George Whitelock's Response to Mellor - Part I

In Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, Limited, as Owner of the Steamship Titanic v. Mellor, the Supreme Court answered the following three questions certified to the Court by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit – 1) whether an owner of a vessel of British nationality, involved in a collision that gave rise to claimants of many different nationalities, was entitled to maintain a proceeding to limit its liability, 2) whether the owner was able to maintain such a proceeding in the United States if the law of the foreign country to which the vessel belonged made provision for limitation upon different terms, and 3) if the answer to the second question was in the affirmative, whether the courts of the United States enforced the law of the United States or of the foreign country. The Supreme Court answered “yes” to the first two questions. Regarding the third question, the Court answered that the laws of the United States were to be enforced because limitation of the owner’s liability was considered to be remedial in nature.

Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, Limited, as Owner of the Steamship Titanic v. Mellor, 233 U.S. 718 (1914).

In upcoming blog entries, beginning with this one, I’ll transcribe George Whitelock’s response to the decision, first published in the American Law Review in 1915. George Whitelock served as Chairman of the Special Committee to Present Bills to Congress Relating to Courts of Admiralty. (I’ll be transcribing one of the Committee’s recommendations in an upcoming blog entry.)

George Whitelock, Damages For Death By Negligence At Sea – The Titanic, 49 American Law Review, 75 (1915).

Damages For Death By Negligence At Sea – The Titanic

A recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States (May, 1914) concerning the loss of the Titanic (233 U.S. 718) induces an extension of my remarks on recovery of damages for death by negligence at sea submitted to the International Law Association six years ago. The profound and universal interest in that awful tragedy is the justification for additional comment.

It will be recalled that the existing law of the United States confers no right of civil recovery for loss of life by negligence on the high seas. Derived from the common law of England, the archaic principle that there can be no pecuniary recompense for the death of a human being still prevails, unless abrogated by statute, in all jurisdictions in which that system of law is operative. Decisions by the United States Supreme Court in 1907 and 1908 caused a statement of my views on such damages to the meeting at Buda-Pesth [sic]. The cases in point were The Hamilton (207 U.S. 398), an American steamer, and La Bourgogne (210 U.S. 95), a French vessel. Each case arose out of a surrender by the shipowner of the remains of his property after collision, together with the freight pending, the purpose of the suits being a limitation of the shipowner’s liability under the provisions of the Act of 1851 of the American Congress. These decisions were a definite advance in the application of extra-territorial law to extra-territorial marine torts. But death claimants having been merely admitted to participation in funds voluntarily paid into Court by shipowners under statutory proceedings to limit their liability, the cases are not authority for the maintenance of direct suit to recover for death by negligence at sea.

Litigation in America concerning the loss of the Titanic on April 14, 1912, has now assumed the same form as the litigation concerning The Hamilton and the litigation concerning La Bourgogne, in which the above mentioned decisions were respectively rendered. The Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, Limited, owner of the Titanic, and a British corporation, has undertaken by petition in the American admiralty to limit its liability under American law to $91, 805.54, an amount representing the aggregate of salved property and freight pending, the claims asserted against the Company in actions for loss of life and personal injuries in the Courts of America running into the millions. By the Company’s own petition it is asserted that the steamship Titanic was a total loss, and that nothing was saved from the wreck except 13 lifeboats, together with their equipment, and one collapsible boat, which was subsequently picked up by the steamship Oceanic and brought to New York.

(To be continued in Part II of George Whitelock’s Response to Mellor)