United States v. Carroll Towing Co.

1947

Venue: US Court of Appeals, 2nd Cir.

Facts: Carroll's bargeman went ashore, and was therefore unavailable to oversee the "drill out" of the Anna C, which came unmoored and smashed into a tanker whose propeller made a hole in the Anna C's side, causing her to sink with government-owned cargo. This was during WWII, incidentally.

Posture: Finding at trial for the plaintiff(?); there's confusion about admiralty law here-- people are trying to reduce the damages and recover the value of the barge. It's not really important. The main thing is Learned Hand's formula.

Issue: How do we decide if there's negligence here?

Holding: There is negligence. Reversed, and remanded for allocation of damages.

Rule: If the Burden of prevention is less than the product of the Probability of harm and the Loss due to injury, then you're negligent not to undertake that burden.

Reasoning: It was prety obvious that there'd be barge-moving, under the busy harbor circumstances, and it's pretty clear that barge-moving entails some risk, or else we wouldn't have barge monitor guys. So, skipping out on that duty represents a shirking of the burden to prevent harm.

Dicta: