Barbaro v. Auditore Contracting Co.

215 A.D. 595, 214 N.Y.S. 221, 1926 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 11019
CourtAppellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
DecidedFebruary 19, 1926
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 215 A.D. 595 (Barbaro v. Auditore Contracting Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Barbaro v. Auditore Contracting Co., 215 A.D. 595, 214 N.Y.S. 221, 1926 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 11019 (N.Y. Ct. App. 1926).

Opinions

Kapper, J.

Defendant Auditore Contracting Company, Inc., a stevedore, in whose employ the plaintiff was as a longshoreman, had a contract with its codefendant N. A. Galanos & Co. to place cargo on board the steamship King Alexander, which was owned by the defendant navigation company, and against which last named defendant the action was discontinued at the outset of the trial upon motion or request of plaintiff. The steamship was equipped with winches, one of them being alongside of hold No. 6. Plaintiff was injured in the course of his work, the accident occurring at about three-forty-five o’clock a. m. on July 8, 1921, while the vessel was lying at the foot of Fifty-eighth street, Brooklyn. At that time there was being lowered into No. 6 hold with the aid of said winch, a draft consisting of two barrels of oil, which work was being conducted solely by the plaintiff’s fellow-servants. It is the claim of the plaintiff that when the barrels reached some point near the bottom of the hold it became necessary to raise them, in doing which, there came a jerk caused by the winch “ jumping,” which swung the draft around so that some part of the tackle caught into a metal projection, a part of the ship itself, which loosened the draft, causing the barrels to fall out. One of them fell on plaintiff and injured him.

Negligence was predicated by plaintiff upon the claim that the •winch was defective or “ out of order.” No other ground of negligence is claimed. It is plaintiff’s theory that his employer, the Auditore Contracting Company, Inc., had a duty to inspect the winch before using it, and that Galanos & Co., who was the charterer of the ship, was in legal effect the owner and bound to furnish plaintiff with a non-defective winch.

The liability of these two defendants must be approached from different angles. Under the doctrine of Liverani v. Clark & Son (231 N. Y. 178), the Auditore Contracting Company, Inc., having undertaken the work of loading cargo on the ship had the right to assume the safety of the winch and that due care had been used by the shipowner to keep and maintain it in reasonably safe condition; that if appearances indicated no danger or defects, an inspection for latent imperfections was not required of the master stevedore; and that in the absence of indications of danger it would be unreasonable .to expect a stevedore minutely to examine this appliance before permitting his employees to use it in their work. (See Barnevo v. Munson S. S. Line, 239 N. Y. 486, 491.)

As to the liability of Galanos & Co., the learned trial justice charged as a matter of law that they were in exclusive possession and use of the steamship for their own business purposes, and they became the owners of the vessel as respects all matters per[597]*597taining to the handling, loading and delivery of cargo, and they were responsible for the ship’s appliances, including the winch in question used for the purpose of loading the ship. It was the defendant Galanos & Company’s duty to see to it, by the exercise of reasonable care and inspection, that the winch and other appliances used for the purpose of loading the ship, were reasonably safe at the time or before the making of the contract with the defendant Auditore Contracting Company.” At the close of the charge, counsel for Galanos & Co. noted the following exceptions and request: “ Mr. Jones: I except to that portion of your Honor’s charge in which your Honor charged the jury that the steamship was at the time of this accident in the exclusive possession and control of the defendant Galanos & Company. Mr. Jones: I except to your Honor’s charge in which you charge the jury that at the time of this accident Galanos & Company was responsible for the ship’s appliances. I except to that portion of your Honor’s charge in which your Honor charged the jury that the defendant Galanos & Company was under a duty to inspect and examine the winch, and to use reasonable care to see to it that it was in proper condition. And I ask your Honor to charge the jury that the duty under this charter party in evidence was on the owner of the ship to maintain and keep the boat, including the winches, in an adequate and safe condition at the time of this accident. The Court: I refuse to charge other than I have charged. Mr. Jones: Exception.”

The owner of the vessel being out of the case on plaintiff’s own motion made at the outset of the trial, it became necessary, to entitle the plaintiff to recover against Galanos & Co., the charterer, to show that that defendant supplanted the vessel’s owner in the matter of responsibility for the condition of the ship and its appliances, and particularly for the winch in question; and to accomplish this result the plaintiff offered in evidence a contract or charter party, made between Galanos & Co. and the shipowner. It will be of importance, therefore, to examine the language of this charter party which I shall shortly do.

The conclusion to which I have come regarding the appeal of the Auditore Contracting Company is that the judgment as to it should be reversed upon the ground that the evidence did not satisfactorily establish that defendant’s negligence. There is no pretense that there was anything observable about this winch at or before the beginning of its use (which was less than an hour preceding the accident) that would import danger. The credible testimony is that escaping steam, which was the only thing testified to before the draft gave this so-called jump on raising up the load which was when the agcident .itself happened, would not gause the [598]*598winch to jump or jerk, and that the only way that that phenomenon could occur would be by too much steam going into the cylinder and not from steam that was lost in the air or atmosphere. Nothing worthy of the dignity of a claim of notice to the Auditore Contracting Company arises on this testimony beyond what happened immediately in connection with the accident which was on the raising up of the third draft, before which nothing had occurred. I am satisfied on this record that nothing did occur such as claimed, because the winch was used for a half hour afterwards to complete the loading, and no claim is made of any further jumping manifestation. The claim that the Auditore Company’s foreman had been told about the jumping, and requested the gangwayman to keep on working, does not seem to me to be enough proof, when the record is studied, to amount to a charge of notice that there was a latent defect which caused the winch to jump. The record leaves it in doubt whether this notice to the so-called foreman was before or after the accident. The testimony of the gangwayman was that “ after Barbare was hurt ” he saw a man with an oil can doing something at the winch for about five minutes,‘after which everything was all right again. And we have the testimony of the winchman, who, when asked “ What was wrong with the winch that made it jerk like that? ” replied that, “Well, there-was something wrong with the oiling of the winch which causes that.” -It may be that upon a new trial as against the Auditore-Contracting Company the testimony may be more clearly brought out to establish a patent defect, or sufficient notice of a latent defect in the winch, if there were such, as to justify a verdict for plaintiff. But, within t'he doctrine of the Liverani case, so clearly analyzed in the Barnevo Case {supra),

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Bluebook (online)
215 A.D. 595, 214 N.Y.S. 221, 1926 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 11019, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/barbaro-v-auditore-contracting-co-nyappdiv-1926.