Consumers Import Co. v. Zosenjo

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Petitioners, Consumers Import Company and others, hold bills of lading covering several hundred shipments of merchandise. The shipments were damaged or destroyed by fire or by the means used to extinguish fire on board the Japanese ship Venice Maru on August 6, 1934, on voyage from Japan to Atlantic ports of the United States. Respondent Kabushiki Kaisha Kawasaki Zo-senjo owned the Venice Maru and let her to the other respondent, Kawasaki Kisen Kabushiki Kaisha, under a bareboat form of charter. The latter was operating her as a common carrier.

Damage to the cargo is conceded from causes which are settled by the findings below, which we decline to review.^[1] Upwards of 660 tons of sardine meal in bags was stowed in a substantially solid mass in the hold. In view of its susceptibility to heating and combustion it had inadequate ventilation. As the ship neared the Panama Canal, fire broke out, resulting in damage to cargo and ship. The cause of the fire is found to be negligent stowage of the fish meal, which made the vessel unseaworthy. The negligence was that of a person employed to supervise loading to whom responsibility was properly delegated and who was qualified by experience to perform the work. No negligence or design of the owner or charterer is found.

The Fire Statute reads: “No owner of any vessel shall be liable to answer for or make good to any person any loss or damage, which may happen to any merchandise whatsoever, which shall be shipped, taken in, or put on board any such vessel, by reason or by means of any fire happening to or on board the vessel, unless such fire is caused by the design or neglect of such owner.”^[4] The statute also provides that a charterer such as we have here stands in the position of the owner for purposes of limitation or exemption of liability.^[5]

Apart from this inapplicable exception the immunity granted appears on its face complete. But claimants contend that because their contracts of affreightment were signed “for master” they became under maritime law ship’s contracts, independently of any owners’ contracts, and that the ship itself stands bound to the cargo though the owner may be freed. It seems unnecessary to examine the validity of the claim that apart from the statute claimants under the circumstances would have a lien on the vessel, or to review the historical development of the fiction that the ship for some purposes is treated as a jural personality apart from that of its owner. If we assume that the circumstances are appropriate otherwise for such a lien as claimants assert, it only brings us to the question whether the Fire Statute cuts across it as well as other doctrines of liability and extinguishes claims against the vessel as well as against the owner.

The provision here in controversy is § 1 of the Act of March 3,1851. Despite its all but a century of existence, the contention here made has never been before this Court. Sections 3 and 4 of the same Act in other circumstances provided limitations of liability, and as to them a question was considered by this Court in The City of Norwich, 118 U. S. 468 , 502 (1886), stated thus: “It is next contended that the act of Congress does not extend to the exoneration of the ship, but only exonerates the owners by a surrender of the ship and freight, and, therefore, that the plea of limited liability cannot be received in a pro

In the meantime, with the exception of The Etna Maru, the lower federal courts have uniformly construed the statutes as exonerating the ship as well as the owner.^[7] We would be reluctant to overturn an interpretation supported by such consensus of opinion among courts of admiralty, even if its justification were more doubtful than this appears.^[8]

Petitioners say, however, that such of these decisions as are not distinguishable were “ill-considered.” We think that the better reason as well as the weight of authority refutes petitioners. To sustain their contention would deny effect to the Fire Statute as an immunity and convert it into a limitation of liability to the value of the ship. This is what Congress did in other sections of the same Act^[9] and elsewhere,^[10] which suggests that it used different language here because it had a different purpose to accomplish. Congress has said that the owner shall not “answer for” this loss in question. Claimant says this means in effect that he shall answer only with his ship. But the owner would never answer for a loss except with

Claimants urge that the statute as construed goes beyond any other exemption from liability for negligence allowed to a common carrier, and that it should therefore be curtailed by strict construction. We think, however, that claimants’ contention would result in a frustration of the purpose of the Act.

At common law the shipowner was liable as an insurer for fire damage to cargo.^[11] We may be sure that this legal policy of annexing an insurer’s liability to the contract of carriage loaded the transportation rates of prudent carriers to compensate the risk. Long before Congress did so, England had separated the insurance liability from the carrier’s duty.^[12] To enable our merchant marine to compete, Congress enacted this statute.^[13] It was a sharp de