Court Opinion

ID: 9463339
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:03:32.561845+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:02.345075
License: Public Domain

FRIENDLY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
My disagreement with the majority is narrow. As I read my brother Mulligan’s opinion, he does not dispute that if the vessel had sustained her burden of proving that the towing operation, with its hazard of a broken tow line, significantly enhanced the risk that the Beauregard would drift to port and scrape her bottom, the damage would have been a “direct consequence” of the general average act under Rule G of the York-Antwerp Rules. Cf. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 442B, Comment b at 470 (1965), see also id. § 432. The majority considers, however, that the district court found, and properly could find, that the maneuver did not significantly enhance the risk of what in fact occurred. I do not read the findings that way.
The briefs and argument before us focused on findings 8 and 9; appellees would read more into them than they say. Finding 8 says only that there was a 50.1% chance that the Beauregard “would have shifted roughly to ‘position B’, regardless of whether the tow had been attempted.” If the tow increased this risk to say 75%, the tow would have been a significant factor in *1319enhancing the risk, yet the maneuver would still have been prudent in light of the plaintiffs’ proposed finding of fact 6, incorporated by the court as its finding 13:
While the vessel was in her first position immediately after the stranding with her bow embedded in the breakwater, she was subject to obvious perils. She could have been holed and broken where she was, as had another vessel previously, and all might have been lost.
Finding 9 has the same elusive quality of seeming to say more than it really does. All that it actually says is that if the tow had not been attempted, the vessel would either have drifted as she did or suffered something much worse; it does not deny that the towing significantly enhanced the risk of a movement to port if the maneuver freed the ship from the rocks but the tow line then broke. The majority endeavor to supply this omission by reference to finding 12:
The master’s action in attempting the tow in no way increased the danger to the ship.
However, this comes in a portion of the findings devoted to showing that the master acted prudently, following immediately finding 11:
The master used good seaman’s judgment in attempting the tow.
and appellees did not contend that finding 12 had any relevance to the issue before us. Moreover, finding 12 also does not say what the majority evidently think it does; it is quite consistent with the view that even though the tow significantly increased the risk of a shift to port if the line should break after the vessel were partially freed, the total danger to the ship, including many dangers of quite different sorts, would be no greater than if the master did not attempt it. On the other hand, the majority are right in saying that the district court did not find that the tow “materially increased the possibility of the shift from A to B.” We are thus in a position where we have no finding, either way, on the critical issue.
In such a situation we could either remand for a further finding or make our own. Of course, there would be no point in remanding if the evidence compelled a finding that the tow was not a significant factor in the shift to port. I do not read the evidence as doing this. To begin, there was unanimity among the eyewitnesses who testified on the subject that the towing operation had moved the Beauregard aft and at least partly off the rocks. (Boehm, 340a-341a; Torres, 427a, 429a; Calderon, 447a). It would seem inescapable, as a matter of common sense, that this enhanced the risk of the Beauregard’s drifting to port if the line broke, as against a lesser possibility of drift and a greater possibility of more serious harm if she did nothing. Similarly I do not find the eyewitness testimony cited to us by appellees to be as impressive as my brothers do. When asked
Right, if nothing were done, she would have come right around to where she did end up?
Captain Boehm, while saying “Yes, that’s true,” added “Maybe worse. I didn’t know what was in there.” (401a). I think the captain was simply defending his conduct against appellees’ attack, not negating that the towage if only partially successful would enhance the risk of a slippage to port. This is particularly clear in light of his immediately preceding answer:
But we couldn’t sit there, let the ship drift further inshore. We had to do something. The stern would have swung right around. (401a).
and the immediately following question and answer:
Q. You knew there was a tanker there and that was danger?
A. Yes, but while she was swinging around, what was in there — suppose she swung around and capsized?
Similarly the passage from Pilot Torres’ testimony cited by appellees is not a declaration that but for the towage, the ship would inevitably have ended up in Position B; he said only that the ship would “go to the west” and “hit against the rocks” (443a, 417a) — possibly incurring much larger dam*1320age to herself and to cargo. The third eyewitness, Sea Land’s port manager Collie, simply mentioned vaguely in a report that it was urgent to float the Beauregard “before she further beached herself” (E-100); this could mean many things besides a shift to Position B. Perhaps the most favorable statement for appellees was in the deposition of Mello, Sea Land’s marine manager for the Caribbean area, not an eyewitness, that the cause of the change in position was “most likely wind and weather” and that the partial removal from the strand could not have caused the shift because the vessel was still aground on the bow “two hours after the line parted.” (292a). However, Mello’s testimony at trial was considerably less favorable to appellees (136a-137a), and even his earlier opinion is not inconsistent with a conclusion that but for the movement effected by the tow, the risk of the Beauregard’s shifting from Position A to Position B would have been substantially less.
In my view the difficulty here has arisen because of the district court’s shift from the standard it enunciated at the end of the trial, namely, whether the towing “materially increased the possibility of the shift from A to B” to the concept, implicit in finding 8, that general average would not lie if it was “more likely than not that the ship would have shifted roughly to ‘Position B’, regardless of whether the tow had been attempted.” Since we all agree that the former is the correct standard, I would reverse and remand for explicit findings in regard to it.