Court Opinion

ID: 6916239
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-23 22:41:56.880144+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:06:40.020276
License: Public Domain

HAND, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
The purpose of putting a time limit upon the owner’s privilege of limiting his liability is to advise the claimant in season, so that he may avoid preparing further to press claims that may have small value, or perhaps none whatever. So at any rate it seems to me. However, should it not be a corollary that the claimant shall give notice that there will in fact be a claim to limit, and not merely that there may be ? If all that the owner had to do was to file a petition, it might well be that even the warning of a possible claim would be enough, but he must do more; he must either file security for the full value of his ship, or surrender her to a trustee. It does not seem reasonable to me to require this of him upon penalty of losing his privilege when the claimant’s position is equivocal. On the other hand it is indeed reasonable to require him to make the claimant define his position. If the claimant refuses to *587do so, it may be that the period does not begin to run until he does; we need not decide that, because in the case at bar the owner made no attempt of any kind to force the claimant to make his position clear. That ought to throw upon the owner the risk that the claimant would in fact assert the claim which he spoke of only as possible, even though it was a conditional claim. For this reason I concur.