The Ottawa
| Citation | 3 Wall. 268,18 L.Ed. 165,70 U.S. 268 |
| Parties | THE OTTAWA |
| Decision Date | 01 December 1865 |
| Court | United States Supreme Court |
APPEAL from the Circuit Court of the United States for
the Northern District of Illinois in a question of collision at night, on Lake Huron, between the steam propeller Ottawa and the schooner Caledonia, and by which the schooner was sunk; the decree in the Circuit as in the District Court having been against the steamer as in fault.
The controversy was one chiefly of fact; whether, for example, there was any one at all on the steamer's deck about the time of the collision besides the wheelsman then steering the vessel; whether the steamer showed lights as required; what the courses of the two vessels had been, and how far they properly or improperly held them on their approach to each other, and some others not necessary, in view of the decision, to be mentioned. The testimony was conflicting and prolix; the cross-examination of one witness alone having extended to four hundred and thirty-two inquiries. The chief point of law disputed in the controversy and the matter therefore to which the reporter more particularly directs attention was apparently this: Whether, assuming that the master was on the steamer's deck after the vessels came into such proximity as required precautions, until the moment before the collision occurred—a matter about which there were doubts—he was a competent lookout within the decisions of this court; he having been, at the time, the officer of the deck, in charge of navigating her, and having been standing with the wheelsman in the wheel-house; a place which, on this steamer, the mate swore was the best place for a lookout to be, well forward, and giving an unobstructed view; and which the counsel for the owners of the steamer, exhibiting to the court a photograph, stated was less than twenty feet from the bow.
Mr. Dexter for the owners of the steamer; Mr. Proudfoot, contra.
Amended libel alleged that the appellee was the owner of the schooner Caledonia; that on the sixteenth day of September, 1860, she was engaged in prosecuting a voyage from Chicago to Buffalo, having on board a cargo of six thousand bushels of wheat, belonging to her owner; that, at eight o'clock in the evening of that day, when she was navigating in Lake Huron, eight miles northwesterly from Thunder Bay Light, she encountered the propeller Ottawa, bound up the lake, and that the propeller was so negligently and carelessly managed and navigated that a collision occurred between the two vessels, whereby the schooner, with her cargo on board, was sunk in the lake and lost.
Appellant, in his amended answer, admitted the collision and loss, but denied that the propeller was in fault, and averred as a distinct ground of defence that the collision occurred entirely through the incompetency of those of charge of the schooner, and in consequence of their carelessness and mismanagement.
Decree in the District Court was in favor of the libellant, and the same was affirmed on appeal in the Circuit Court; whereupon the owner and claimant of the propeller appealed to this court.
I. Most of the material inquiries of fact presented for decision are, as usual in this class of cases, involved in perplexing uncertainty on account of the conflicting nature of the testimony. Superadded to that difficulty, which experience shows is one generally to be expected in controversies of this character, the present investigation is greatly complicated and embarrassed by the unreasonable length of the examinations and cross-examinations of the witnesses, as exhibited in the record. Undoubtedly a party calling a witness, may, if he sees fit, examine the witness by specific interrogatories, instead of relying upon the general statements of witness, as made responsive to the oath under which he testifies; and it is equally clear that the opposite party may in all cases cross-examine the witness in respect to all the material matters disclosed in the examination in chief, but it is past belief that everything valuable involved in the right of cross-examination may not be secured without propounding, in a collision case, four or five hundred question to a single witness.
Cross-examination is the right of the party against whom the witness is called, and the right is a valuable one as a means of separating hearsay from knowledge, error from truth, opinion from fact, and inference from recollection, and as a means of ascertaining the order of the events as narrated by the witness in his examination in chief, and the time and place when and where they occurred, and the attending circumstances, and of testing the intelligence, memory, impartiality, truthfulness, and integrity of the witness; but a few questions, well directed to those several objects, are in general amply sufficient to effect all that can well be accomplished by the fullest enjoyment of that admitted right.
II. Embarrassed, however, as the investigation is by the complications and difficulties suggested, still there are some facts and circumstances having an important bearing upon the principal questions involved in the pleadings, which may be regarded as conceded, or as so fully proved that they are not properly the subjects of controversy in the case.
Seaworthiness of the schooner is not denied, and it is fully proved that she was well manned and equipped, and that the master, at the time of the collision, was in charge of her deck. Proofs are also entirely satisfactory that she had an able seaman at the wheel, and a competent lookout, properly stationed, forward of the windlass, having no other duty to perform, and at a place where there was nothing to obstruct his view.
Just before the collision the master was standing near the helmsman, but, when notified by the lookout that he...
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Arnstein v. Porter
... ... Greenstein, 2 Cir., 153 F.2d 550; Shecil v. United States, 7 Cir., 226 F. 184, 187 ... 7 See, e.g., Wigmore, Evidence, 2d Ed., 1936, § 1367; Moore, Facts (1898), § 1274; The Ottawa", 3 Wall. 268, 271, 18 L.Ed. 165; Sanborn, J., in Resurrection Gold Min. Co. v. Fortune Gold Min. Co., 8 Cir., 129 F. 668, 675, 676; Lee Sing Far v. United States, 9 Cir., 94 F. 834, 837 ... 8 He would be so entitled if the trial were before a judge without a jury ... \xC2" ... ...
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United States v. Hay, Crim. No. 72-CR-246.
... ... In holding as I do that there was no impermissible curtailment of defendant's right of cross-examination, I am not unaware of The Ottawa, 3 Wall. 268, 70 U. S. 268, 18 L.Ed. 165, and its progeny including Alford v. United States (1931), 282 U.S. 687, 51 S.Ct. 218, 75 L.Ed. 624. I know that the right of cross-examination is encompassed within the Sixth Amendment right of confrontation. Pointer v. Texas (1965), 380 U.S. 400, 85 S.Ct ... ...
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Beasley v. State
... ... Objection was sustained on the ground that the questions were immaterial and not proper cross-examination. Mr. Justice Stone said for the Court: ... 'Cross-examination of a witness is a matter of right. The Ottawa, 3 Wall. 268, 271, 18 L.Ed. 165. Its permissible purposes, among others, are that the witness may be identified with his community so that independent testimony may be sought and offered of his reputation for veracity in his own neighborhood, cf. Khan v. Zemansky, 59 Cal.App. 324, 327 ff., 210 P ... ...
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... ... 5 Wigmore, Evidence (3 ed.) § 1368, From an examination of the authorities it appears that the right of cross-examination is an absolute right only in regard to adverse witnesses. The Ottawa, 3 Wall. 268, 70 U.S. 268, 18 L.Ed. 165 [(1865)]; Gurley v. St. Louis Transit Co., Mo.App., 259 S.W. 895 [(1924)]; Citizens Bank & Trust Co. v. Reid Motor Co., 216 N.C. 432, 5 S.E.2d 318 [(1939)]; Aluminum Industries, Inc. v. Egan, 61 Ohio App. 111, 22 N.E.2d 459 [(1938)]; Hall v. Crosby, 131 Me ... ...