Court Opinion

ID: 9455288
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:17:36.765995+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:32.439586
License: Public Domain

WATERMAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I, too, would remand to the district court. Unlike my brothers, however, who mandate that the court below award pre-judgment interest and add the computed amount to the district court judgment order, I would remand for an enlargement of the record.
From the record before us certain un-controvertible facts appear. At pre-trial conferences in the presence of the judge the defendant made an offer to dispose of the case for a sum certain which the plaintiff accepted. It was agreed that this sum would be incorporated into a consent judgment order. The plaintiff claimed there should also be an award of pre-judgment interest in addition to the offered and accepted sum. The defendant claimed the offered and accepted sum had the effect of an accord and that no prejudgment interest should be awarded. The experienced trial judge asked for and received memoranda on the point, and thereafter in colloquy *1186with counsel explained defendant’s position as he understood it:
The Court: I think what [defense counsel] is trying to say is that any matter which is disposed of amicably, as it were, a disposition in lieu of trial — it is really not important or significant what characterization you place upon that kind of a disposition —generally speaking, by and large, unless the agreement and disposition includes interest and/or costs, as a rule both of those items are eliminated.
He then followed this summary with his own observation:
“That is generally the way these matters are handled.”
Soon after this colloquy plaintiff submitted a judgment order which set forth in separate paragraphs the agreed-upon breakdown of consented-to sums with respect to each of the three vessels. The preamble to these paragraphs contained the language “* * * and the Court further having considered the arguments of counsel with respect to the awarding of interest * * Each of the three paragraphs ended with the language “* * * with interest thereon at the rate of - per cent per an-num from_to the date of this Judgment amounting to the sum of $_; * * The judge struck from the submitted judgment order this latter language at each of the three places it occurred, and, two weeks after he had stated “That is generally the way these matters are handled,” he filed the order so submitted to him and so modified by him.
On the basis of these uncontrovertible facts it would seem that when it prepared its judgment order plaintiff had decided that, upon the facts and circumstances of this case, plaintiff would leave to the discretion of the admiralty judge not only the rate of interest to be ordered but the date or dates from which it was to be computed; and, indeed, whether any pre-judgment interest at all was to be allowed.
Even when the exercise of judicial discretion in the content of judgment orders filed in causes arising within the court’s admiralty jurisdiction is properly circumscribed by the rules of the substantive law, if libelant and respondent should by their conduct demonstrate beyond a peradventure of doubt a willingness to accept discretionary judicial action, I would think it arbitrary of an appellate court to override that willingness upon less than a full record.
Therefore, I would remand to the court below with instructions to enlarge this record by filing a written opinion in which the rationale of the denial of pre-judgment interest will be set forth.