George Sutherland

“ The libel alleged that the injury was caused by negligence in failing to provide a safe place to work, and to use reasonable care to avoid striking respondent, and by the unseaworthiness and insufficiency of the gear and tackle employed on the vessel. By an amendment, further specifications of negligence were added to the effect that the United States had failed to provide a proper and sufficient gear or socket to support the strongback, that the officers of the vessel were incompetent, and that there was owing to the injured person a special duty because of his youth and inexperience. ”

“ The injured respondent was bound to set forth in his first action for damages every ground of negligence which he claimed to exist and upon which he relied, and cannot be permitted, as was attempted here, to rely upon them by piecemeal in successive actions to recover for the same wrong and injury. ”

“ The injury to respondent occurred after the passage of the amendment of Act March 4, 1915, § 20, by the Merchant Marine Act, § 33, c. 250 (41 Stat. 988, 1007 (Comp. St. § 8337a) ) , which provides:
'That any seaman who shall suffer personal injury in the course of his employment may, at his election, maintain an action for damages at law, with the right of trial by jury, and in such action all statutes of the United States modifying or extending the common-law right or remedy in cases of personal injury to railway employees shall apply. ”

“ In either view, there would be but a single wrongful invasion of a single primary right of the plaintiff, namely, the right of bodily safety, whether the acts constituting such invasion were one or many, simple or complex. ”

“ Unless the statute of 1889 (25 Stat. 850) put the former suit upon a peculiar footing, the United States was bound then to bring forward all the grounds it had for declaring the patents void, and when the bill was dismissed was barred as to all by the decree.'
The same general doctrine is stated in Stark v. Starr, 94 U.S. 477, 485 (24 L. Ed. 276) , that:
'A party seeking to enforce a claim, legal or equitable, must present to the court, either by the pleadings or proofs, or both, all the grounds upon which he expects a judgment in his favor. ”

“ He is not at liberty to split up his demand and prosecute it by piecemeal, or present only a portion of the grounds upon which special relief is sought, and leave the rest to be presented in a second suit, if the first fail. ”