Court Opinion

ID: 9447017
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:23:26.167901+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:52.252286
License: Public Domain

SIMPSON, District Judge
(dissenting).
Despite my strong respect for the views of the majority, I reach an opposite view as to the meaning of the language of the critical Paragraph 9 of the Equipment Lease. I read that language as simply expressing the caretaker obligation of an ordinary bailee, to maintain and repair the leased equipment and to return it to the bailor in good condition at the end of the bailment.
It is by no means unusual for Government lawyers in phrasing contracts (or any other documents) to use many words where a few would suffice. This, it seems to me, is all that occurred here. The obligation under Paragraph 9, reduced to *821its essence and stripped of its excess verbiage, I view as precisely the obligation undertaken by the bailment contract before this Court in R.F.C. v. Peterson Bros., 5 Cir., 160 F.2d 124.
The fact that the bailee, Seaboard, for its own benefit, insured its own interest in the leased equipment, and collected the proceeds of this insurance, is completely extraneous to a determination of Seaboard’s contractual obligation. The suit, as framed, was not a dispute over proceeds of the insurance policy; it was an attempt to construe the contractual liability as that of an insurer, one of abso-. lute liability, regardless of fault. Such liability is neither expressed nor fairly implied by the language under scrutiny.
I would affirm the District Judge’s holding that under the Peterson case, Paragraph 9 “merely sets expressly out what a common law bailment implies, and does not add anything to it.” 160 F.2d at page 126.
With deference, therefore, I dissent.
Rehearing denied; SIMPSON, District Judge, dissenting.