Aurora Shipping Co. v. Boyce

191 F. 960, 112 C.C.A. 372, 1911 U.S. App. LEXIS 5012
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
DecidedOctober 23, 1911
DocketNo. 1,893
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 191 F. 960 (Aurora Shipping Co. v. Boyce) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Aurora Shipping Co. v. Boyce, 191 F. 960, 112 C.C.A. 372, 1911 U.S. App. LEXIS 5012 (9th Cir. 1911).

Opinions

HANFORD, District Judge

(after stating the facts as above). [1] For the determination of this case, one main question must be decided, viz.: Did the District Court have jurisdiction to render its decree in favor of the libelant for the cause alleged in her libel? This main question can be treated most advantageously by dividing it into two parts. The subsidiary questions are:

(a) Is there a statutory right to maintain an administrator’s suit to recover damages for the death of a person resulting from a tortious injury within the state of Oregon, and a statutory lien upon a vessel subject to admiralty jurisdiction, where the injury causing the death happens on board of such vessel afloat upon navigable water, and constitutes a maritime tort by reason of culpability of the ship’s officers?

(b) Is the admiralty jurisdiction of a United States District Court adequate to adjudicate the rights of the parties, founded upon a maritime tort causing death and state statutes conferring a right of action therefor and creating a lien upon the offending vessel?

The answers to the appellant’s contentions, above stated, will also furnish the reasons deemed sufficient for an affirmative decision of these main and subsidiary questions.

[2] The first proposition is untrue, because there is involved in it an unwarranted assumption of power in the Legislature of Oregon to invest the courts of that state with exclusive jurisdiction of suits in rem against vessels to enforce liens for maritime torts. That assumption has to support it the plausible theory that legislative power sufficient to create a new right must be potent to limit the right by imposing a condition. That theory, however, as applied to encroachments upon the jurisdiction of the national courts, is completely refuted bv the decisions of the Supreme Court in the cases of The J. E. Rumbell, 148 U. S. 1, 13 Sup. Ct. 498, 37 L. Ed. 345, and The Glide, 167 U. S. 606, 17 Sup. Ct. 930, 42 L. Ed. 296. Section 5709 is merely an appendage of the preceding section, and its unconstitutionality does not taint section 5706, which creates the lien.

[3] The second proposition seems to aim at a separation of injuries causing death from other personal injuries which only inflict pain or partially disable an individual. To classify torts, and then apply the statute to one class and make exceptions as to others, would require an unwarranted usurpation of legislative authority, because it would effect a material change in the statute, eliminating therefrom fights comprehended within it, according to the common and general definition of the. words and phrases selected by the Legislature. Instead of a construction restricting their application to classes, general laws are to have general application so as to operate equally and uniformly. To give this law a fair and reasonable construction, it is necessary to presume that the Legislature intended to prescribe a rule consonant with justice. When a man is wounded or killed, the pain which he suffers and his individual loss are not the only pains and losses inflicted, for the indirect consequences to those dependent upon him are often the most distressing. In such cases justice requires that compensation be rendered to the injured, and there can he no fair rule of compensation which excludes from its benefits the dependent wife [964]*964and children who have been robbed of their means of support by the death of a husband and father.

' In the case of The Oregon (D. C.) 45 Fed. 62, Judge Deady sustained intervening libels in rem of an administrator of two seamen who were killed in a collision. The provisions of the Oregon statutes, which we have to consider, were quoted in his opinion. On an appeal to the Circuit Court for the District of Oregon, his decision was affirmed, and the case has been cited approvingly by Judge Brown of New York in the case of The City of Norwalk (D. C.) 55 Fed. 98, approved by this court in the case of The Willamette, 70 Fed. 874, 18 C. C. A. 366, 31 L. R. A. 715. The Supreme Court, in The Corsair, 145 U. S. 335, 12 Sup. Ct. 949, 36 L. Ed. 727, mentions it in these words: “In The Oregon [D. C.] 45 Fed. 62, a lien was given by the state statute and was enforced in the admiralty.” Aft'erwards the case was reversed by the Supreme Court, on the ground that the decree for damages against sureties and in favor of parties who intervened after the release of the vessel was erroneous; but the question as to the right of the administrator to sue in rem appears to have been passed over without discussing it. The order which the Supreme Court made, however, was that the decree be reversed with costs “as against the interveners, and the case remanded to the Circuit Court, * * * without prejudice, however, to the right of the court below, or of the District Court, in its discretion to treat the intervening petitions as independent libels, and to issue process thereon against the steamship Oregon, her owners or charterers, or to take such other proceedings therein as justice may require.” 158 U. S. 186, 15 Sup. Ct. 804, 39 L. Ed. 943. Thereafter, in the District Court, Judge Bellinger decided that the right of ■ the administrator to continue the litigation was barred by the Oregon statute of limitations. The Oregon (D. C.) 73 Fed. 846. His decision was reversed by this ' court and an opinion was rendered in which, following a quotation of the Oregon statutes' and citation of The Willamette Case, the court stated the following conclusion:

“The local law thus giving a lien upon the offending thing for such damages as are here involved, it is the settled law that the aggrieved party may proceed in rem in the proper court of admiralty.” Laidlaw v. Oregon Ry. & Nav. Co., 81 Fed. 876, 26 C. C. A. 665.

The case was finally terminated by a decree awarding damages to' the several intervening libelants, including the administrator of the. estates of the seamen who were killed. The Oregon (D. C.) 89 Fed. 520; The General Foy (D. C.) 175 Fed. 590.

The main'supports of the appellant’s arguments are the decisions of the Supreme Court in the case of The Albert Dumois, 177 U. S. 257, 20 Sup. Ct. 602, 44 L. Ed. 751, which denied the applicability of a statute of Louisiana conferring a privilege in favor of the party injured, to claims of representatives of deceased persons; and of this court in the case of The Dauntless, 129 Fed. 715, 64 C. C. A. 243. That part of the opinion of the Supreme Court which bears upon the subject is here quoted:

“Assuming for tile present that the question of lien is material, we are next to inquire whether such lien is given hy the local law of Louisiana. [965]*965We are cited in this connection to two articles of the Civil Code, the first of which (article 2315), as amended in 1884, declares that: ‘Every act whatever of man that causes damages to another, obliges him by whose fault it happened to repair it; the right of this action shall survive, in ease of death, in favor of the minor children or widow of the deceased, or either of them, and in default of these, in favor of the surviving father and mother, or either of them, for the space of one year from the death.

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Bluebook (online)
191 F. 960, 112 C.C.A. 372, 1911 U.S. App. LEXIS 5012, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/aurora-shipping-co-v-boyce-ca9-1911.