Court Opinion

ID: 9442258
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 18:41:23.265007+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:01.848784
License: Public Domain

CHASE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
If the bill of lading ought to be construed to entitle the carrier to reasonable extra compensation for any action rightfully taken, because permitted, under the third alternative in clause four, my brothers are right, but I cannot believe such a construction permissible. Wherever there is a fair doubt as to the meaning of a bill of lading, it should be construed most strongly against the carrier which prepared it. Texas & Pacific Ry. Co. v. Reiss, 183 U.S. 621, 626, 22 S.Ct. 253, 46 L.Ed. 358. This bill did not provide for extra compensation to the carrier for any action taken under the clauses excusing non-delivery to the consignee at the point of delivery, but only for “any services rendered to the goods as hereinabove provided.” Some of the permitted acts in lieu of direct carriage by the vessel to destination and delivery there were efforts which might be taken to deliver the goods otherwise and for such services extra compensation was provided. But' where the carrier, as here, did nothing but let the goods remain aboard, though that was ex*291cused by the bill of lading, it cannot be said that a service was rendered to the goods.
Though it is by no means clear that the vessel could not have discharged the goods at Bergen where the consignee was ready, willing and able to take delivery, I will assume that it could not. Then it could have elected to try to make delivery in some other way and for that extra compensation would have been earned. Or it could have let the goods remain in the hold, as it did. Of course it could not abandon them and upon failure to make delivery, or of any effort toward that, it had no alternative but to take them wherever the ship went. That is all it did and, in so doing, it performed no service to the goods by way of carriage to destination or by way of any effort to do so. All that happened to the goods was merely an incident in the return of the ship for its own purposes to the point of departure. Insofar as that included custodial care, the carrier was compensated by the original freight paid.
I dissent.