Court Opinion

ID: 9637636
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:13:08.239565+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:58.209488
License: Public Domain

AUGUSTUS N. HAND,
Circuit Judge (concurring).
I am in agreement with the result as well as with the reasoning of Judge Clark’s opinion respecting matters other than the effect to be given to the judgment of conviction in the criminal case.
Whatever may be the justification under some circumstances for giving any weight in a civil action to a judgment rendered against the defendant in a criminal case, such a judgment ought, in my opinion, to have no effect when the issues determined thereby are not necessarily the same as those involved in the action on trial.
The indictment in the criminal case charged the libellant and its managing officer, Cabaud, with the infraction of statutes of the United States resulting in loss of life and both were found guilty. It is, however, impossible to determine whether either was found guilty of the particular faults which are relied on in Judge Clark’s opinion as a basis for holding that the libel-lant has not established absence of “actual fault or privity”. The jury may have convicted for violation of one statutory requirement where we have found a violation of another. Yet a violation of the statutory provision.for fire drills would not tend to show a violation of the requirement for the division of the crew into equal watches. To give a criminal judgment evidential weight under such circumstances would be going much farther than admitting proof of other like acts of negligence in support of a cause of action founded on particular acts of negligence of the defendant. It more nearly resembles admitting proof that the defendant was generally careless as to unrelated matters.
It may be that Judge Goddard was justified in admitting the judgment since he could hardly know .until the trial was over whether all of the statutory violations charged in the indictment would not be‘established in the admiralty suit. It is quite different to give the judgment any weight when neither the trial judge nor this court could know that the jury found either the company or Cabaud guilty of any of the faults on which we are basing our present decision.
The situation is quite different from one where an issue known to be determined in a criminal action is involved in a civil suit to which the convicted person is a party.