Page:United States Reports, Volume 60.djvu/39

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DECEMBER TERM, 1856.
23

Thomas et al. v. Osborn.


ferred to the points decided by the court were the following, viz:

First. That no lien on the Laura was created for the expenses paid and supplies furnished by Loring & Co., as per their account, and Phineas Leach, on whose order or request they were paid and furnished, was not then the master of the barque, and no one but the master can create an implied lien on a vessel. Conkling’s Admiralty, 59; Flanders on Shipping, 181; Flanders’s Maritime Law, 174, 175, 186; Story on Agency, sects. 116 to 124; Curtis on Merchant Seamen, 76–165 to 185; The St. Jago de Cuba, 9 Wheaton, 409, 416; The Phebe, Ware, 275; Sarchet v. Sloop Davis, Crabbe, 199, 200, 201; Jones v. Blum, 2 Richardson, 475, 476, 479, 480; Thorn v. Hicks, 7 Cowen, 700; James v. Bixley, 11 Mass., 37, 38, 40, 41; Sproat v. Donnell, 20 Maine, 187, 188; Thompson v. Snow, 4 Maine, 268, 269; Mann v. Fletcher, 1 Gray, (Mass.,) 128, 129, 130; Webb v. Peirce, 1 Curtis C. C. R., 105 to 118; Reeve v. Davis, 1 Ad. and E., 312; Minturn v. Maynard, 17 Howard, 477; The Aurora, 1 Wheaton, 103; Greenway v. Turner, 4 Md., 296, 303, 304; Young v. Brander, 8 East., 12; Frazer v. Marsh, 13 ib., 238; Bogart v. The John Jay, 17 Howard, 401; Abbot on Shipping, 128; 1 Bell’s Com., 506; The Jane, 1 Dod., 461; 2 Starr’s Institutions, 953, 955, 962, 966; Gilpin, 543.

Second. At the time when the supplies in question were furnished, Leach had ceased to be captain, and become a merchant, doing business in Valparaiso, in the counting-room of Loring & Co. As to the Laura, he was a wrong-doer, improperly detaining her from her owners, and using her as his own. And the facts which came to the knowledge of Loring & Co. were sufficient to have put them on the inquiry as to the legality of the right which Leach claimed to exercise over the Laura, and such an inquiry would have enabled them to ascertain that he had no such right. They had therefore constructive notice of all the facts to which such an inquiry might have led. Curtis on Seamen, 151 to 153; Carr v. Hector, 1 Curtis C. C. R., 393, and cases there cited; Ringgold v. Bryan, 3 Md. Ch. R., 493; Magruder v. Peter, 11 G. and J., 243; Baynard v. Norris, 5 Gill, 468; Oliver v. Piatt, 3 How., 479, 495; Harrison v. Vose, 9 How., 372.

The points made on the part of the appellee, so far as they were included in the decision of the court, were:

1. That whether Leach, by the terms of the contract under which he navigated the barque, was or was not to be regarded as her temporary owner at the time when the repairs and supplies in controversy were furnished, and whether the gen-