THE GANSFJORD, 18882.
| Decision Date | 17 April 1928 |
| Docket Number | No. 18882.,18882. |
| Citation | 25 F.2d 736 |
| Parties | THE GANSFJORD. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Louisiana |
Edmond E. Talbot, Asst. U. S. Atty., of New Orleans, La.
M. A. Grace (of J. D., M. A. & E. H. Grace), of New Orleans, La., for respondents.
The libel of information was filed on behalf of the United States against the Norwegian steamship Gansfjord, under charter to the United Fruit Company, a domestic corporation, charging that the vessel negligently collided with the East Jetty wall of South Pass at a point about 400 feet above the East Jetty Light, damaging same to the extent of $2,556.37, in violation of sections 14 and 16 of the Rivers and Harbors Act approved March 3, 1899 (30 Stat. 1152 33 USCA §§ 408, 411, 412; Comp. St. §§ 9919, 9921).
Exceptions to the jurisdiction of this court, either as a court of admiralty or of law, and attacking the constitutionality of the act in so far as it concerns the remedy afforded the government thereby for recovery of damages to jetties and other such property, as being an encroachment of the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, in violation of article 3 of section 2 of the Constitution, were overruled. The Gansfjord (D. C.) 17 F.(2d) 613. Claimant insistently reiterates them in its answer on the merits.
In overruling these exceptions I contemplated the libel of information as a proceeding sui generis in character, deriving its sanction directly from the terms of the act in question. I cannot see what the constitutional declaration, that the judicial power of the United States shall extend to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, has to do with the distribution of that jurisdiction by Congress as it alone may decide. It seems clear to me that in passing the act Congress contemplated the state of the jurisprudence by which the courts of the United States have consistently held that damages to shore property were not cognizable in admiralty, and that the United States was thereby deprived of the benefit of admiralty liens for such damages, particularly in cases where the vessels damaging public property were transiently in this country, and whose owners and officers were not amenable to the process of the courts; that also in an action at law no attachment ordinarily would lie in a federal court, in the case of an alien or absentee owner, in the absence of personal service.
For these reasons, among others, no doubt, in its effort to conserve and protect public works such as these jetty walls, and after declaring unlawful by section 14 any act of any person who, in any manner whatever, defaced, destroyed, or injured same, penalized such acts of defacing, destroying, and injuring, etc., in section 16, which, inter alia, makes any boat used or employed in such violations liable for all or any of the pecuniary penalties against such person specified; then it specifies particularly that such boat shall be liable "in addition thereto for the amount of the damages done by said boat," etc., and specifies that "said boat," etc., "may be proceeded against summarily by way of libel in any District Court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof."
Certainly Congress may distribute the judicial power as its wisdom, in the light of experience,...
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