Benjamin Robbins Curtis

“ Any privilege generally accorded to persons in a particular employment, tends to render that employment more desirable, and of course to enable the employer more easily and cheaply to obtain men to supply his wants.
It is true the master of a steamboat, like other agents, has not an unlimited authority. He is the agent of the owner to do only what is usually done in the particular employment in which he is engaged. ”

“ It has been urged that the master had no power to impose any obligation on the steamboat by receiving a passenger without compensation.
But it cannot be necessary that the compensation should be in money, or that it should accrue directly to the owners of the boat. If the master acted under an authority usually exercised by masters of steamboats, if such exercise of authority must be presumed to be known to and acquiesced in by the owners, and the practice is, even indirectly, beneficial to them, it must be considered to have been a lawful exercise of an authority incident to his command. ”

“ Haskell, another passenger, says, 'about ten minutes before the explosion I was standing looking at the engine, we saw the engineer was evidently excited, by his running to a little window to look out at the boat behind. He repeated this ten or fifteen times in a very short time.' The master, clerk, engineer, assistant engineer, pilot, one fireman, and the steward of the New World, were examined on behalf of the claimants. No one of them, save the pilot, denies the fact that the boats were racing. With the exception of the pilot and the engineer, they are wholly silent on the subject. ”

“ And when a disastrous explosion has occurred in such a strife, this court cannot treat the evidence of those engaged in it, and prima a facie responsible for its consequences, as sufficient to disprove their own negligence, which the law presumes.
We consider the testimony of the assistant engineer and fireman, who are the only witnesses who speak to the quantity of steam carried, as wholly unsatisfactory. They say the boiler was allowed by the inspector to carry forty pounds to the inch, and that when the explosion occurred, they were carrying but twenty-three pounds. ”

“ It is also settled that if the occupation or employment be one requiring skill, the failure to exert that needful skill, either because it is not possessed, or from inattention, is gross negligence. Thus Heath, J., in Shields v. Blackburne, 1 H. Bl. 161, says, 'If a man applies to a surgeon to attend him in a disorder for a reward, and the surgeon treats him improperly, there is gross negligence, and the surgeon is liable to an action ”

“ Their signification necessarily vaies according to circumstances, to whose influence the courts have been forced to yield, until there are so many real exceptions that the rules themselves can scarcely be said to have a general operation. ”