Court Opinion

ID: 9469061
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:31:03.46077+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:11.734130
License: Public Domain

HARLINGTON WOOD, Jr., Circuit Judge,
concurring in part, dissenting in part.
In all respects, I concur in Judge Grant’s careful analysis of this barge incident up to the final paragraph concerning the allocation of liability. At that point, I respectfully dissent, but only by one notch.
As Judge Grant fairly points out, there is ample support in the record to justify an equal allocation of liability between Trumbull and Cairo. As it now stands, however, Trumbull is assessed two-thirds of the liability and Cairo the remaining one-third.
It was Cairo’s man Rukes who was dispatched to the scene “to take charge of the situation.” He arrived in time and had the means at his disposal to save the barge, but he had a more compelling interest that night waiting at his motel. When Rukes returned the following morning, it was too late. The trial judge found that Rukes admitted that he “had just sunk the barge.” That unavoidable candor should not save his company from its full share of liability.
In reviewing the factual findings in a close case, you must remind yourself that you are not the district judge who presided at the trial, only a reviewing judge looking at the record, and bound by the clearly erroneous standard. I believe, however, in the circumstances of this case that justice would be a little more equal by an equal division of liability.