Court Opinion

ID: 9442533
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 18:50:54.857471+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:07.544520
License: Public Domain

L. HAND, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
My brothers have accepted the holding of the Ninth Circuit in Crowley Launch & Tugboat Co. v. Wilmington Transportation Co., 117 F.2d 651, that the purpose of the steaming signals does not include alerting the vessel to which they are addressed, but is only to advise her of what the signalling *410vessel proposes to do, so that she may cooperate. Consequently they hold, as I understand them, that if the vessel, to whom the signal should have been addressed, is not aware of the presence of the vessel which should have signalled, the failure to signal does not contribute to the collision. This presupposes that the duty to signal is owed only to ships which are attentive enough to have observed the vessel which should have signalled. I can see no reason so to limit the purpose of the rule, and apparently the English courts agree that it should not be so limited. The Ninth Circuit held as it did because the Inland Rules provided for, an “alarm signal” which is to be given, not to indicate a proposed change of navigation, but only to alert the other vessel. Yet even under the Inland Rules I do not understand that' it is necessary to give an alarm as well as the signal, appropriate to the change of navigation proposed by the signalling vessel. Be that as it. may, under the International Rules, no “alarm” is permitted; and surely it is as desirable to awaken an inattentive vessel and to advise her of the proposed change, as it is to advise an alert vessel of that change. The rules are to be construed, I submit, so as best to avoid collision, and to arouse a vessel, which, as here for example, was giving every evidence of inattention, would seem to be even more desirable than to announce a change to an attentive vessel. If a vessel does not signal, it is, or it .should be, because she thinks she will pass safely; and I find it hard to understand the reasoning which excuses her when she thinks she will not pass safely, because the other vessel stands in exceptional need of being informed that she does not.
I do not think that the Nashbulk proved beyond a reasonable doubt that, had she blown, the Rutgers Victory would not have taken the steps necessary to avoid collision; indeed, I am not sure that my brothers disagree as to that! In any event, it is eminently likely that she would have taken them, and it is clear that adequate steps were in fact open to her. I do not mean that I should divide the damages equally, if I were free to divide them proportionately to the relative fault of the vessels. An equal division in this case would be plainly unjust; they ought to be divided in some such proportion as five to one.- And so they could be but for our obstinate cleaving to the ancient rule which has been abrogated -by nearly all civilized nations. Indeed, the doctrine that a court should not look too jealously at the navigation of- one vessel, when the faults of the other are glaring, is in the nature of a sop to 'Cerberus. It is no doubt better than nothing; but it is inadequate to reach the heart of the matter, and constitutes a constant temptation to courts to avoid a decision on the merits. Nevertheless, so long as our antiquated doctrine prevails, I think we should apply it unflinchingly, and in the case at bar I would 'divide the damages.