The Vallescura

• Decision Date: 03 December 1934
• Docket Number: No. 134,134
• Parties: THE VALLESCURA
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

293 U.S. 296

55 S.Ct. 194

79 L.Ed. 373

THE VALLESCURA.

No. 134.

Argued Nov. 14, 1934.

Decided Dec. 3, 1934.

[Syllabus from pages 296-297 intentionally omitted] Mr. Joseph Joffe, of New York City, for petitioner.

Mr. Homer L. Loomis, of New York City, for respondent.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 297-300 intentionally omitted] Mr. Justice STONE delivered the opinion of the Court.

Petitioners brought suit in admiralty in the District Court for Southern New York, to recover damages for injury to a shipment of onions on respondent's steamship Vallescura from Spain to New York City. The onions, receipt of which in apparent good condition was acknowledged by the bill of lading, were delivered in New York damaged by decay. The vessel pleaded as a defense an exception, in the bill of lading, from liability for damage by 'decay' and 'perils of the seas,' and that the damage 'was not due to any cause or event arising through any negligence on the part of the vessel, her master, owner or agents.'

On the trial there was evidence that the decay was caused by improper ventilation of the cargo during the voyage, and that the failure to ventilate was due in part to closing of the hatches and ventilators made necessary by heavy weather, and in part to the neglect of the master and crew in failing to keep them open at night in fair weather. The District Court entered an interlocutory decree, adjudging that the libelants recover the amount of the damage sustained by them, caused by closing the hatches and ventilators during good weather, and appointing a special commissioner to ascertain and compute the amount of damage. 43 F.(2d) 247.

The commissioner, after hearing evidence, found that it was impossible to ascertain how much of the damage was due to want of ventilation in fair weather and how much to want of it in bad. But, after comparing the periods during which the ventilators were negligently closed with those during which they were open or properly closed,¹ he stated: 'It would seem, therefore, that the greater part of the damage must have been due to improper shutting of the hatches and ventilators.' He concluded that as the vessel had failed to show what part of the damage was due to bad weather, the petitioner should recover the full amount of the damage. The District Court, accepting the report of the commissioner as presumably correct, as required by Admiralty Rule 43 1/2, 286 U.S. 572 (28 USCA § 723), found no basis for rejecting its conclusions and gave judgment to libelants accordingly. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, reversed, 70 F.(2d) 261, holding that as the damage was within the clause of the bill of lading exempting the vessel from liability for decay, the burden was on petitioner to show what part of the damage was taken out of the exception, because due to respondent's negligence.

Although certiorari was granted, 293 U.S. 539, 55 S.Ct. 83, 79 L.Ed. —-, to review this ruling of the court below, most of respondent's argument before us was given over to the contention that the record discloses no finding, by either court below, that any part of the damage was caused by respondent's negligence. The decision of the District Court was made before the promulgation of rule 46 1/2 in Admiralty, 281 U.S. 773 (28 USCA § 723), requiring the trial court to make special findings of fact. No formal findings were made, but in directing entry of the interlocutory decree, and after reviewing the evidence and commenting on the fact that the hatches and ventilators had been kept closed at night in fair weather, a circumstance which the trial judge declared established negligence in the care and custody of the cargo, he stated: 'Thus it appears that this notoriously perishable cargo of Spanish Onions (The Buckleigh (C.C.A.) 31 F.(2d) 241, 1929 A.M.C. 449, 450) was deprived of all ventilation during the nighttime, regardless of the state of the weather. Such treatment was obviously ruinous and must have caused substantial damage.' We have no doubt that this was intended to be a finding that negligence in failing to provide properventilation was the cause of some of the damage and that, as such, it was adequately supported by evidence. The commissioner and the court below assumed it to be such and we so accept it.

The failure to ventilate the cargo was not a 'fault or error in navigation or management' of the vessel, from the consequences of which it may be relieved by section 3 of the Harter Act of February 13, 1893, § 3, c. 105, 27 Stat. 445; section 192, tit. 46, U.S.C. (46 USCA § 192). The management was of the cargo, within the meaning of sections 1 and 2 of the act (46 USCA §§ 190, 191), and not of the vessel, to which section 3 relates. The Germanic, 196 U.S. 589, 597, 25 S.Ct. 317, 49 L.Ed. 610; Knott v. Botony Mills, 179 U.S. 69, 73, 74, 21 S.Ct. 30, 45 L.Ed. 90; The Jean Bart, 197 F. 1002, 1006 (D.C.). Hence, we pass to the decisive question whether, in view of the presumptions which aid the shipper in establishing the vessel's liability under a contract for carriage by sea, it was necessary for the petitioners to offer further evidence in order to recover the damage which they have suffered. If, in the state of the proof which the record exhibits, recovery depends upon their ability to produce evidence which would enable the court to separate the amount of damage attributable to respondent's negligence from that attributable to the unavoidable failure to ventilate in bad weather, they have failed to do so and judgment must go against them. But if respondent can relieve itself from liability only by showing what part of the damage was due to sea peril, in that bad weather prevented ventilation, judgment must go against it for the full damages.

In general the burden rests upon the carrier of goods by sea to bring himself within any exception relieving him from the liability which the law otherwise imposes on him. This is true at common law with respect to the exceptions which the law itself annexed to his under taking, such as his immunity from liability for act of God or the public enemy. See Carver, Carriage by Sea (7th Ed.) c. I. The rule applies equally with respect to other exceptions for which the law permits him to stipulate. Clark v. Barnwell, 12 How. 272, 280, 13 L.Ed. 985; Rich v. Lambert, 12 How. 347, 357, 13 L.Ed. 1017; The Niagara v. Cordes, 21 How. 7, 29, 16 L.Ed. 41; The Maggie Hammond, 9 Wall. 435, 459, 19 L.Ed. 772; The Edwin I. Morrison, 153 U.S. 199, 211, 14 S.Ct. 823, 38 L.Ed. 688; The Folmina, 212 U.S. 354, 361, 29 S.Ct. 363, 53 L.Ed. 546, 15 Ann.Cas. 748. The reason for the rule is apparent. He is a bailee intrusted with the shipper's goods, with respect to the care and safe delivery of which the law imposes upon him an extraordinary duty. Discharge of the duty is peculiarly within his control. All the facts and circumstances upon which he may rely to relieve him of that duty are peculiarly within his knowledge and usually unknown to the shipper. In consequence, the law casts upon him the burden of the loss which he cannot explain or, explaining, bring within the exceptional case in which he is relieved from liability. See Bank of Kentucky v. Adams Express Co., 93 U.S. 174, 184, 23 L.Ed. 872; Chicago & Eastern Illinois R. Co. v. Collins Produce Co., 249 U.S. 186, 192, 193, 39 S.Ct. 189, 63 L.Ed. 552; New York C. Railroad Co. v. Lockwood, 17 Wall. 357, 379, 380, 21 L.Ed. 627.

To such exceptions the law itself annexes a condition that they shall relieve the carrier from liability for loss from an excepted cause only if in the course of the voyage he has used due care to guard against it. Liverpool & Great Western Steam Co. v. Phenix Insurance Co., 129 U.S. 397, 438, 9 S.Ct. 469, 32 L.Ed. 788; Compania De Navigacion la Flecha v. Brauer, 168 U.S. 104, 117, 18 S.Ct. 12, 42 L.Ed. 398. This rule is reconized and continued in the first section of the Harter Act (46 USCA § 190), which makes it unlawful to insert any clause in a bill of lading whereby the carrier shall be relieved of liability for negligence.

It is commonly said that when the carrier succeeds in establishing that the injury is from an excepted cause the burden is then on the shipper to show that that cause would not have produced the injury but for the carrier's negligence in failing to guard against it. Such we may assume the rule to be, at least to the extent of requiring the shipper to give evidence of negligence where the carrier has sustained the burden of showing that the immediate cause of the loss or injury is an excepted peril. Clark v. Barnwell, 12 How. 272, 280, 13 L.Ed. 985; Memphis & C. Railroad Co. v. Reeves, 10 Wall. 176, 189, 190, 19 L.Ed. 909; Western Transportation Co. v. Downer, 11 Wall. 129, 134, 20 L.Ed. 160; The Victory & The Plymothian, 168 U.S. 410, 423, 18 S.Ct. 149, 42 L.Ed. 519; Cau v. Texas & Pacific Ry. Co., 194 U.S. 427, 432, 24 S.Ct. 663, 48 L.Ed. 1053; The Malcolm Baxter, 277 U.S. 323, 334, 48 S.Ct. 516, 72 L.Ed. 901.

But this is plainly not the case where the...