Court Opinion

ID: 8790182
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 13:48:11.713295+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:03:18.485826
License: Public Domain

HOUGH, District Judge
(after stating the facts as above). The Boskenna Bay (D. C.) 40 Fed. 91, 6 L. R. A. 172, entitles the respondent to a dismissal of this libel unless the very ingenious argument advanced in respect of the Harter Act shall prevail. By the second *997section of that act it is declared to be unlawful to insert any words in any bill of lading whereby the obligation of the master “to carefully handle and stow cargo and to care for and properly deliver same shall in any wise be lessened, weakened or avoided.”
The language of the bill of lading under consideration has long been familiar to shippers and their counsel; it is the ordinary form of words by which a carrier is authorized to make a substituted delivery. The form of words long antedated the Harter Act, and a substituted delivery, whether by contract or usage, has long been known to the law. The draftsman of the Harter Act is presumed to have known that there was more than one kind of delivery, or more than one method of making delivery. The obligation of the statute is not to deliver in any peculiar manner, or any one manner, or any special manner, but only to properly deliver.
The final question, therefore, is whether a reasonable substituted delivery based upon contract and strengthened by long custom is a proper delivery. It was a proper delivery before the passage of the Harter Act, and, during more than 20 years which have elapsed since that statute became effective, no case has arisen (so far as I know) in which the second section of the act has been applied to these familiar words of the bill of lading.
T do not think that they do apply, and it is therefore ordered that the libel be dismissed.