Court Opinion

ID: 9620163
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:39:27.179206+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:14:58.917537
License: Public Domain

*565Judge Holmes,
dissenting in the Collins case, said:
“The right of the ship or carrier to limit its liability for negligence to an amount not exceeding $500 is in derogation of the common law and must be strictly construed. It does not shield an employee, not a party to the bill of lading, who (for instance) negligently sets fire to or otherwise negligently injures the cargo. No ship, carrier, or party to the bill of lading, is being sued in this case, but only the corporate stevedore, which is primarily liable under the decision of Reid v. Fargo, 241 U.S. 544, 36 S.Ct. 712, 60 L.Ed. 1156. * * *
“ * * * The appellee owed a duty to the public to keep its steve-doring equipment in a safe condition; the answer admits that it did not do so. Where an agent violates a duty that he owes to a third party, he is personally liable to the latter, not by reason of his agency, but upon the ground that he has failed in his common law obligation not to injure another. * * *
“ ‘The liability of an agent for his own negligence has long been embedded in the law.’ Brady v. Roosevelt S. S. Co., 317 U.S. 575, 580, 63 S.Ct. 425, 428, 87 L.Ed. 471.
“The bill of lading in this - case limited the carrier’s liability in question to $500, but it did not confer upon the carrier the power to diffuse partial dispensations to its negligent stevedores or other agents for their wrongful acts.”
In The Steel Inventor, D.C.Md., 35 F.Supp. 986, 996, Judge Chesnut called attention to the difference between an action against the carrier in which the carrier brings in a lighterage company for indemnity, and a tort action against the lighterage company. Judge Chesnut said: “The libelants base their claim against the Isthmian Steamship Company on breach of contract, and it will of course have been noted that they are not directly suing the Baltimore Company in tort for negligence. If the suit had been in the last mentioned form it would seem clear enough that the larger sum would be the proper measure of damages. * * 35 F.Supp. at pages 996, 997.
Despite my respect for the majority judges in the Collins case, and other courts which .have approved their opinions, usually without discussion, I believe that Judge Holmes adopted the sounder position.
The Collins case was cited with approval in United States v. The South Star, 2 Cir., 210 F.2d 44, affirming D.C., 115 F.Supp. 102, where one of the questions was whether a stevedore is entitled to the benefit of the one year limitation in Cogsa; in Ford Motor Co. v. Jarka Corp., Mun.Ct., 134 N.Y.S.2d 52, 1954 A.M.C. 1095 which was similar to the case at bar, and will be discussed below; and in Autobuses Modernos, S. A. v. Federal Mariner, etc., D.C.E.D.Pa.1954, 125 F.Supp. 780, 1954 A.M.C. 1650, where the question was whether the limitation of liability of the carrier and the ship extended to the owner and the charterer of the ship.
The extent of the liability of an owner or charterer is quite different from the question involved in the case at bar, as was clearly pointed out in the majority opinions of the Supreme Court of Australia in the recent case of Wilson v. Darling Island Stevedoring and Lighterage Co. Ltd., (1956) Argus Law Reports 311, 29 Australian Law Journal 740. See also Elder, Dempster & Co. Ltd. v. Paterson Zochonis & Co. Ltd., 1924 A.C. 522. The latter is a most difficult case, because the several law lords gave different reasons for their conclusions. I concur in the construction of the Elder Dempster case set out in the opinions of Fullager, J., and Kitto, J., in Wilson v. Darling Island Stevedoring and Lighterage Co. Ltd., supra. The limitation of liability granted to a ship would be of little value if it could be avoided by the simple expedient of suing her owner in personam.
*566In Ford Motor Co. v. Jarka Corp., supra, besides citing the Collins case, and refusing to give any weight to Reid v. Fargo, the judge of the Municipal Court cited with approval two cases decided in New South Wales, one by a nisi prius court, Waters Trading Co. Ltd. v. Dalgety & Co. Ltd., (1951) 2 Ll.Rep. 385, and one by the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Gilbert Stokes and Kerr Prop. Ltd. v. Dalgety & Co. Ltd., (1948) 81 Ll.L.Rep. 337. The two New South Wales cases, however, have now been overruled by the Supreme Court of Australia. Wilson v. Darling Island Stevedoring and Lighterage Co. Ltd., supra. The opinions in the latter case are quite long and discuss all of the relevant British cases. Fullager, J., in an opinion with which Dixon, C. J., agreed, said:
“ * * * What has been supposed to be a principle involved in the Elder Dempster case (although there is a conspicuous lack of unanimity as to what that principle really is) has, as will be seen, been extended so as to give to a stevedore exemption from liability for negligence by virtue of a provision in a bill of lading to which the stevedore is not a party, and which is really no concern whatever of the stevedore. This appears to me to be a ‘development’ of the common law which is altogether out of character, and which is exactly the opposite of what one would have expected and felt to be justified. It is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that the modem tendency has been to expand the field of liability in tort. The common law has, I think, from quite early times — consistently with its general policy of freedom of contract — allowed the validity of provisions in a contract which limit or exclude liability for negligence. But it has always frowned upon such provisions and insisted on construing them strictly. * * * ”
In disposing of the opinion of Owen, J., in the Gilbert Stokes case, Judge Ful-lager said:
“The second comment is that his Honour, at the beginning of his judgment speaks as if the cargo-owner was doing something slightly disreputable in attempting ‘to avoid the exceptions and limitations contained in the bill of lading’ by bringing an action of tort against the-persons who, by their negligent acts, had damaged his goods. I am, as I have indicated above, unable to understand this approach, which seems, to me to be wrong and alien to the-whole spirit of the common law. A sounder approach would be made in such a case as the Gilbert Stokes Case by asking why a self-confessed tortfeasor should be allowed to shelter behind a document which is not, and never was, any concern of his.”
The concurring opinion of Judge Kitto in Wilson v. Darling Island etc. Ltd. said:
“ * * * ii js irue that, having regard both to the nature of the services contracted for and to the corporate character of the carrier, the inference is inescapable that both parties contemplated that the carrier would perform its obligation through servants or other persons engaged for the purpose and that the operations involved in the process described in the case stated as sorting, stacking and storing of the cargo after discharge at the port of destination was an operation naturally to be performed through the agency of stevedores. A necessity for the carrier to depend upon others to perform his obligations under the contract suggests a strong reason why he should have desired to stipulate for immunity for himself from liability for loss or damage in the course of the performance of those obligations. But there is no such readily discernible reason why he should concern himself to make, or should be understood as making, a similar stipulation for the benefit of those whom he should engage as servants, stevedores and the like and still less is there any ground for *567understanding the consignor as conceding immunity to such persons. The train of thought of which the exemption clause is a natural expression is that, since the carrier has no .alternative but to rely upon others to do the work involved in producing the result contracted for, it is mutually agreeable that he should not have to bear responsibility for any failure of theirs to observe proper standards in the work they do, but that the consignor shall look to them alone to make good any loss or damage which their defaults may cause.”
Judge Kitto cited with approval the dissenting opinion of Judge Holmes in Collins v. Panama R. Co., supra.
I conclude that neither (A) the contract between the shipper and the carrier, nor (B) Cogsa, extends to the stevedore in this case the $500 limitation of liability.