Court Opinion

ID: 9446273
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:50:32.374526+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:35.460793
License: Public Domain

DIMOCK, District Judge
(dissenting in part).
I agree that petitioner should be permitted to seek contribution but I dissent from so much of the decision as directs that the decree provide for contribution in this limitation proceeding.
The final decree below discharged Leonard Costas, the owner of the motor boat, from liability to petitioner, the owner of the tug. It thus prevented petitioner from recovering contribution from Leonard Costas in some subsequent proceeding. Petitioner appealed “from that part of the final decree * * * which holds that claimant Leonard Cos-tas shall be discharged from liability.” The decree was incorrect in prohibiting petitioner from obtaining from Leonard Costas contribution of his share of the total damage. Petitioner was entitled to the elimination of that part of the decree from which it had appealed and to be *917made free to pursue its remedy in a subsequent proceeding.
My brethren have, however, gone much farther. They have directed that the decree be refashioned so as to provide for recovery in this limitation proceeding of Leonard Costas’ half share of the burden of the payments by petitioner to the other claimants. The issue whether the decree should provide for contribution by Leonard Costas was an issue upon which Leonard Costas had never had an opportunity to be heard, and, less important, was an issue not raised by petitioner’s notice of appeal.
The effect of Algoma Central & Hudson Ry. Co. v. Great L. T. Corp., 2 Cir., 86 F.2d 708, as explained in British Transport Comm. v. U. S., 354 U.S. 129, 141, 77 S.Ct. 1103, is that a petitioner in a limitation proceeding cannot recover contribution without filing a counterclaim therefor. The object of the rule is not to insure the performance of an idle ceremony. Its purpose is to give the party from whom contribution is sought an opportunity to defend against the claim. For instance, he may himself wish to defend by pleading and establishing limitation of his liability. The Chickie, 3 Cir., 141 F.2d 80; The West Point, D.C.E.D.Va., 83 F.Supp. 680; cf. Cantwell v. Meade, D.C.E.D.N.Y., 120 F.Supp. 406.
My brethren say that the rule requiring the filing of a pleading is subject to the gloss that, when issues not raised in the pleadings are tried by express or implied consent of the parties, they are to be treated in all respects as if raised by the pleadings. Even so, the issue of the right of petitioner to a decree for contribution was never tried here by consent or otherwise. That right was never claimed until the settlement of the interlocutory decree. At that time and at the settlement of the final decree petitioner submitted proposed decrees which contained provisions for contribution. The submission of these proposed decrees is evidently the basis for the statement in the majority opinion that the issues between the parties had been completely settled. The statement must rest upon 'one or both of two conclusions: First, that, when Leonard Costas received a proposed decree in which petitioner sought to embody a determination which had never been made, it was Leonard Costas’ duty to file an answer to it and ask for a hearing instead of relying on the court to refuse to resolve an unliti-gated issue; or, second, that, when the court received the proposed decree seeking embodiment of an unmade determination, it was the court’s duty to summon Leonard Costas to file an answer to it and the court presumably performed that duty and Leonard Costas presumably defaulted in answering.
It seems to me that neither conclusion has any basis in reality. Nothing of the kind occurs under present practice. If counsel, in examining a proposed decree, are to be expected at their peril to search through it for provisions tendering new issues and then to answer them, one more hazard and uncertainty will have been added to those now inherent in litigation. If a judge, in examining a proposed decree, is to be expected to treat it as possibly containing claims which he ought to require the opposing party to admit or deny and which, if denied, he ought to hear and determine, the function of the useful device of submission of competing forms of judgment for settlement will be so perverted that the device will put sand rather than oil in the gears of the legal machine.
It may well be that Leonard Costas would have been unable to establish a defense by way of limitation or otherwise to a claim for contribution. He has, however, never been called upon to present such a defense. No pleading warned him of any possibility that, unless he asserted and established in the limitation proceeding a defense to a claim for contribution, he would be deemed to have no valid defense to one. No issue of contribution was tried by the court. My brethren believe that, if Leonard Costas had been called upon to present his defenses to a claim for contribution and had asserted such a defense, he would *918have been unsuccessful. That ought not to make any difference. Leonard Costas either had to present his defenses to contribution in the limitation proceeding or he did not. If he did not have to present them there we are not justified in precluding him from presenting them elsewhere just because we doubt his ability to establish one.
So much for the fundamental point that the decision of the majority determines against Leonard Costas an issue on which he has never been heard.
Not only have my brethren precluded Leonard Costas from asserting a defense in this proceeding but, in the course of doing so, they have made what I believe to be a material departure from procedural rules. Petitioner appealed “from that part of the final decree * * * which holds that claimant Leonard Cos-tas shall be discharged from liability”— i.e. from the decree insofar as it prevented subsequent assertion of a claim for contribution such as was suggested in Algoma. Leonard Costas came into the Court of Appeals prepared to oppose that appeal. He goes out of the Court of Appeals having been defeated on a different appeal, an appeal from the decree insofar as it failed to direct an affirmative recovery of contribution from him. The majority brush aside Rule 73(b) P.R.Civ.P. which directs that the notice of appeal shall designate the judgment “or part thereof” appealed from by referring to the requirement as a “means of identification, and not as a step in appellate pleading.” Identification for what purpose? I can see no reason for identifying the part of a judgment appealed from if the appeal from part constitutes an appeal from the whole. Surely we can rely on enough craftsmanship in the bar to indicate the extent to which the judgment of the lower court is challenged. The matter is not one of assignments of error committed in the proceedings below but rather of specification of how far the appellant wants the formal sentence of the court changed and how far he wants it left as it is. Here again I think that the court is taking a step backwards. The necessarily complex and time consuming presentation and decision of appeals will become still more involved and protracted if the appellee must in his argument anticipate possible reversals of parts of the judgment which have not been appealed from.
I would do no more than reverse the decree insofar as appealed from and direct the District Court to eliminate the provision that Leonard Costas be discharged from liability to petitioner.