Luckenbach S. S. Co. v. Union Oil Co. of California

The proceedings upon libelant’s libel and petition for limitation of liability have been consolidated and tried. The case is one of collision between steamers, and involves the law of the road at sea, nothing mysterious and in fundamentals like to that upon land. The evidence is mainly by depositions (and in large part vilely leading), though libel-ant, in contrast to respondent, presents its principal witnesses to the place of the collision (the issue most strenuously contested) for oral examination at the trial.

In respect to this issue, the evidence is in direct conflict. However, so much involved are estimates, calculations, opinions based on scanty observations, that in the circumstances perhaps no witness is willfully wrong therein. At the same time it may he observed that, even as “every passenger swears by his ship,” as said the Supreme Court many years ago, a fortiori ships’ crews do likewise.

Libelant and respondent claiming full damages, each has a burden to prove the other’s fault and its own lack of contributing fault. In the latter both have failed. The Clara, 102 U. S. 203 , 26 L. Ed. 145 .

To describe the ships; Libelant’s Walter A. Luekenbaeh is a freighter,…