided, the judgment of the district court will be affirmed.