Court Opinion

ID: 8836764
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 16:26:58.423306+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:05:05.578441
License: Public Domain

ON REHEARING.
Lacombe, J.
The reargument in this case has covered so wide a range that I have felt it necessary to review the greater part of the testimony. No substantial change, however, has been thus wrought in the conclusions announced in the original opinion. I was not then able from the testimony to indicate upon the chart the exact position of the Newport at 6:40 p. m., nor am I now. The testimony as to the courses taken by that vessel after passing Scotland light-ship is not sufficiently positive to support the precise statement contained in the fifth finding, which was not as carefully drawn as it should have been, and should therefore be now amended by stating that she took a course of about S. by E., on which she ran about 40 minutes, and then took a course of about S. half W. The same finding should further be amended so as to state her speed after she passed the Scotland light-ship at over (instead of about) 14 knots an hour, as I feel satisfied, from a re-examination of the testimony, that I did not allow enough for the action of the wind, and entirely overlooked the operation of the tide. While unable to locate the precise position of the Newport at 6:40 p. m., my re-examination of the case has not changed the opinion heretofore formed that she was more than six miles off shore, and hence could not have sunk the wreck afterwards found four and a half miles off shore. The bearing testified to by Johnson was not overlooked upon the first examination of the case, nor was it doubted that ho took the bearing accurately. It does not follow, however, that his unaided recollection of what that bearing was, and of the time and place at which (relatively to the steamer’s prior movements) it was taken, should be accepted as controlling of the case, unless upon a weighing of his testimony in comparison with all the evidence considered as a whole the fair preponderance of probability is that the Newport and the Shaw were at the same place at 6:40 p. M. My former opinion as to the preponderance of proof on this point is unchanged by the reargument. With the alterations above suggested, the findings and conclusions may stand,