The Willamette Valley

• Decision Date: 07 January 1896
• Docket Number: 10,777.
• Citation: 71 F. 712
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of California
• Parties: THE WILLAMETTE VALLEY. v. THE WILLAMETTE VALLEY. GLEASON

71 F. 712

THE WILLAMETTE VALLEY.

GLEASON v. THE WILLAMETTE VALLEY.

No. 10,777.

United States District Court, N.D. California.

January 7, 1896

John A McKenna, for libelant.

Wal. J Tuska and Page, Eells & Wheeler, for claimant and receiver.

MORROW District Judge.

The libel in rem is filed to recover the sum of $5,000 for damages alleged to have been sustained by libelant, while a passenger on board of the steamship Willamette Valley, on a voyage from Yaquina Bay, Or., to San Francisco. Libelant alleges that, after he had been received on board the vessel he was refused first-class accommodations, to which, he claims, his ticket entitled him, and that he was not permitted to occupy a steerage passage, although he offered to pay for the same; that he was excluded from the cabin and steerage of the vessel, kept and confined upon the forward part of the main deck, and refused and deprived of lodgings, sleeping accommodations, and provisions as a cabin or steerage passenger from the second day of the voyage, August 5, 1893, to its termination on the day following, August 6, 1893; that, by reason of these deprivations and ill treatment, his health has been impaired, and he was subjected to shame, humiliation, and indignity, by being excluded from his rights as a passenger, and he has suffered great physical pain and mental distress, to his damage in the sum above mentioned. A general denial was interposed on behalf of the claimants of the vessel.

The case rests almost exclusively upon the testimony of the libelant, on the one hand, and of the purser of the vessel, with whom libelant had all his dealings, on the other hand. There is but little conflict between these two witnesses as to the salient facts. It appears that Gleason, being in the state of Oregon and desirous of coming to San Francisco, purchased at Portland from a ticket broker a ticket which purported on its face to be good for a return trip from Albany to San Francisco, and was represented to libelant as entitling him to a first-class passage, consisting of a stateroom and meals at the cabin table. He paid $4.50 for it. The ticket was the return coupon of a round-trip excursion ticket from San Francisco to Albany and return, and entitled the holder to a first-class passage. It had been sold originally in San Francisco to one Charles Meyers and used by him or some other person from that place to Albany, and thereafter had been disposed of to the broker in Portland, who, in turn, sold it to the libelant as good for the return trip to San Francisco. The ticket was introduced at the hearing. It had nothing upon it to indicate that it was not transferable. At the conclusion of libelant's case, a motion for a nonsuit was made by the claimant, on the ground that the libelant had no right to travel on an excursion ticket-- that is, on the return coupon-- which had originally belonged to some one else. But this objection was overruled, and the motion denied, for the reason that there was nothing on the face of the return coupon to indicate that it was not transferable, and that, therefore, the libelant had the right to use it and receive transportation and first-class accommodations therefor. Carsten v. Railroad Co. (Minn.) 47 N.W. 49; Hoffman v. Railroad Co. (Minn.) 47 N.W. 312; Nichols v. Southern Pac. Co. (Or.) 31 P. 296. Libelant reached Albany by rail, for which part of the transportation he had, however, to pay an additional fare. From Albany he had to travel by rail to Yaquina Bay, where the steamer was lying. This part of the journey was covered by the ticket he held. The distance between these two places is about 90 miles. That between the latter place and San Francisco, the port of destination, is about 450 miles.

It was urged upon the argument, as an objection to the jurisdiction of the court, that, as part of the transportation had been on land, this fact operated to divest the court, as a court of admiralty, of whatever jurisdiction it otherwise had of the case. In other words, it was claimed that the subject of the maritime service must be 'wholly of admiralty cognizance'; citing The Pacific, 1 Blatchf. 585, Fed. Cas. No. 10,643, and other cases. Whether an incidental land carriage, in connection with a transportation upon the high seas, can be deemed to divest a court of admiralty of its jurisdiction over the maritime part of the contract for such service, it is not necessary, under the pleadings of this case, to decide. The objection is immaterial, for the simple reason that the libelant is not suing upon the contract of transportation, but he seeks to recover for alleged tortious acts committed by the master and his agents upon the vessel on the high seas, and not for anything that took place on land. So that it cannot be said that this case presents the question of divided jurisdiction. As locality is the sole test of admiralty jurisdiction over torts, the allegations and facts certainly bring this case within that rule.

But it is argued that libelant was on the vessel solely by virtue of the contractual relations that purported to exist between the carrier and himself, which contract included the 90 miles of land transportation from Albany to Yaquina Bay. While this is undoubtedly true, yet it does not alter the tortious character of the acts complained of as having been inflicted on the libelant by the master and his agents. The libelant, unquestionably, was on board the vessel by virtue of some right or color of right. His contract of passenger ship lies at the basis of this suit, but that fact does not impair his right to sue in a court of admiralty for any maritime tort that may have been inflicted upon him, and to do this he need not sue on the contract itself. The cases cited by counsel for claimant in no wise controvert this proposition, nor can they be said to sustain the contention he seeks to establish. The Pacific, supra, and Plummer v. Webb, 4 Mason, 384, Fed. Cas. No. 11,233, were suits for breach of contract,-- one of passenger ship, and the latter of apprenticeship,-- and not for torts arising from breaches of such contracts. They did not involve the fact of any land transportation. In the case of The Moses Taylor, 4 Wall. 411, one Hammons entered into a contract with Roberts, as owner of the steamship, for transportation from New York to San Francisco, as a steerage passenger, with reasonable dispatch, and to furnish him with proper and necessary accommodations on the voyage. For alleged breach of this contract Hammons brought an action, under a law of the state of California, against the vessel in the justice's court in San Francisco. The breach alleged was that the plaintiff was detained at the Isthmus of Panama eight days, and that the provisions furnished him on the voyage were unwholesome, and that he was crowded into an unhealthy cabin, without sufficient room or air for either health or comfort, in consequence of a large number of steerage passengers, more than the vessel was allowed by law to have, or could properly carry. The agent of the vessel filed an answer in which he denied the allegations of the complaint, and asserted that the court had no jurisdiction, because the cause of action, as against the said vessel, was one of which the courts of admiralty had exclusive jurisdiction. The justice decided that he had jurisdiction, and gave judgment for the plaintiff. The case was taken to the county court, where the objection to the jurisdiction was again made and again overruled, and, final judgment being entered in favor of the plaintiff, the case was taken to the supreme court of the United States on a writ of error. In the supreme court it was contended, in favor of the jurisdiction of the state court, among other things, that, as the land carriage at the isthmus was a substantial part of the voyage, the jurisdiction of the admiralty court did not attach, for the reason that a contract, to come within that jurisdiction, 'must be wholly of admiralty cognizance, or else it was not at all within it'; citing the case of The Pacific, supra. The supreme court held that the case presented was clearly one within the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the federal courts, and that the state court had no jurisdiction of the case in a proceeding in rem. Clearly, the court did not consider the incidental land transportation at the isthmus, or the breach of contract involved in the detention of the plaintiff on land, as impairing the admiralty jurisdiction over that part of the contract relating exclusively to a service to be performed on the high seas, and pertaining solely to the business of commerce and navigation. I am of the opinion, therefore, that the mere fact that the contract of transportation in this case included also an incidental land carriage in no way impairs the right of the libelant to sue in admiralty for the alleged commission of a maritime tort on the high seas.

From the testimony, it appears that Gleason boarded the steamer at Yaquina on August 4, 1893. The vessel left about 4 o'clock p.m. of that day. Previous to her departure Gleason deposited with the purser, for safe-keeping, the sum of $240, for which he received a receipt. About an hour after leaving port, he presented himself, along with other passengers, at the purser's office, for the purpose of securing the number of his berth. He presented his ticket to the purser, who, according to libelant's testimony, handed it back to him without assigning any reason therefor. The purser testified that he then and there told Gleason that he had no right to the ticket,-- no right to a passage on it; but in his cross-examination he was unwilling to swear positively that he did speak at all to Gleason on the subject upon that occasion. I am inclined to think that the...