Court Opinion

ID: 9442461
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 18:49:08.654165+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:06.289567
License: Public Domain

L. HAND, Chief Judge
(concurring).
I should not add anything to what my brothers say, were it not that I cannot agree with the distinction they make between The Chattahoochee, 173 U.S. 540, 9 S.Ct. 491, 43 L.Ed. 801, and the case at bar. The sunken schooner in that case caused injuries to the steamer for which she would have been liable, had she survived, and which went in reduction of her owner’s damages; but the damages which the steamer had to pay to the cargo were of course no part of the injuries done to the steamer. Like the injuries to the steamer, they were indeed caused by the joint act of both the steamer and the schooner; but except for § 3 of the Harter Act each wrongdoer would have been liable in solido to the cargo, whose claim against each would have been independent of the steamer’s claim against the schooner for her injuries. The question was whether the steamer could compel the schooner to contribute to the compensation for this independent wrong done to the cargo by the faults of both. I cannot understand how it serves to answer that question that the same acts which caused damage to the cargo, also caused damage to the steamer. If that were so, it would follow that if the breaking of the guy wire in the case at bar had injured not only Veloz but some part of the ship, the ship would have been able to exact contribution for Veloz’s injuries. I should certainly regard that as an altogether irrelevant circumstance, and I fancy that my brothers would agree. But, if it would be irrelevant, the absence of any injury to the ship cannot be a ground for distinguishing The Chattahoochee, supra.
I agree that the Longshoremen’s and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act need not inevitably be construed to include a release, not only from direct claims by employees, but from contribution to third persons from whom employees have recovered; and the reason why I think it should be so construed is that it has imposed upon employers an absolute, though limited, liability, in exchange for a release from the preceding unlimited liability, conditional upon negligence. The release should, I submit, have the same scope as the imposed liability, which extends as well to injuries caused by a joint wrong, as 1° those caused by the wrong of the employer alone.
The release from liability to her cargo for faults of navigation which § 3 of the Harter Act grants to a ship, was also conditioned upon an imposed liability, for it depended upon the ship’s due diligence in making herself seaworthy cap-a-pie.1 It can therefore be argued that, since The Chattahoochee, supra, decided that release did not extend to joint faults, we should hold that the act at bar does not release an employer for a joint fault; and a number of district courts have so held. However, although it is true that § 3 did impose a new liability upon the ship, the burden of it was very slight. Before the Harter Act the owner, as a common carrier, had not been free to release himself by contract from his liability for negligence,2 and under § 2, 46 U.S.C.A. § 191, he obtained the power to do so, if he used *326dué diligence to man and equip the ship. That was a privilege; and, although he had had power to contract himself out of his duty of furnishing a seaworthy ship, which § 2 took away, that disability extended only to cases where he had not used diligence to make her seaworthy. Thus, so far as concerned § 2, there was a balance of advantage and disadvantage. And while, as I have said, § 3 did make it a condition upon the release that due diligence should b,e used to make the ship seaworthy even in respects not relevant to the carriage, in practice that has not added a heavy burden.
Thus, the effect of the doctrine of The Chattahoochee, supra, was that the sum of these changes in the owner’s duties was not enough to justify extending the release beyond direct claims of shippers. Wheth-» er, ,as res integra, that was right, is not important here; what is important is that the balance between the changes made there as a condition of the release, was very different from a similar balance in the case at bar. It is for these reasons that I do not think The Chattahoochee, supra, a precedent.

. May v. Hamburg-Amerikanische, etc. Gesellschaft, 290 U.S. 333, 54 S.Ct. 162, 78 L.Ed. 348.

. Liverpool & G. W. Steam Co. v. Phenix Ins. Co., 129 U.S. 397, 9 S.Ct 469, 32 L.Ed. 788.