Harlan F. Stone

“ If the doctrine now announced is right, a vessel supplied with the newest charts would be unseaworthy if the owner failed to remove old charts from the pilot house; it would make the owner an insurer that, no matter how many adequate facilities were at hand, no insufficient one was anywhere on the ship. Here the socalled unseaworthiness did not consist in want of adequate ropes for the seaman's need. His injury was due entirely to the negligent selection by the mate of a piece of bad rope when ample good rope was at hand. ”

“ Any negligence of the mate in selecting the rope and ordering its use as a part of the staging, or of the boatswain in using it for that purpose, could not relieve respondent of the duty to furnish a seaworthy staging. Whether petitioner knew of the defective condition of the rope does not appear, but in any case the seaman, in the performance of his duties, is not deemed to assume the risk of unseaworthy appliances. ”

“ It said the libellant must make out a case of maritime tort; that, under the law of England, there could be no recovery and that if the applicable law were the maritime law of the United States the libellant could not recover for the improvident or negligent act of the mate, adding: 'If the vessel had been unsupplied with good and proper rope, a different question would arise.'
That court further held that, although, under the Jones Act, libellant could have sued at law or filed a libel in personam, the statute gave no right to a libel in rem. ”

“ If it is not, but a fellow servant's negligence is the cause, the seaman could not recover, [11] until the law was altered by the Jones Act.
The evil resulting from overruling earlier considered decisions must be evident. In the present case, the court below naturally felt bound to follow and apply the law as clearly announced by this court. If litigants and lower federal courts are not to do so, the law becomes not a chart to govern conduct but a game of chance; instead of settling rights and liabilities it unsettles them. ”

“ The statement in the opinion that the defense of a fellow servant's negligence had never been deemed applicable to the owner's obligation to the seaman under the warranty of seaworthiness ignores the point that if the seaman is to recover the unseaworthiness must, under the authorities cited, be the direct cause of the injury. ”

“ The Osceola, supra, in answer to certified questions, laid down as separately numbered and independent propositions the rule of the owner's unqualified obligation to furnish seaworthy appliances, and the rule that the owner is not liable to a seaman for the negligence of his fellow servants. ”

“ The statement from The Pinar Del Rio, supra, relied upon by the two courts below, could be taken to support their decision, only on the assumption either that the presence of sound rope on the 'Wichita Falls' afforded an excuse for the failure to provide a safe staging, or that antecedent negligence of the mate in directing the use of the defective rope relieved the owner from liability for furnishing the appliance thereby rendered unseaworthy. But as we have seen, neither assumption is tenable in the light of our decisions before and since The Pinar Del Rio, supra. ”

“ No question is raised with respect to petitioner's right to recover under the Jones Act or his right to the award of maintenance and cure or its adequacy.
A finding of seaworthiness is usually a finding of fact. Luckenbach v. W. J. McCahan Sugar Refining Co., 248 U.S. 139, 145, 39 S.Ct. 53, 54, 63 L.Ed. 170, 1 A.L.R. 1522; Steel v. State Line S.S.C.o., L.R. 3 A.C. 72, 81, 82, 90, 91. Ordinarily we do not, in admiralty, more than in other cases, review the concurrent findings of fact of two courts below. ”

“ Northern Pac. R. Co. v. Herbert, 116 U.S. 642, 647, 648, 6 S.Ct. 590, 592, 593, 29 L.Ed. 755; Baltimore & O.R. Co. v. Baugh, 149 U.S. 368, 386-388, 13 S.Ct. 914, 921, 922, 37 L.Ed. 772; Union Pac. R. Co. v. ”