Court Opinion

ID: 9651501
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 16:20:26.685028+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:34.351800
License: Public Domain

HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
As the majority opinion well says, this is a “controversy between rival pilots which involves no vessel, no cargo, no contract, no tort, no owner, claimant, master, or seaman, and calls for no declaration of the law of the seas but for a construction of statutes of Texas relating to the jurisdiction of Gulf, and navigation district, pilots.” This being so, the court below was without jurisdiction of the libel and should have dismissed it on that ground. If I am correct in this, this court, on a review of the lower court’s judgment, would be confined to reversing the judgment and ordering the libel dismissed for want of jurisdiction. I, therefore, dissent from the decision of the appeal on the assumption that there was jurisdiction in the Court below.