Court Opinion

ID: 9447292
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:30:59.642991+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:58.579470
License: Public Domain

HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) .
Stripped of all the rhetorical involvements of the opinion, by which a pretty theory is made to answer for a legal solution, this case is a completely simple one. It presents the single question whether the claimant of a lien for moneys loaned has made sufficient proof, that they were used for crews’ wages, to entitle him to a lien priming a mortgage lien. This court’s espousal, however, of the district judge’s conclusion on rehearing (Rec. 73) that “The discovery by the court that Vincent Lanasa was actually an owner and not a charterer, puts an entirely different complexion on the transaction” supplies the entire absence of testimony of any person, that the sums loaned were actually paid to the crew as wages, accepts the false logic that this discovery destroys Findley’s admitted priority, as mortgagee of the vessel, over a wholly unproved claim of a lien for moneys loaned, and indeed gives the case “an entirely different complexion.”
Such a decision, abstractly considered, is neither breath-taking nor earth shaking-
Unfortunately for the law, the use of this sort of chop logic or pseudo reasoning, the substitution of feeling for thinking, the ignoring of a fact for a theory, has appeared in many cases, and there is no guarantee, except the mental activity and the personality of the particular judge or judges, that it will not continue to appear.
Viewed abstractly, therefore, it might well be thought that I should not unpack my heart with words but should content myself with general reflection upon the usual futility of dissents and the particular reflection that my dissent in this case will certainly be read by few and perhaps agreed to by none but the aggrieved appellant. Of the opinion, however, that the conclusion on which the district judge and the majority have made this case turn, that on a second hearing it was shown that Findley was not owner of the vessel but the owner of a mortgage, is completely without bearing on the decision of this case, I must register my disagreement with and disapproval of the kind of reasoning which led the district judge to his opinion below and persuaded the majority to follow him.
*912In doing this, I wish to register particular disagreement with the statement on the last page of the majority opinion, that the fact that'the owner was present when the purported loan was made and did not protest it, is evidence of the fact that the master used the funds to pay crews’ wages. In the first place, there is no evidence that the owner assented at all. In the second place, the record shows only that he did not protest the loan for the stated purpose, that, indeed, he said nothing whatever. This fact can have no bearing on the crucial fact whether the master used the funds for crews’ wages. On this point no evidence was offered by anybody, and until such evidence was offered there was no duty upon Findley, either as the supposed owner or as the mortgagee, to make any proof on the issue.
The final conclusion of the opinion: “What was sufficient as prima facie proof then became uncontradicted proof and on it, the District Court was entitled to declare the existence of the lien as he did.”; is therefore a complete non sequitur, unsupported in fact or in law.