Court Opinion

ID: 9653887
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:58:03.264529+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:03.254071
License: Public Domain

L. HAND, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
My brothers agree that if the contract had involved only a promis'e to procure insurance, and no insurance had been procured, this libel would not lie in the admiralty. There are difficulties in applying this, when such a promise is contained in a general contract of carriage; it imposes upon the shipper the choice of foregoing access to an admiralty court upon the contract of carriage, or of abandoning his right of action on the promise to procure insurance. He can hardly bring two suits on the same contract, and in his suit in the admiralty he cannot by hypothesis include the promise to .procure insurance. If I were free, I think I might hold that the promise was merely an incident to the general contract of carriage, and came within the admiralty’jurisdiction along with the rest. However, the authorities cited by my brothers are quite in point, and with them I accept the doctrine that one cannot sue in the admiralty .upon such a promise, even when so incorporated.
The amended libel here set up no cause of suit upon the breach of the promise to carry, because though it does allege that the goods were not delivered, it does not allege any actionable wrong in that failure. The only breach was in not securing the inspection upon which the continued validity of the coverage depended .while on the Great Lakes. That inspection was not part of the - performance of the promise to carry; the respondent would not' have been liable as carrier, had it failed to get it. Indeed it was no part-of any express undertaking at all, but merely an implied part of procuring-the coverage. Had the respondent agreed only to take out a policy for the Great Lakes, it appears to me impossible to say that it would have performed merely by getting a certificate from the underwriters, upon whose validity there was an unperformed condition precedent. The. promise was not to get a certificate, but insurance; the breach would have been only of that promise. Certainly, .it can make no difference that the promise here included insurance on the Barge Canal as well; the breach remained the same, the absence of the stipulated insurance.
Hence I cannot see how this case can be turned into the breach of a contract of carriage, and unless we were prepared to overrule the decisions which hold that a promise to procure insurance contained in such a contract may not be sued on in the admiralty, I cannot concur. None of us is prepared to overrule them.