Court Opinion

ID: 9461193
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:08:17.723703+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:56.417173
License: Public Domain

HUFSTEDLER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
The crew of the Saint Paul performed ably and courageously in rescuing crewmen from the North America and in boarding her later in an attempt to salvage the vessel and her cargo. But our admiration for the men of the Saint Paul is not a substitute for evidence that the efforts of the boarding parties meaningfully contributed to the ultimately successful salvage by the tug Ma-lie.
The key district court findings were that the boarding parties closed doors and portholes in the after accommodations and that without that action seawater would have entered the vessel through these apertures in such quantities that the vessel could have sunk before the Malie reached her. No one testified that anyone closed portholes. The porthole finding is based solely on Di-Colo’s unsworn statement in Italian annexed to his deposition. The Italian statement was accompanied by an English translation that does not mention portholes. Porthole closing entered the case for the first and only time when plaintiff’s in-court translator was trying to interpret DiColo’s unsworn statement. Of course, the DiColo statement was inadmissible hearsay even if the translator correctly interpreted it, a dubious assumption under the circumstances. Plaintiffs do not question its hearsay character; rather, they argue that defendant waived objection when it failed to object upon the initial offer of the document. The document was offered, along with a number of other documents, under a single number before any testimony was taken. Defendant’s counsel reserved the right to correct the translation. After plaintiff’s translator testified, defendant’s counsel moved to strike the unsworn statement, and the motion was denied. The motion should have been granted. On these facts, no predicate exists for a waiver of the hearsay objection.
Testimony is in the record that the boarders closed one or more of the poop house doors. For two reasons the door closing episode cannot sustain the district court’s further finding that the boarding crew’s activities contributed to salvaging the vessel: first, neither the plaintiff’s expert nor the court attempted to decide what effect door closing would have had on the vessel if portholes had not also been closed;1 second, no substantial evidence, direct or circumstantial, supported an inference that the amount of water that was prevented from entering the vessel through the closing of one or more doors in the poop house could have been enough to sink the vessel.
Entirely apart from these deficiencies in the evidence, the Saint Paul is foreclosed from any recovery because she abandoned the North America. The Saint Paul conducted vigorous and successful efforts in rescuing the crew of the North America. In contrast, her attempt, after the crew were rescued, to salvage the vessel was brief, sporadic, and ineffectual. She did not have adequate equipment to make more than a passing try to salvage the North Ameri*1124ca. After her insufficient towline parted, she gave up any further salvage operations and left. Her departure was voluntary; she was not dismissed, superseded, or disabled by her salvage attempt. She is not to be criticized for deciding that the risks to herself were too great to undertake any further salvage efforts, but neither is she entitled to a salvage award after she voluntarily abandoned the North America. The district court’s finding that she did not abandon the vessel is unsupported by the record and is thus clearly erroneous.
The important purposes served by salvage awards and the abandonment rule are impaired, not promoted, by permitting those whose contributions to ultimate salvage are as slight as those performed by the Saint Paul to share in the salvage award. Heroic efforts to salvage are not likely to be made by salvors knowing that any ultimate bounty will be shared handsomely with any potential salvage claimant who made any fleeting effort toward salvage.
I have no occasion to reach any of the other issues. I would reverse.

. Mr. Walsh, the plaintiff’s expert witness, based his opinion that the plaintiff’s efforts contributed to the salvage upon hypothetical questions. When the facts in a hypothetical are not supported by the record, the foundation for the expert’s opinion obviously collapses,