Court Opinion

ID: 8634996
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-24 19:43:45.565605+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:55:53.947909
License: Public Domain

DAVIS, District Judge,
made a decree, giving to the salvors one-half of the nett proceeds, reserving some points, made by the owners and insurers, arising out of the alleged misconduct and perjury of a portion of the salvors, as bearing upon another part of the case, and to be decided when the question of the division of the salvage was considered. The opinion was quite brief. The judge decided that the Nathaniel Hooper, though not derelict when the master and crew first left her, because they left with the purpose of return, yet became derelict when the master and crew afterwards gave up the pursuit of her, in the belief that she had sunk. And, being thus a case of derelict, he felt bound by recent decisions to apply the rule of one-half, as he considered this rule now so firmly established as to leave the court almost without a discretion in the matter, unless there were manifest reasons for reducing the salvage, of extraordinary force, which reasons he could not clearly perceive in this case. Prom this decree the owners and insurers claimed an appeal. But the parties subsequently agreed among themselves upon the amount of salvage, and the decree of the district court was modified accordingly, to the effect that the whole sum to be awarded as salvage of the ship and cargo should be $25,000, and that a further sum of $2,000 should be charged on the funds in court for fees of the libelants’ counsel, whereof the sum of $1.000 was to be paid to the counsel of the libelants in the original libel, and a like sum of $1,000 was to be paid to the counsel of the libelants in the supplemental libel.1 The costs of the cause to be charged on the funds in court.

 In the case of The Henry Ewbank [Case No. 6.376], decided in 1834 in this court, there were ten counsellors engaged, and they were allowed, by consent of parties, $5,000.