Court Opinion

ID: 9642590
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 18:03:42.672336+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:49.880240
License: Public Domain

L. HAND, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
This ease presents a question of fact on which the judge has found for-the respondent. He saw the libelant and his witness McCormack, and did not believe them when they said that the second engineer, Driscoll, gave any order to turn the ventilator by the added leverage of the pipe. Indeed, the supposed order was at most no more than a suggestion, even as the libelant states it. The judge also found that the chief engineer, Davenport, told the libelant not to touch the ventilator.. Though he saw neither Dri'scoll nor Davenport, there is no reason á priori for accepting the libelant’s story against theirs; rather the opposite, for certainly the libelant was under a much stronger motive to color the facts than they. What warrant we have for upsetting these findings I cannot understand; in a great many decisions we have refused to do so in similar situations.
Unless Driscoll did at least suggest the effort, the libelant assumed any risk in doing what he did. He knew that the ventilator had stuck, and if he did not know that he was setting up a strong torque in the rod, he should not have put the force of two men upon the handle without finding out whether it would stand such a strain and what might be the effect, if it would not. The conditions in the engine room were certainly severe, but without the supposed order, the case does not fall within those decisions which hold that a seaman on shipboard must obey orders. Indeed, I do not understand that my Brothers mean to hold otherwise. The ship was indeed unseaworthy, but the injury was in no sense the “proximate” result of that, and for sueh results alone was the owner liable. The Malcolm Baxter, Jr., 277 U. S. 323, 48 S. Ct. 516, 72 L. Ed. 901. Therefore, the ship was not liable at all; but if she was, I think that an award of $20,000 is much in excess of the proper amount.