Cargill, Inc. v. Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, 15919.

• Decision Date: 30 June 1956
• Docket Number: No. 15919.,15919.
• Citation: 235 F.2d 240,1956 AMC 1545
• Parties: CARGILL, Inc., Appellant, v. COMPAGNIE GENERALE TRANSATLANTIQUE, as Owner and Operator of THE S. S. CAVALIER DE LA SALLE and Commodity Credit Corporation, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

1956 AMC 1545, 235 F.2d 240 (1956)

CARGILL, Inc., Appellant, v. COMPAGNIE GENERALE TRANSATLANTIQUE, as Owner and Operator of THE S. S. CAVALIER DE LA SALLE and Commodity Credit Corporation, Appellees.

No. 15919.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

June 30, 1956.

George F. Wood, John H. Tappan, Mobile, Ala., Pillans, Reams, Tappan, Wood & Roberts, Mobile, Ala., of counsel, for appellant.

T. K. Jackson, Jr., Mobile, Ala., John W. Sims, New Orleans, La., Keener T. Blackmarr, Asst. U. S. Atty., Mobile, Ala., Phelps, Dunbar, Marks, Claverie & Sims, New Orleans, La., and Inge, Twitty, Armbrecht & Jackson, Mobile, Ala., of counsel, for appellees.

Before HUTCHESON, Chief Judge, and RIVES and BROWN, Circuit Judges.

JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge.

The French Line filed a libel against Cargill, Inc., for demurrage under a freight booking engagement contract for failure of the shipper to have the cargo of grain available in the port for loading on the S. S. Cavalier De La Salle at the specified time. The shipper answered, and then, under the 56th Admiralty Rule¹ filed a petition impleading Commodity Credit Corporation on the grain sales contract² claiming that if it had failed to have the cargo available as agreed with the vessel, it was all due to CCC's breach of its contract.

Long before the impleaded respondent CCC had anything to say about its wishes, the Court sustained the libellant's exception to the impleader that the "cause of action alleged in said petition is independent of the original controversy, is in no way germane thereto, and does not grow out of the same matter or cause of action on which the original libel is founded." The dismissal was without written opinion or findings although, from the argument, it seems agreed that the Judge thought the case rigidly controlled by our decision in Standard Fire Insurance Co. v. Boyce-Harvey Machinery, Inc., 5 Cir., 202 F.2d 871, 1953 A.M. C. 623.

This was not unnatural, although we should here make plain that affirming, as we did there, the act of a District Judge as he presides over the endless variety of subsidiary procedural controversies which relate to the form or manner in which substance is finally to be tested, what we say need not necessarily be "according to the law of the Medes and Persians which altereth not."

There are undoubtedly situations (in addition to jurisdictional ones) in which allowance of an impleader under Rule 56 would so complicate a case, frustrate justice, impose hardship or cause such real harm that, on review, we would have to declare a District Court in error for having permitted it. But this would be rare — rarer perhaps than for similar action under F.R.C.P. 14 where the element of adverse effect on a jury trial might be present. Cf. Jones v. Waterman S. S. Corp., 3 Cir., 155 F.2d 992, 1946 A.M.C. 859. Conversely, the facts, the nature of the underlying claim, the necessities for service of process, in rem or in personam, availability of seagoing witnesses, or other like circumstances might so plainly call for allowance³ of impleader that denial would itself be reversible. But this too will be rare. For by its very nature, the determination of whether a proposed impleader comes within the Rule is a matter which must be committed to the careful, informed judgment — discretion — of the Trial Judge as he sees a case developing.

And this gives a due regard to the origin of the Rule which Judge Addison Brown, with pioneering courage, brought into being, without benefit of authoritative precedent or anything but the barest indication of a statutory rule-making power, to meet the demands of equity, The Hudson, D.C.S.D.N.Y., 15 F. 162; see, In re New York and Porto Rico Steamship Company, 1894, 155 U.S. 523, 528, 15 S.Ct. 183, 883, 39 L.Ed. 246; 2 Benedict on Admiralty, 6th Ed., Section 349, page 533, and Section 351, page 538; and takes proper account of the legal capacity of United States District Judges who, in their daily grappling with today's complex litigation, successfully meet the challenge of assimilation of intricate, voluminous evidence in endless fields of the law. To such a Judge, mixing a tort with a contract case, separating evidence for its application to one but not the other phase of an action, applying one basis of liability or measure of damages to one but a different standard to another, is hardly the sort of problem we should hold exceeds his competence if he determines to undertake it. See, e. g., Eastern Massachusetts Street Ry. Co. v. Transmarine Corporation, 1 Cir., 42 F.2d 58, 1930 A. M.C. 1454; Loma Fruit Company v. International Navigation Co., Ltd., 2 Cir., 11 F.2d 124, 1924 A.M.C. 664.

On the other hand, perhaps the Judge will conclude, as he did here, that the indicated complications, e. g., The Donald T. Wright, D.C.W.D.Ky., 30 F.Supp. 610, 1940 A.M.C. 291; Cf. Lee's Inc., v. Transcontinental Underwriters, D.C.Md., 9 F. R.D. 470, construing F.R.C.P. 14(a), outweigh the aim of the Rule which, "is designed to save expense and to avoid the duplication of trials", Standard Fire Insurance Co. v. Boyce-Harvey Machinery, Inc., supra 202 F.2d 872, and is intended, "* * * to avoid a multiplicity of suits; to secure a complete hearing of the subject-matter, through the presence of all of the parties interested; to obtain an adjudication * * * binding upon all; to avoid conflicting decisions to which separate suits would be liable through the different evidence likely to be produced in them * * * and thus to avoid any possible failure of justice through such causes * * *", In re New York and Porto Rico Steamship Company, 155 U.S. 523, 525, 15 S.Ct. 183, 184, 39 L.Ed. 246, 247. Certainly the Judge had a basis for it here since the relatively simple issue framed by libel and answer might conceivably become involved in unpredictable complexities, both of proof and law, in the controversy between Cargill and this Governmental agency. Not the least of these questions would be the nature of the agreement —...