Court Opinion

ID: 9447940
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:18:07.399773+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:14.327841
License: Public Domain

HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I am unable to agree with the conclusion of the majority that the findings and *402conclusions of the district judge are clearly erroneous and his judgment must be reversed. A careful reading and rereading of the district judge’s findings and conclusions as a whole, as they are set out in his opinion, Petition of Republic of Prance, as Owner and of Com-pagnie Generale Transatlantique, as Agent, of The Steamship Grandcamp, in a cause of Exoneration from and Limitation of Liability, No. 1870, 171 F.Supp. 497, leaves me with the clear conviction that the findings of fact are well supported by the record, and that the conclusions, that the petitioner is not entitled to limitation, or exoneration from liability, are well supported in law and in fact. I cannot, therefore, concur in the opinion of the majority which rejects the findings and reverses the judgment, but must dissent therefrom.
With deference, it seems to me that the majority opinion has gone astray as a direct result of the fact that two red herrings have been carefully and sedulously drawn by appellants across the trail of true fact and law which the district judge’s opinion presents.
The first of these red herrings is undue emphasis on the decisions and opinions of this court and of the Supreme Court in the first Texas City disaster case, 5 Cir., 197 F.2d 771, 346 U.S. 15, 16, 73 S.Ct. 956, 97 L.Ed. 1427. With deference those decisions and opinions have nothing to do with this case either as res judicata or as stare decisis. This case was tried on its own facts as a separate case by a different tribunal and judge and between different parties, and decision in it cannot be controlled or influenced by what occurred in those cases for two reasons: (1) the cases were tried on different facts by a different judge; and (2) the decisions in the appellate courts were based entirely on the view that the suit came within the discretionary provision of the Federal Tort Claims Act and, therefore, could not be maintained against the United States.
The majority, therefore, in my opinion, clearly errs in giving to the opinions in the Dalehite case the effect substantially of res judicata. This is so for two reasons. In the first place, this case was tried and must be determined upon its own evidence, upon which it was, in my opinion, entirely correct for the district judge to find fault and negligence as he did. In the second place, the Dalehite case did not go off on the conclusion of no negligence but on the conclusion that the claim was excepted out of the Act by its discretionary provision.
The second red herring is the contention that damage of the kind occurring here was not, under Texas law, reasonably foreseeable. The contention invades the function and province of the district judge and in effect runs counter to the universally prevailing rule that the particular character of damage done does not have to be foreseen, but it is sufficient if the evidence shows that some damage could reasonably have been foreseen. It is clear to me that the majority opinion errs in giving to the Texas law on foreseeability, as an element of negligence and proximate cause, a meaning and effect different from that actually ascribed to it here and in other jurisdictions.
As the first and leading case in Texas on the question, Texas & P. Ry. v. Bigham, 90 Tex. 223, at page 227, 38 S.W. 162, at page 164, shows, the rule applied in Texas is the same as that applied generally elsewhere. There the Texas Supreme Court, quoting with approval from Milwaukee St. P. Ry. Co. v. Kellogg, 94 U.S. 469, 24 L.zd 256:
« -x- -x- * it is generally held that, in order to warrant a finding that negligence, or an act not amounting to wanton wrong, is the proximate cause of an injury, it must appear that the injury was the natural and probable consequence of the negligence or wrongful act, and that it ought to have been foreseen in the light of the attending circumstances.”
then went on to say:
“This is probably as accurate a statement of the doctrine as can be given, and is substantially that gen*403erally laid down by the authorities. Upon the doctrine as abstractly stated there is a substantial consensus of opinion. That difficulties arise when we come to apply it to particular cases is not surprising when we reflect, that minds are prone to differ as to such questions; that the degree of probability rises by almost imperceptible gradations; and that the circumstances of such cases are so variant that hardly two can be found which present precisely the same state of fact. Under such circumstances it is hardly to be expected that many cases will not be found, the result of which seemingly do not accord with the doctrine as generally recognized.
“But we are not prepared to hold that in no case can the original cause of the injury be deemed the proximate cause, where an independent and disconnected agency has supervened and brought about the result. The fact of the intervention of an independent agency, it occurs to us, bears more directly upon the question whether the injury ought, under all the circumstances, to have been foreseen; and, where this latter fact appears, we think that the original negligent act ought to be deemed actionable. In Seale v. Railway Co., 65 Texas, 274, Chief Justice Willie says: ‘If the intervening cause and its probable or reasonable consequences be such as could reasonably have been anticipated by the original wrongdoer, the current of authority seems to be that the connection is not broken.’ It follows, that in our opinion, the question of probable cause ought to depend upon the further question, whether a reasonably prudent man, in view of all the facts, would have anticipated the result — not necessarily the precise actual injury, but some like injury, produced by similar intervening agencies.” (Emphasis supplied.)
This court, in Chicago, R. I. & P. Ry. Co. v. Goodson, 242 F.2d 203, by Rives, Tuttle and Jones, with Judge Tuttle the organ of the court, accurately discussed and stated, and correctly applied the Texas doctrine of foreseeability.
It seems clear to me that in this maritime case the district judge correctly understood the principle obtaining and correctly applied it to find liability here. I would affirm the interlocutory decree both on limitation and exoneration of liability, without prejudice, however, to the right of the petitioner, in defense of particular claims for damages, to offer such further evidence in each case bearing on the question of foreseeability as it may desire to offer.
It seems clear to me, also, that the majority has given too much and a wrong effect to the statement of the district judge, in note 3 in his opinion, where, after having stated in the body of the opinion that the master could and should have foreseen the danger of a disastrous fire, said in the note to his opinion at that point that the master could not have foreseen the explosion that occurred. With deference, to the contrary view of the majority, it seems clear to me that the district judge was distinguishing between what the master, as a natural man and individual, actually knew as distinguished from what, as a representative of the ship and owner, he was required in law and ought to know. A reading of the opinion as a whole, in which the district judge points out fully his reasons for denying the limitation, shows, I think, in the clearest way that the district judge, in the note, was making this distinction and was not contradicting his finding in the body of the opinion, that the master was charged with the knowledge and ought to have known and foreseen an explosion as a consequence of the situation which was then and there obtaining.
I respectfully dissent.