Court Opinion

ID: 9455059
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:09:36.689264+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:26.034741
License: Public Domain

HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge
(dissenting) :
With respect to my brothers, I must dissent, for I think they misapprehend the record, the issue presented, and the legal principle which should control its resolution.
Clarity may be served if I first lay aside one area in which there is no disagreement between us. The fact that the barge had earlier been declared a total constructive loss gave no subsequent wrongdoer an immunity. The District Judge did not hold otherwise. I readily agree, too, that the fact that she was previously declared a constructive total *659loss has no legal significance in itself in the assessment of the damages or in the application of the governing legal principles. It has only historical significance as the basis upon which the salvor, the principal libelant, acquired her. The prior physical history of the barge, however, is highly relevant in explanation of her condition, her value and potential uses, with respect to all of which the record is far clearer with much less disagreement than the majority opinion might indicate.
The Barge 1401 had been purchased in 1958 for $40,000 and immediately insured for $45,000. One month later she sank. After salvage operations, the lowest bid for restoration to her former condition was $46,290. That was why she was declared a constructive total loss and surrendered to the salvor.
The salvor effected certain repairs costing only $1305.76, which had the effect of making her hull watertight. She was then usable as a pontoon in other salvage operations, as she was once used. It gave her a theoretical potentiality for hauling deck cargo, though she had never been used for such a purpose, and it is very doubtful that she could have been insured for such use.
The barge in her then condition had a market value of $5,616. This was her scrap value, but it was a ready market value, and it seems to me to be a mistake to approach the case as if there were no market value when everyone agrees there was.
Everyone agrees, too, that the market value of $5,616 was not affected in the slightest by the additional dent inflicted in her side when the Barge Bertie collided with her. The already battered Barge 1401 had a scrap value after the additional dent of $5,616, just as she had before.
The libelant here, of course, claimed that the Barge 1401 had a special value to him for use as a pontoon, as once he used it, and potentially, but highly theoretically, for use in carrying telephone poles or other dry deck cargo, a use in which she had never been engaged. It is true, of course, that the special value, if any, was not determined in the District Court, but everyone agrees that the additional dent placed in her side by the Barge Bertie did not effect any diminution in that value, whatever it was. She was as useful as a pontoon after she sustained this dent as she was before, and whatever potential she had for use in carrying deck cargo was not impaired in the slightest.
Under these circumstances, of course, the owner did not attempt to effect the repair of the barge for the repairs were estimated to cost $2,895, and that expenditure would not enhance the value of the barge or its usefulness to the libelant, or to anyone else, in the slightest. No one claims that any such repairs would ever be attempted. If the libelant prevails on the basis of the opinion of my brothers, his winnings will go as cash into his pocket and will not be applied to any reparation of the barge. It is thus clear beyond all dispute that repair is not economically practicable or feasible, and in no event will it be attempted.
It is thus settled in the record that' the additional dent inflicted by the Barge Bertie occasioned no diminution in the market value of the Barge 1401 of $5,-616; it occasioned no diminution in any special value she may have had to the libelant. Between the parties, there is no dispute about this. The conclusion is inescapable that the libelant has suffered no economic loss. The question then is whether the libelant’s damages should be measured by his economic loss, as was done in the District Court, or by an estimate of the cost of economically imprudent and senseless repair which has not been and never will be incurred.
I think the damages are to be measured by the economic loss sustained by the libelant and that no different rule can be found in admiralty by looking at isolated statements lifted from. their context.
In Williamson v. Barrett, 54 U.S. (13 How.) 101, 110, 14 L.Ed. 68, the Court *660stated what until today never seems to have been doubted: “The general rule in regulating damages in cases of collision is to allow the injured party an indemnity to the extent of the loss sustained.” The loss sustained, of course, is the difference in the value of the vessel before and after the collision, together with a sum to compensate for the loss of her service during the completion of repairs, if she is reparable. The particular question in Williamson related to the latter assessment. When repairs are economically feasible, however, the assessment of the first item of damage may not depend upon generalized appraisals of the value of the vessel before and after the collision, for the difference in fact is measured by the cost of repair. This was clearly stated in The Schooner Catharine v. Dickinson, 58 U.S. (17 How.) 170, 15 L.Ed. 233. The Catharine sank as a result of a collision just off the New Jersey coast and her owners sold her where she lay for $140. They claimed the difference between the appraised value of the vessel before the collision and $140. The fact, however, was that the schooner had been raised, repaired and returned to service. The Supreme Court held that the actual cost of raising the vessel, repairing her and returning her to service was a more accurate measure of the diminution in value than could be gotten by use of the owner’s sales price before she was raised or by the general opinions of inexpert witnesses that the vessel was worth no more than the owner’s appraisal before she was refloated.
Since the Supreme Court’s decision in The Catharine one frequently encounters the expression that the cost of repairs is the equivalent of the diminution in value. This is factually true whenever repairs are economically feasible, for whatever the appraisal of the vessel’s value before the collision, all practical men know that the diminution in value is measured by the reasonable cost of necessary repairs to substantially return the vessel to its former condition. That is a more accurate measure of the diminution than a comparison of appraisals by some of the precollision value with general appraisals by others of the post-collision value, as was held in The Catharine.
Where factual equivalency exists between diminution in value and cost of repair, there are still some limitations, for when the cost of restoring the vessel to her former condition is disproportionate to the cost of more limited repair which would substantially restore the vessel’s utility, recovery must be measured by the cost of the lesser repairs.1 As Judge Augustus Hand has stated in Zeller Marine Corporation v. Nessa Corporation, 2 Cir., 166 F.2d 32, 34, the owner “is only entitled to an award that would give him a boat as seaworthy and practically serviceable as before and not to an award, often much larger, sufficient to restore her to the identical condition she was in before the injury.”2 Where factual equivalency exists, therefore, between diminution in value and cost of repair, it is equivalent to the cost of such limited repairs as are necessary to make the vessel as seaworthy and practically useful as before, which, in this ease, is nothing at all.
There is not factual equivalency between diminution in value and the cost of repair when the cost of repair is greater than the precollision value of the vessel. In such a case, the measure of damages is clearly the precollision value of the vessel.3 That this truism *661is sometimes expressed as a limitation upon the right to recover cost of repairs does not obscure the absence of factual equivalency between diminution in value and cost of repair and the irrelevance of the cost of repair in such a situation. Cost of repair is not the measure of damages simply because in that situation it is not the factual equivalent of diminution in value.
In this case there is no factual equivalency between diminution in value and cost of repair. The parties and the court are agreed that there was no diminution in the market value of the barge, or in any special value it may have had to the libelant.4 The barge is now as seaworthy and as practically useful to the libelant as it was before the collision; it is worth just as much on the market. The majority, therefore, inevitably are suggesting that despite the conceded absence of factual equivalency between diminution in value and cost of repair, there is a legal equivalence which requires a disregard of its factual inconsistency. This, I submit is clearly refuted by the cases and the situations mentioned above when the cost of repair is not allowed as a measure of recovery in the absence of factual equivalency between such costs and diminution in value. It is a novel suggestion for which I can find no support in any case, and which seems to me at war with reason. With the assessment of damages, we move in ai very practical field where regard must be had for factual differences and obfuscating legal presumptions which would substitute rules of law for factual assessments have no place.
If my brothers are right, the libelant is unduly enriched. He must hope greatly that another errant navigator will hit his battered barge again, and still another yet again, so that each time he may happily pocket the estimated cost of theoretical repairs which neither he nor anyone else will ever dream of undertaking while retaining all along a barge as seaworthy and useful to him and of undiminished worth if he chooses to sell it.
The question is not whether the battered barge is an outlaw. It is not. The District Court held the tug and the Barge Bertie responsible for the economic loss of the libelant, and, of course, awarded to the libelant the costs of the action. I think the District Court properly determined the amount of the libelant’s loss and that my brothers stray far afield when they undertake to reappraise it by their creation of a legal presumption which is demonstrably inconsistent with the conceded factual situation.
I would affirm the judgment.

. The J. T. Easton, S.D.N.Y., 24 F. 95, 96; Zeller Marine Corp. v. Nessa Corp., 2 Cir., 166 F.2d 32, 33-34.

. The attempted distinction of Zeller by my brothers is actually a rejection of it; if Zeller and the majority opinion stand, the libelant in this case would receive only $50 had an expenditure of that amount been necessary to restore its seaworthiness even though total repairs would cost much more. But my brothers give him the total cost of repairs when seaworthiness is not impaired by the collision.

. See, e. g., The Nyland, D.C.Md., 164 F. Supp. 741, 743-744.

. The majority opinion suggests that the special values before and after the accident were not proved. The libelant, of course, would bear the burden of such proof, but the lack of such proof is irrelevant since the stipulated facts prove that there was no difference in the values.