Atlantic, Gulf & Pacific S.S. Corp. v. United States

• Decision Date: 16 February 1923
• Citation: 287 F. 714
• Parties: ATLANTIC, GULF & PACIFIC S.S. CORPORATION v. UNITED STATES.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

287 F. 714

ATLANTIC, GULF & PACIFIC S.S. CORPORATION v. UNITED STATES.

United States District Court, D. Maryland.

February 16, 1923

Stuart S. Janney, George Weems Williams, and L. Vernon Miller, all of Baltimore, Md., for trustee.

F. R Conway, of Washington, D.C., and Amos W.W. Woodcock, U.S Atty., of Baltimore, Md., for the United States.

ROSE Circuit Judge.

The controversy in this case is between the United States, on the one side, and a trustee in bankruptcy, on the other, as to who has the better title to $5,363.36, the proceeds of consumable stores found on board the steamships Liberator and Cape Henry at the time of their arrest by the Marshal, in a possessory suit in which the United States was libelant, and which resulted in the possession of them being adjudged to it.

Originally the ships had been purchased by the bankrupt from the government on the installment plan so to speak; that is to say, a comparatively small part of the agreed purchase price had been paid down the balance to be paid at certain fixed intervals. The purchaser became largely in default, and the seller exercised its reserved right of repossessing its ships at or about the time at which the buyer was adjudged a bankrupt. The dispute as to whether the stores went with the ship or passed with the other property of the bankrupt to its trustee at once arose. It was impossible at the moment for the court to give adequate consideration to the legal question involved, and it was to the interest of all parties that there should be no unnecessary interference with the completeness of the Government's control over the ships. As it proposed to lay them up for an indefinite period, if not forever, the stores were, as such, of no use to it. It was interested only in what they would fetch when sold. It was accordingly agreed that the receiver and trustee in bankruptcy should take the stores, sell them, and keep the proceeds intact until the court could determine to whom they belonged.

The United States relies on such cases as the Dundee, 1 Haggard Admiralty Reports, 109; Gale v. Laurie (which is the same case on prohibition) 5 B.C.C. 156; The Witch Queen, 3 Sawy 201, 30 Fed.Cas. 396, No. 17,916; The Manila Prize Cases, 188 U.S. 254, 23 Sup.Ct. 415, 47 L.Ed. 463; the construction put upon the last-named opinion in the contemporaneously decided case of The Infanta Maria Teresa, 188 U.S. 283, 23 Sup.Ct. 412, 47 L.Ed. 477, and the Frolic (D.C.) 148 F. 921. In the Supreme Court cases, it was adjudged that 'ship or vessel of war belonging to an enemy,' as employed in section 4635, R.S., 'covered armament, outfit and appurtenances, including provisions, money to pay the crew or for necessary expenditures, everything necessary to be used for the purpose of the vessel and as a vessel of war. ' In another of the decisions it was held a chronometer lawfully on board, convenient, if not necessary, for the use of the ship, went with the ship when the latter was forfeited for the breach of the Chinese Exclusion Law, although it did not belong to the owners of the ship and had been hired by them for its use. The Frolic, supra. The fishing appliances on board a Greenland whaler, and worth almost as much as the rest of the ship itself, were held a part of it, within the English limited liability statutes, in that they were answerable with the ship for the latter's torts. The Dundee, supra; Gale v. Laurie, supra. For distinguishable reasons a diving bell belonging to the owner of a ship and necessary for its use in its pearl-fishing voyage was held subject to the...