Court Opinion

ID: 8629992
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-24 19:36:05.845365+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:55:44.174517
License: Public Domain

BENEDICT, District Judge.
The agreement made with the libellant subsequent to the shipping articles, is the agreement ac*644cording to which, the libellant’s right to proceed against this yacht for his wages as the sailing master thereof must be determined. The contract of the shipping articles, if subsisting, would not avail him, as at the rate of wages stated in the shipping articles he has been overpaid. The subsequent agreement was entered into by the libellant as a part-owner in the vessel for the purpose of enabling the vessel to be finished and to run races at New York and Philadelphia, in which races she was to be sailed by the libel-lant. By the agreement it was stipulated that the libellant should be sailing master at $60 per month. No limit whatever is assigned to the length of the employment, either by reference to any voyage or voyages, or to any period of time. According to the agreement, the libellant was at liberty to leave the vessel certainly at the end of the first month. The agreement creates a trust for the benefit of the libellant and others, and it cannot be supposed that any of the parties contemplated that the libellant, in case he should leave the vessel at the termination of the month or at any other time, should have the right to proceed against the vessel to enforce a lien for his wages, and so put an end to the adventure. The nature and object of the agreement are inconsistent with the right of lien claimed by the libellant, and that right must be deemed to have been waived by the execution of the new agreement made subsequent to the shipping articles upon which alone his right of action rests. Section 4535 of the Revised Statutes can have no operation here, as this was a foreign vessel and the contract made in a foreign port.
The court can not presume that the statutory law of the dominion of Canada is the same as the United States statutory law declared in section 4535. 1 Greenl. Ev. § 488; Cutler v. Wright, 22 N. Y. 481.
In the absence of any evidence as to the law of the place where the contract was ¡nade and to be in a substantial part performed, the law maritime will be presumed to be the law controlling the mariner’s contract. By that law it is competent for a mariner by his agreement understandingly made in a proper case to waive his right to proceed against the vessel for his wages. The libel must be dismissed, and with costs.