Bisso v. Waterways Transportation Co‪.‬

In a pleaders paradise of two hundred fourteen printed record pages of libels, cross-libels, impleadings, petitions, answers, reconventions, and claims for contract and maritime salvage, towage, for damage and general average expense, the District Judge declared that The Kevin Moran, the command tug on a hawser ahead, and The Mary B., assisting on the starboard quarter, were liable for the stranding, in the entrance of Southwest Pass, Mississippi River, of The James L. Richards, a former vessel 359 feet long, 49-foot beam, operated as a seagoing barge without motive power but equipped with a steam steering engine actuated by a hydraulic telemotor system from the bridge. The case comes to us on a record of an additional twelve hundred one printed pages of testimony from some twenty-five witnesses, a good portion of whom gave evidence by deposition. The scope of this record, the somewhat complex technical problems involved, and the inevitable running advocacy to which a Judge is properly exposed as a case is being presented, whether with live or printed swearers, illustrates the inherent soundness in a rule which commits to Trial Judges the trying and finding of facts and those significant inferences which come from them. Whatever vestigial power remains to invoke trial de novo, McAllister v. United States, 348 U.S. 19, 75 S. Ct. 6, 99 L. Ed. 20, 1954 A.M.C. 1999; Taylor v. Crain, 3 Cir., 224 F.2d 237, 238, 1955 A.M.C. 1499; cf. Coyle Lines v. United States, 5 Cir., 195 F.2d 737, 1952 A.M.C. 715; Coryell v. Phipps, 5 Cir., 128 F.2d 702, 1942 A.M.C. 906, affirmed 317 U.S. 406, 63 S. Ct. 291, 87 L. Ed. 363, 1943 A.M.C. 18, this is certainly not a case in which to seek out or apply its limits. We start, therefore, with willing acceptance of the Trial Courts findings unless clearly erroneous. C. J. Dick Towing Co. v. Leo, 5 Cir., 202 F.2d 850, 1953 A.M.C. 498; Mississippi Valley Barge Line Co. v. Indian Towing Co., 5 Cir., 232 F.2d 750, 1956 A.M.C. 757; Societa Anonima Navigazione Alta Italia v. Oil Transport Co. (The Mongioia), 5 Cir., 232 F.2d 422; see, Galena Oaks Corp. v. Scofield, 5 Cir., 218 F.2d 217.