Court Opinion

ID: 9448563
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:40:05.635682+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:29.185935
License: Public Domain

FRIENDLY, Circuit Judge
(concurring) .
Judge MOORE’S opinion is wholly convincing that there is no basis for believing the “forthwith” requirement of 46 U.S.C.A. § 742 to be any less applicable to the mailing of a copy of the libel to the Attorney General than to the service of a copy upon the United States Attorney. Hence, if, as the opinion assumes, every failure by a libelant to comply with a procedural step outlined in the Suits in Admiralty Act, 41 Stat. 525 (1920), is “jurisdictional,” but only if so, its Draconian conclusion inexorably follows.
I cannot believe Congress meant anything of the kind; I should have supposed that, once Congress gave the basic consent to sue the United States, as it did in the first sentence of § 2 of the Suits in Admiralty Act, 46 U.S.C.A. § 742, it was content to have the courts decide the effect of various procedural lapses in the same manner as “if such vessel were privately owned or operated.” The Act was “a comprehensive waiver by the United States” whereby “the government, in entering the shipping world as a participant, simply assumes a normal role in the antecedent pattern.” Gilmore and Black, Admiralty (1957), pp. 773-774.
Nothing to the contrary was decided by this court in Osbourne v. United States, 164 F.2d 767 (2 Cir., 1947), which held only that the “built-in” two-year statute of limitations, 46 U.S.C.A. § 745, should be applied in the same way as were similar provisions in statutes relating to suits against private defendants. Indeed, even Schnell v. United States, 166 F.2d 479, 482 (2 Cir.), cert. denied, 334 U.S. 833, 68 S.Ct. 1346, 92 L.Ed. 1760 (1948), a decision which Judge Frank, the author of the Osbourne opinion, characterized in dissent as resting “on the sheerest formality,” 166 F.2d at. 484, did not speak in jurisdictional terms but sought to show the possibility of *687prejudice to the United States. However, the majority opinion in Messenger v. United States, 231 F.2d 328 (2 Cir., 1956), arising under the Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. §§ 1346, 2401, 2671 et seq. and F.R.Civ.Proc. 4(d) (4), 28 U.S.C., proceeds on “jurisdictional” lines, and City of New York v. McAllister Brothers, Inc., 278 F.2d 708, 710 (2 Cir., 1960), reaches a result explicable only on that basis, a basis altogether natural in view of the “jurisdictional” characterization of the statute of limitations in the Suits in Admiralty Act, 46 U.S.C.A. § 745, in recent in banc opinions, American-Foreign SS. Corp. v. United States, 265 F.2d 136, 149 (dissenting opinion of Judge Clark) (2 Cir., 1958), vacated, 363 U.S. 685, 80 S.Ct. 1336, 4 L.Ed.2d 1491 (1960) ; 291 F.2d 598, 603-604 (2 Cir.), cert. denied, 368 U.S. 895, 82 S.Ct. 171, 7 L.Ed.2d 92 (1961), but see 291 F.2d at 616. The body of authority thus accumulated in this circuit is too heavy for a panel to overcome, and I perceive no indication of dissatisfaction with the course of decision by my brothers sufficient to warrant requesting consideration in banc, see Mr. Justice Frankfurter’s opinion in Western Pacific Railroad case, Western Pacific R. R. Corp. v. Western Pacific R. R. Co., 345 U.S. 247, 270, 73 S.Ct. 656, 97 L.Ed. 986 (1953). I therefore reluctantly concur.