Joined: 05 Sep 2006 Posts: 1737 Location: It means good luck - a chinese symbol
Admiralty Law
A term often referenced in Admiralty
chat·tel (chtl)
n.
1. Law An article of movable personal property.
2. A slave.
I am looking for a good reference book on admiralty law.
Sun Dec 16, 2007 7:51 pm
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postcardsfrompalestine VIP
Joined: 05 Sep 2006 Posts: 1737 Location: It means good luck - a chinese symbol
From Common Law:OWH
Quote:
By the maritime law of the Middle Ages the ship was not only the
source, but the limit, of liability. The rule already prevailed,
which has been borrowed and adopted by the English statutes and
by our own act of Congress of 1851, according to which the owner
is discharged from responsibility for wrongful acts of a master
appointed by himself upon surrendering his interest in the vessel
and the freight which she had earned.
Quote:
Let us now take another rule, for which, as usual, there is a
plausible explanation of policy. Freight, it is said, the mother
of wages; for, we are told, "if the ship perished, [31] if the
mariners were to have their wages in such cases, they would not
use their endeavors, nor hazard their lives, for the safety of
the ship." /1/ The best commentary on this reasoning is, that the
law has recently been changed by statute. But even by the old law
there was an exception inconsistent with the supposed reason. In
case of shipwreck, which was the usual case of a failure to earn
freight, so long as any portion of the ship was saved, the lien
of the mariners remained. I suppose it would have been said,
because it was sound policy to encourage them to save all they
could. If we consider that the sailors were regarded as employed
by the ship, we shall understand very readily both the rule and
the exception. "The ship is the debtor," as was said in arguing a
case decided in the time of William III. /2/ If the debtor
perished, there was an end of the matter. If a part came ashore,
that might be proceeded against.
You could almost see how a corporation is like a ship or vessel.
Quote:
so far as the usual maritime contracts are
concerned, the dealing must be on the security of the ship or
merchandise in many cases, and therefore [33] that it is policy
to give this security in all cases; that the risk to which it
subjects ship-owners is calculable, and that they must take it
into account when they let their vessels
Mon Dec 17, 2007 9:52 pm
postcardsfrompalestine VIP
Joined: 05 Sep 2006 Posts: 1737 Location: It means good luck - a chinese symbol
She the ship
Quote:
"A ship is the most living of inanimate things. Servants sometimes say `she' of a clock, but every one gives a gender to vessels. And we need not be surprised, therefore, to find a mode of dealing which has shown such extraordinary vitality in the criminal law applied with even more striking thoroughness in the Admiralty. It is only by supposing the ship to have been treated as if endowed with personality, that the arbitrary seeming peculiarities of the maritime law can be made intelligible, and on that supposition they at once become consistent and logical." Holmes, The Common Law (1881), 26-27.
When a ship takes on a straw man or becomes an artificial person.
Tue Dec 18, 2007 10:34 pm
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Joined: 05 Sep 2006 Posts: 1737 Location: It means good luck - a chinese symbol
