Court Opinion

ID: 9651190
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 16:09:52.224673+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:30.760233
License: Public Domain

AUGUSTUS N. HAND, Circuit Judge
(dissenting in part).
I agree with the statement in Judge FRANK’S opinion that “on the assumption that libellant was negligent as found, liere is a case in which the unseaworthiness of the flywheel was a concurrent cause which made it proper to ‘divide the damages’ ”, but I cannot agree that we are justified in disregarding the effect of the findings of the trial judge that: “The governor on this particular engine had on two prior occasions failed to check the speed of the engine promptly, when the load was suddenly taken off the generator and the engine speeded up slightly. This was "known to the libellant”; and that: “The .libellant had this generator engine tested as to speed with the load on, but did not make any test of it with the load off.” These findings, if correct, I think clearly justified the decree whereby a partial abatement of libellant’s damages was required ¡because of his own contributory negligence.
Libellant testified that on December 28, 1942, he was told by the second assistant -engineer that the generator had speeded -up with him that day and that he had been informed that on a prior occasion there had been trouble with the generator. In spite of this, libellant made no test of the generator without a load. His only explanation was that “as long as our generators are running with the load inside of our speed limits, and we are having no trouble with it, there is no necessity of testing without a load”. The testimony by libellant as to the speeding up was confirmed by the depositions of the second assistant, Kegerries, and of the third assistant, Baldwin.
Wilson, the Assistant Chief Surveyor of the American Bureau of Shipping, who was undoubtedly an accredited expert, testified that there is no safe way of testing an engine which had been speeding up and has not been checked sufficiently by the governor, except suddenly to release the load in order to make sure that it holds the speed without running away.
The fact that the generator did not speed up between the time the ship left Philadelphia December 29, 1942, and the date of the accident, January 18, 1943, would not seem to me to affect the findings of the district judge. We do not know whether the load was taken off for any reason during that period; we only do know from the testimony of the various witnesses that the governor had not worked properly on more than one occasion, that libellant, who was in charge of the engineroom, knew of this fact, and that he had not taken pains to get at the root of the difficulty and had failed to make a test that would certainly disclose whether the defect in the governor continued to exist — a test which a competent expert said was the only safe way of testing the machine.
If there was ever a question of fact for resolution by a trial court I think there was one here. The evidence seems not only to justify but indeed to require the findings that were made by the trial court which in any event cannot be said to have been “clearly erroneous.”
Undoubtedly the trial judge departed from the beaten track in apportioning the damages according to fault instead of dividing them equally. In spite of some hesitation I am prepared to approve of an apportionment of damages in suits in admiralty for personal injuries though the Supreme Court left the question open in The Max Morris, 137 U.S. 1, 15, 11 S.Ct. 29, 34 L.Ed. 586. The great authority of Judge Addison Brown seems to support an apportionment according to fault. Such, I think, was the effect of his decision in *88The Max Morris, D.C., 24 F. 860, and in The Frank and Willie, D.C., 45 F. 494. When apportionment according to fault is the rule under the Jones Act, it would seem unreasonable to impose another rule upon a seaman because he is compelled to sue the government in admiralty. The H. A. Scandrett, 2 Cir., 87 F.2d 708.
For the foregoing reasons I think the decree of the District Court should be affirmed.