Court Opinion

ID: 9455577
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:26:14.69233+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:38.832938
License: Public Domain

FRIENDLY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
After the Howlett No. 6 was berthed at her pier at Weehawken on a clear summer night with a gentle wind, Captain Morrissey, his engineer and his deck-hand had a period of two hours to do something to help her. While the testimony was unclear, Judge Cannella was justified in concluding that only a small portion of that time was consumed in the appropriate but unsuccessful attempt to accomplish pumping. The idea that the crew acted reasonably thereafter in confining their efforts to notifying their dispatcher and ringing a telephone with a constant busy signal was too much for the judge’s rugged common sense. Even if we should think differently, as I do not, I perceive no sufficient basis for substituting our judgment for his.
Although this court has long held that a conclusion of negligence by a judge is not a “finding of fact” within the protection of F.R.Civ.P. 52(a), we have said that “it will ordinarily stand unless the lower court manifests an incorrect con*624ception of the applicable law.” Cleary v. United States Lines Co., 411 F.2d 1009, 1010 (2 Cir. 1969). Our ruling in Esso Standard Oil, S. A. v. S. S. Gasbras Sul, 387 F.2d 573, 582 (2 Cir.), cert. denied, 391 U.S. 914, 88 S.Ct. 1808, 20 L.Ed.2d 653 (1968), is not to the contrary; we held that the judge had applied a wrong conception, namely, by viewing the master’s actions in light of hindsight. The judge here fully recognized his duty in this regard.
The testimony of the two tugboat captains, both intimately familiar with these waters, was that beaching was an idea that would have occurred to a reasonable master as soon as it became evident that pumping would not succeed. The judge’s questioning made it clear that all work on the stern manhole cover was over by around 9:35 P.M., and Morrissey’s first bout with the telephone had concluded by 10 P.M., more than an hour before the debacle. The case is not as if the tug personnel had chosen between beaching and pumping, the latter choice had proved unsuccessful, and they were sought to be held liable for making it. Neither is it like one where they considered beaching and rejected it as impractical. Captain Morrissey admitted that he gave no thought to beaching at all. Despite the majority’s contrary statement, the trial court did not regard the captain as having been confronted with an emergency in which the failure to consider a possible course of action might be excusable; it specifically found there was time for deliberation. To be sure a negligent failure to decide to beach would not support a recovery unless Howlett sustained its burden of showing that the effort would have succeeded. But this surely is a question of fact and I see no basis for deeming clearly erroneous the finding that this could probably have been accomplished if Morrissey had tried it around 10 P.M.
By second-guessing the district judge in a ease like this, we encourage appeals on what are largely factual issues, thus needlessly produce further work for ourselves, and impair the confidence which the district courts deserve. See C. Wright, The Doubtful Omniscience of Appellate Courts, 41 Minn.L.Rev. 751, 778-82 (1957). I would therefore affirm the judgment. However, if it is decided to reverse, I see no justification whatever for attempting, as the majority apparently would do, to foreclose Judge Cannella’s consideration of other claims of imprudent seamanship on which he found it unnecessary to pass; he particularly noted that it was “difficult to believe that the deckhand and the engineer were unable to remove the [stern manhole] cover with the power tools available.”