Newtown Creek Towing Co. v. Aetna Ins. Co.
| Decision Date | 15 May 1900 |
| Parties | NEWTOWN CREEK TOWING CO. v. AETNA INS. CO. |
| Court | New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from supreme court, appellate division, Second department.
Action by the Newtown Creek Towing Company against the AEtna Insurance Company upon a policy of insurance. From an order of the appellate division (48 N. Y. Supp. 927) reversing the judgment of the trial term dismissing the complaint, defendant appeals. Reversed.
J. E. Carpenter, for appellant.
Mark Ash, for respondent.
Counsel have accumulated between them, apparently, not only all the decisions, but all the text-book learning as well, in this country and England on the subject of collision as understood in marine parlance, without discovering that such a case as this has ever been brought to the attention of a court. Obviously, the reason is either that no other vessel was over injured under similar circumstances, or it has not been supposed hitherto that the insurance of vessels against ‘any accident caused by collision’ included injuries sustained by a vessel as the outcome of its crashing into another object by the design of the master. Unquestionably, the injured may recover where the collision is due to the design of the master of another vessel or floating object; but when the master of the vessel insured designedly takes the chance of running into a perfectly apparent obstruction, although with the hope and expectation that the vessel will successfully meet the encounter, the contact is not a collision within the meaning of the term as employed in this contract. Collision, in its strict nautical and legal acceptation, originally meant the impinging upon one another of vessels while being navigated, but in course of time and by common usage the application of the term has been so far extended, in this country at least, as to include the impact of a vessel with other floating objects. Lord Coleridge held in Richardson v. Burrows (Q. B., 16th Dec., 1880), not reported, but referred to and quoted in Lowndes on Marine Insurance (2d Ed.; p. 198, note s), that the striking of a ship on a field of ice was not a collision within the meaning of the term in a policy of insurance; but it may well be that his definition of the word was too narrow, measured by the tendency of our courts to broaden its application. However, whether the term be treated by the courts as so fixed in character as to be restricted in its meaning to the coming together of two vessels, as is the rule in France, or so flexible as to include a variety of floating objects other than vessels, the idea of accident, so far as the insured is concerned, underlies it. To illustrate: If a ferryboat crossing the Hudson river in the nighttime should unexpectedly strike a large floating cake of ice, it may well be that state of the law in this country would justify the holding that the striking constituted a collision within the meaning of the term as used in this policy. But it would be otherwise if, after the river had been closed for months by ice, the owner of the boat should conclude that the ice had been so far weakened by the rays of the sun that the boat could break its way through, and the result of the attempt should be an injury to the boat. No adjudication can be found holding...
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...to our attention. We here preserve a reference to the following for the future convenience of bench and bar: Newtown Creek Towing Co. v. Ætna Ins. Co., 163 N. Y. 114, 57 N. E. 302; London Assurance v. Companhia, 167 U. S. 149, 17 S. Ct. 785, 42 L. Ed. 113; Cline v. Western Assurance Co., 10......
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...to our attention. We here preserve a reference to the following for the future convenience of bench and bar: Newtown Creek Towing Co. v. Ætna Ins. Co., 163 N. Y. 114, 57 N. E. 302;London Assurance v. Companhia, 167 U. S. 149, 17 Sup. Ct. 785, 42 L. Ed. 113;Cline v. Western Assurance Co., 10......
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