Court Opinion

ID: 9481423
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:18:38.411953+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:18.534715
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. GIBSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. The court today simply avoids our direction from the Supreme Court in United States v. Reliable Transfer Co., 421 U.S. 397, 410-11, 95 S.Ct. 1708, 1715-16, 44 L.Ed.2d 251 (1975), that liability for damage “is to be allocated among the parties proportionately to the comparative degree of their fault.” Id. at 411, 95 S.Ct. at 1715. The court today accepts the finding that Mays Towing was in some way negligent, as was Lone Star, but nonetheless concludes that Lone Star’s negligence relieves Mays of liability for the loss.
The court rejects the holdings of the Fifth Circuit en banc in Nunley v. M/V Dauntless Colocotronis, 727 F.2d 455, 464-66 (5th Cir.) (en banc), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 832, 105 S.Ct. 120, 83 L.Ed.2d 63 *1462(1984), and the Eleventh Circuit in Hercules, Inc. v. Stevens Shipping Co., 765 F.2d 1069, 1075 (11th Cir.1985), refusing to apply intervening negligence or superseding cause under the teaching of Reliable Transfer. Instead, it elects to follow dictum from a decision of the Ninth Circuit in Protectus Alpha Navigation Co. v. North Pacific Grain Growers, 767 F.2d 1379, 1384 (9th Cir.1985), and errs in doing so. Although the opinions of Judge Learned Hand always have strong persuasive impact, the Second Circuit decided Sinram v. Pennsylvania Railroad Co., 61 F.2d 767 (2d Cir.1932), 43 years before the Supreme Court issued Reliable Transfer.
Even assuming that the court’s interpretations of Reliable Transfer, Nunley, and Protectus Alpha Navigation Co. are correct, the court’s opinion contains a far more serious flaw. To reach its conclusion, the court must hold that the district court’s finding that Mays’ negligence proximately caused the damage is clearly erroneous, or hold as a matter of law that Lone Star’s negligence was a superseding cause that cut off the liability of Mays Towing. The court simply fails to take either of these steps.
The question of whether one party’s negligence constitutes a superseding cause of the injury is a question of fact. W. Kee-ton, Prosser & Keeton on Torts § 45 at 320 (5th ed. 1984). Discussing the functions of the court and jury in determining particular elements in the proximate cause inquiry, Keeton writes:
Even though this evaluative determination is not a factfinding in the usual what-happened sense, it is nevertheless a question that is to be decided by a jury to the same extent, no more and no less, as fact questions are to be decided by a jury. Thus, if reasonable persons could not differ about the determination on the evidence before the court, it is decided by the trial judge, or by the appellate court. If, on the other hand, reasonable persons could differ, then the trial judge must explain the applicable legal concept to the jury, and leave to the jury the responsibility of making the evaluative determination — the application of that concept to the facts, as they find them to be.

Id.

In this admiralty case the district court was the factfinder, but the principles above direct the analysis of this issue. A finding of superseding cause serves to cut off the liability of the party whose antecedent negligence constitutes a cause-in-fact of the injury but whose actions are no longer considered the legal or proximate cause of injury. See Keeton, § 44 at 301; see also maj. op. at 1459. By concluding that Lone Star’s negligence constituted a superseding cause of the injury, this court simply engages in its own factfinding and overturns the district court’s findings on proximate cause without concluding that those findings are clearly erroneous. See Valley Line Co. v. Ryan, 771 F.2d 366, 372 (8th Cir.1985) (district court’s findings in admiralty will not be disturbed unless clearly erroneous); Wilkins v. P.M.B. Systems Engineering, Inc., 741 F.2d 795, 800 (5th Cir.1984) (questions of negligence and causation in admiralty are questions of fact); King Fisher Marine Service, Inc, v. NP Sunbonnet, 724 F.2d 1181, 1184 (5th Cir.1984) (findings of negligence and proximate cause in admiralty reviewed under clearly erroneous standard).
The district court found that both Lone Star and Mays Towing proximately caused the injury to the barge. The majority opinion flouts the rules of appellate review by rejecting the district court’s findings, see maj. op. at 1459, without concluding that those findings are clearly erroneous.
As this court failed to make a necessary conclusion — that the district court’s findings on proximate cause are clearly erroneous or that the negligence of Lone Star constituted a superseding cause of the injury as a matter of law — to support its holding, we should affirm the order of the district court.