Flint v. Christall/Dissent Brown

by Henry Billings Brown

United States Supreme Court

171 U.S. 187

Flint  v.  Christall

Mr. Justice BROWN, with whom was Mr. Justice McKENNA, disseni ng.

I am constrained to dissent from the opinion of the court in this case. While I freely concede that the owner of a ship is not by the general maritime law entitled to a general average contribution where the loss is occasioned by the fault of the master or crew, I regard the third section of the Harter act as introducing a new feature into the law of carriage by sea, and as eliminating altogether the question of negligence in navigation. This section provides in substance that if the owner shall exercise due diligence to make his vessel in all respects seaworthy, and properly manned, equipped, and supplied, he shall not 'be held responsible for damage or loss resulting from faults or errors in navigation or in the management' of his vessel.

As the steamer Irrawaddy was stranded on the coast of New Jersey, confessedly by the negligent navigation of her master, it will not be contended that she or her owners became liable to the owners of the cargo for any damages thereby occasioned. It is said, however, that, while the Harter act may be appealed to in defense of any action by the cargo against the ship, it is not available by the ship owner in a suit against the owners of the cargo for a contribution to the general average expenses occasioned by such stranding. If this be so, then the ship is thereby made responsible for a fault in her navigation to the exact extent to which she would be otherwise entitled to a general average contribution, and the statute to that extent is disregarded and nullified. I consider this a narrow and technical construction of the act. I think the third section makes the question of fault in navigation an immaterial one, and eliminates it from the relations of the ship to the cargo. The section, therefore, becomes available to the ship owner either as a weapon of defense or attack. If the ship owner stands in relation to the cargo as if no fault had been committed, it is impossible for me to see why he may not avail himself of this in whatever shape the question may arise.

As the Harter act is a novelty in maritime legislation, of course it would be vain to search for authorities based upon a similar enactment; but cases are by no means wanting where a similar question has arisen upon stipulations in bills of lading exempting the owner of the ship from the consequences of faults or errors in navigation. While it is conceded in this country that such stipulations are of no avail, it is equally well settled that by the law of England, and of some, if not all, of the maritime nations of continental Europe, they are held to be valid and binding.

In the case of The Carron Park, 15 Prob. Div. 403, a charter party contained a stipulation that the ship owners were not to be responsible 'for any act, negligence, or default whatsoever of their servants during the said voyage.' The cargo having been damaged by water pouring through a valve, negligently left open by one of the engineers, the owners brought suit against the vessel, and the owners of the ship counterclaimed for a general average contribution. It was held by the admiralty division that the ship was exonerated in the suit against her by the owners of the cargo, and was also entitled to her contribution. In delivering the opinion, Sir James Hannen, president, observed: 'The claim for contribution as general average cannot be maintained where it arises out of any negligence for which the ship owner is responsible; but negligence for which he is not responsible is as foreign to him as to the person who has suffered by it. The loss would not have fallen upon the ship owner, and the expenditure or sacrifice made by him is not made to avert loss from himself alone, but from the cargo owner.' The case of Strang v. Scott, 14 App. Cas. 601, was cited to the proposition that the conditions ordinarily existing between parties standing in the relation of ship and cargo owners may be varied by special contract.

It is true that the case of the Carron Park was not one r ising upon a statute, but upon a stipulation in a charter party; but I think it can make no possible difference in the legal aspect of the case whether the exemption be conceded by contract or granted by statute.

The case of The Ettrick, 6 Prob. Div. 127, is not in point. In that case the owner of a ship, sunk by a collision in the Thames, admitted the collision to be his fault, and paid into court 8 a ton in a suit to his liability. The ship having been subsequently raised at the expense of the owner, he sought to recover in general average against the cargo its contributory portion of such expenses. It was held that this could not be done, the court basing its opinion upon the language of the merchants' shipping act (section 54), which merely declared that the owners of the ship should not be answerable for damages in respect of losses to ships or goods to a greater amount than eight pounds per ton of the ship's tonnage. In delivering the opinion of the court, Sir George Jessel observed: 'That is merely the limit of the liability for damages. It does not in any way alter the property. * * * Now, property not being altered, the ground upon which the ship owner puts his claim is this: He says that the payment of eight pounds per ton not only prevents his being answerable in damages for any more, but is equivalent to saying that he shall be in exactly the same position as if no negligence had been committed, and nothing had been done by him or by his agents that would give rise to any liability. But I cannot read the act so. All that it says is that he shall not be answerable in damages for any greater amount. It does not make his acts right if they were previously wrongful. * * * It seems to me that he would have no such right [that is, to salvage on the cargo], for the statute does not destroy the effect of all that had been done, as it simply diminishes or limits the liability in damages. If that is so, of course that is an end of the case.'

In the case of The Carron Park the stipulation exempted the ship from the consequences of all negligence in her navigation. In The Ettrick the act simply limited the liability of the owner in damages to a certain sum per ton. The operation of the merchants' shipping act was evidently intended to be merely defensive. The Ettrick, though cited by counsel, was not referred to by the court in The Carron Park, and was evidently regarded as standing upon a different footing.

The French law in this particular is the same: The case of Le Normand v. Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, 1 Dalloz, Jurisprudence Generale, 479, before the French court of cassation, was an appeal from the court of Rouen, which had treated as general average the expenses of salvage and towage of the steamer Amerique, after having found that the abandonment of the ship was imputable only to the master and crew, and had held that a contract exempting the ship from the consequences of negligence, permitted the owners of the ship to recover from the owners of the cargo their share in contribution of the expenses of salvage. In the opinion of the court of cassation upon appeal it was said that in this bill of lading the defendant company, the owner of the Amerique, had formally excepted the acts of God, of enemies, pirates, fire by land or sea, accidents proceeding from the engine, boilers, steam, and all other accidents of the sea caused or not caused by the negligence, fault, or error of the captain, crew, or engineers, of whatever nature these accidents were, or whatever were their consequences. It was further said that no law forbade the owners of ships from stipulating that they would not answer for the faults of the captain or crew; that such an agreement is no more contrary to public policy than to fair dealing; that, in upholding this clause in the bill of lading by which the defendant company declined responsibility for the faults of the crew, the decree appealed from violated no law. It was thereby established that the ship had been abandoned at sea, after consultation i th the crew; that it had afterwards been picked up by three English vessels, which had towed it to Plymouth, where it was voluntarily stranded; and that the defendant company had reclaimed it from the salvors by paying the expenses of salvage and towage; and thereupon the court held that this was a damage voluntarily suffered, that the expenses were incurred for the common safety of the ship and cargo, and without the payment of which the salvors would not have been obliged to deliver over the vessel, and that such expenses constituted a claim for general average, notwithstanding the abandonment of the ship was not attributed to a peril of the sea, but to the fault of the master and crew. The decree was affirmed.

The case of Crowley v. Saint Fr eres, 10 Revue Internationale du Droit Maritime, 147, also came before the French court of cassation in 1894. In this case, an English ship, the Alexander Lawrence, on a voyage from Calcutta to Boulogne, with a cargo of jute, took fire through the carelessness of a sailor. The ship put into Port Louis, an intermediate port, with the cargo still burning, and extinguished it, subsequently arriving at her port of destination. By a clause in the charter party the ship was exonerated from responsibility for negligence. It was held that the expenses of putting into the port of refuge should be classed as general average, and not as particular average, as it had been held by the court below. The decree of that court (of Douai) was therefore reversed.

A case arising from the same disaster to the Alexander Lawrence, between the owners and the underwriters (11 Revue Internationale, 41), subsequently came before the court of appeal of Orleans, on appeal from the tribunal of commerce of Boulogne, where a similar ruling was made, and the expense of putting into port classed as general average under the stipulation in the charter party, although in the absence of such stipulation they would have been chargeable to the ship.

The same question came before the tribunal of commerce of Antwerp, Belgium, in the case of The Alacrity, 11 Revue Internationale, 123, where the cargo was held to contribute to the expenses of putting into a port of refuge, in consequence of a collision due to the fault of the captain, the ship owner being exonerated by his contract from the consequences of this fault. In this case the parties had stipulated that general average expenses should be payable under the York-Antwerp rules, and that the ship should not be responsible for the faults of the captain or crew. It was held that, by the Belgium law, parties might contract with reference to these rules, which declared the expenses of putting into a port of refuge general average; that there was no difference between such expenses when occasioned by an inevitable accident or in consequence of the fault of the captain; that, the parties having stipulated that the ship should be exonerated from the consequences of such fault, the owners of the cargo were bound for their contributory shares.

From the case of The Mary Thomas [1894] Prob. Div. 108, it would seem that the Dutch law is different; but it was said by Mr. Justice Barnes in this case (page 116) that, if the question had arisen in this country (England), 'the point could hardly have occurred, as it has done, because it has already been decided by Lord Hannen, in the case of The Carron Park, that the cargo owners would be liable for the contribution in general average under circumstances where the accident had occurred through negligence, but where by the bills of lading the owners of the ship were not responsible for that negligence.'

These are all the cases I have been able to find directly upon the question under consideration, but there is a class of analogous cases which, I think, have a strong bearing in the same direction. It is well known that, by the law of England, a ship is not responsible to another for a collision brought about by the negligence of a compulsory pilot. Ofc ourse, where such ship is solely to blame, the rule is easy of application. No recovery can be had against her. But, where the faults of the two vessels are mutual, a different question arises; and in the case of The Hector, 8 Prob. Div. 218, it was held that where a collision occurred by the mutual fault of two vessels, and one of such vessels had on board a compulsory pilot, whose fault contributed to the accident, the owner of that vessel was entitled to recover a moiety of the damages sustained by her without any deduction on account of the damage sustained by the other; in other words, she was not responsible for any portion of the damage done to the other vessel, but might recover the half of her damages from such other vessel. Said the master of the rolls in delivering the opinion: 'With regard to the Augustus, she was found to blame for the collision; therefore she is, in the first instance, liable to pay all the damage which the Hector has suffered. With regard to the Hector, it is found that her owners are not to blame, but that her navigation was to blame; but that was the fault of the pilot. The owners are not liable for this default; therefore they are not liable for anything to the owners of the Augustus. What is the result? That the liability of the owners of the Augustus is declared to have been proved, but the liability of the owners of the Hector is disproved, and they are dismissed from the suit. Therefore no balance is to be calculated. The owners of the Hector are not liable for a single pennyworth of the damage done to the Augustus. The owners of the Augustus must go against the pilot, and get what they can out of him; but the Hector is entitled to succeed.'

See, also, Dudman v. Board, Ir. R. 7 C. L. 518; Spaight v. Tedcastle, 6 App. Cas. 217.

It seems to me that the cases above cited show an almost uniform trend of opinion against the principle laid down by the court in this case. I do not contend that the decisions of the English, French, and Belgian courts should be recognized by us any further than their course of reasoning commends itself to our sense of justice; but upon questions of maritime law, which is but a branch of international law, I think the opinions of the learned and experienced judges of these courts are entitled to something more than respectful consideration. It is for the interest of merchants and ship owners, whose relations and dealings are international in their character, that the same construction should, so far as possible, be placed upon the law maritime by the courts of all maritime nations; and I am compelled to say that I see no reason for creating an exception in this case.