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Myron R. Durham vs. Charles E. Larom et al.

Connecticut Supreme Court1920-12-22
95 Conn. 475

Summary

Holding. The judgment of the trial court is affirmed. Although the plaintiff failed to pursue the proper appellate procedure by not requesting correction of the trial court's factual findings, the appellate court affirms the judgment on the merits, as the evidence supports a finding that the plaintiff was negligent in leaving his vessel unprotected against a known and continuing danger.

The plaintiff appealed a trial court judgment against him in a maritime collision case, but failed to follow the required procedural step of requesting a correction of the trial court's factual findings before appealing the judgment itself. Under established appellate practice, a party seeking to overturn a judgment based on factual disputes must first ask the trial court to revise its findings. The plaintiff's failure to take this initial step prevented the appellate court from reviewing the case on its merits.

However, the appellate court noted that even if it could review the certified evidence, the result would be the same. The evidence showed that when the defendant's vessel Georgianna dragged her anchor and drifted toward the plaintiff's vessel Sachem, the plaintiff's representative made only a temporary effort to secure Georgianna's anchor chain before returning to Sachem. The plaintiff then left Sachem exposed to danger from Georgianna without adequate precautions, despite clear warning of the risk. The trial court properly found the plaintiff negligent for failing to take sufficient protective measures once it became apparent that the initial emergency measure had not resolved the hazard.

Summary generated by law.co from the public-domain opinion. The opinion text itself is public domain.

Key issues

  • Appellate procedure for challenging factual findings
  • Negligence in maritime collision involving dragging anchor
  • Duty to take protective measures when danger is known

Procedural posture

The plaintiff appealed a trial court judgment against him, but failed to request correction of the trial court's factual findings as a prerequisite to appellate review.

Authorities cited

No cited authorities resolved to law.co cases yet.

Opinion

majority opinion

Case, J.

Although the record embraces a transcript of all the testimony, this is not strictly available for our use or enlightenment, as the case has been brought to us. The finding confessedly warrants the judgment, and nothing on the record gives us authority to meddle with it. Our practice has long been settled upon this point, and the course to be pursued, by one who seeks a correction of material facts upon which the judgment rests, has been clearly defined in our decisions. Dennison v. Waterville Cutlery Co., 80 Conn. 596, 597, 69 Atl. 1022; Boughton v. Boughton, 77 Conn. 7, 9, 58 Atl. 226. The plaintiff is without standing here, since he wholly ignores the vital initial step of asking a correction of the finding as a warrant for the ultimate correction of the judgment.

With the record before us, however, we are reluctant to leave this disposition of the case open to the inference that the appeal must have prevailed upon its merits but for the technical insufficiency of the steps taken to get it here. This is not so. The result must have been the same were we permitted to use the certified evidence for the conclusive purpose of its submission on the record.

The trial court could only have found upon the testimony that when the young men in charge of Sachem brought her to her moorings that afternoon, a stiff breeze was blowing straight out of the southwest; that while they were stowing sail, they saw Georgianna, anchored not more than two hundred feet dead to windward, drag at her anchorage and drift straight down upon them; that young Durham at once went aboard Georgianna in Sachem’s small boat, and in an effort to stop the drifting, paid out some feet of Georgianna’s anchor chain. When this slack had been taken up, the drifting for the moment stopped, and Durham at once returned to Sachem, when, while the work of making that yacht snug was proceeding, Georgianna again dragged her anchor, and bore down upon and collided with Sachem, — the latter by this time having been put in a position where prompt action on her part to escape collision was impossible.

Quite apart, therefore, from any question of negligence on the part of the defendants — which may or may not present other considerations, — it is obvious that the court must have found, upon these facts, the plaintiff guilty of negligence essentially chargeable with the injury. Clearly neither Sachem’s time of peril nor her need for watchful caution to avert it, was limited to the actual interval that she lay helpless in the lee of the drifting Georgianna. It did not pass until there was the plainest ground for believing that the mere emergency measure of young Durham for checking the dragging of Georgianna’s anchor was effective. The momentary check of the boat’s drift when the paid-out slack of the chain had been taken up, was obviously not enough to settle that point, and the court’s conclusion is obviously justified by the plain lack of care which this view of the facts exposes, in leaving Sachem helpless and unprotected against a peril of which they had been’ amply warned, before they had ground for assuming that the peril had been overcome or removed.

There is no error.

In this opinion the other judges concurred.