Court Opinion

ID: 9445807
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:38:27.142053+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:24.741625
License: Public Domain

POPE, Circuit Judge.
I concur in all that is said in the foregoing opinion. I am of the opinion that the district court had jurisdiction for a further reason. Even if it were assumed *758that it was improper to file a third party complaint in the original plaintiff’s law action, yet plainly enough the pleading filed stated a cause of action under the Suits in Admiralty Act. Assuming the lack of authority to treat this as a third-party complaint in the law action, yet its defects were merely defects in form. Conceding that it was filed under the wrong number, and called by the wrong name, it was nevertheless filed in a court which had jurisdiction to entertain a suit in admiralty under the Act. The United States appeared and answered. The mere fact that it was called a “complaint” instead of a “libel” should make no difference in substance to a court having admiralty jurisdiction. “For the ancient admiralty teaching is that, ‘The rules of pleading in the admiralty are exceedingly simple and free from technical requirements.’ ” Archawski v. Hanioti, 350 U.S. 532, 534, 76 S.Ct. 617, 620, 100 L.Ed. 676. And see Admiralty Rule 44, construed in The Cleona, D.C., 37 F.2d 599, 600, as a means “to adopt admiralty procedure * * * to the practical needs of justice.”
When the trial court announced its intention to dismiss this complaint appellants moved that their action be transferred to the proper district under the provisions of § 1406(a) of Title 28. Thus they recognized, as the court’s order recited, that “jurisdiction of the third party action herein is exclusively under the Suits in Admiralty Act.” In substance this was an application to treat the complaint as a libel in admiralty. “When a cause of action is within the substantive jurisdiction of the District Court for any reason, it does not mar that jurisdiction that the suitor proceeds as libellant in admiralty rather than as plaintiff at law.” Prince Line v. American Paper Exports, 2 Cir., 55 F.2d 1053, 1056. In like manner a pleading wrongly called a complaint may be transferred from the law side to the admiralty side. Cannella v. Lykes Bros. S.S. Co., 2 Cir., 174 F.2d 794, 797.
I agree that the court should have exercised its plain jurisdiction to grant this motion to transfer, particularly since the denial of that relief would mean that appellant would lose its admittedly well stated cause of action, since a new action elsewhere would be barred by limitations under the rule of Ryan Stevedoring Co. v. United States, 2 Cir., 175 F.2d 490.