The case involved a shipowner seeking damages from the United States for the loss of an anchor and damage to anchor chains on the SS PRESIDENT ARTHUR while operating under a time charter to the Military Sea Transportation Service. The owner claimed the losses resulted from the government's breach of the charter's safe-berth warranty by directing the vessel to load cargo at the unsafe port of Villa do Porto in the Azores. An administrative board found a breach of the charter but denied recovery for damages incurred while the vessel waited in Sao Loureneo Bay, concluding the master's choice to anchor there was an intervening act that broke the chain of causation. The court held the government liable for those damages, ruling that the board had erred as a matter of law because a master's efforts to comply with a directive to an unsafe port do not constitute an intervening act of negligence unless the chosen course entails an unreasonable risk.
This case was a Federal Tort Claims Act suit by the owner of a cabin cruiser damaged after striking the submerged wreck of another vessel in San Francisco Bay. The plaintiff claimed the United States was liable for negligently failing to mark the wreck under 14 U.S.C. § 86 after its owner abandoned it. The court granted the government's motion for summary judgment. It held that Section 86 does not create a duty for the Secretary of the Army to mark all abandoned wrecks but only requires the government to continue marking those wrecks the Coast Guard had already marked before abandonment, based on the statute's text and its historical background in the Wreck Act and general maritime law.
In Mohr v. United States, the plaintiff sued the federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act to recover damages for her husband's death, which allegedly resulted from negligent administration of anti-tetanus serum during treatment for a work-related injury sustained while he was a federal employee. The United States moved to dismiss on the ground that the Federal Employees' Compensation Act provided the exclusive remedy for such injuries or deaths. The court granted the motion to dismiss, holding that compensation under FECA extends to deaths or disabilities that are the ultimate consequence of an original work injury, including those caused by intervening medical treatment, and that submission to government-provided medical care may itself be considered incident to federal employment duties. This interpretation aligns with the Act's administration by the Department of Labor and prior judicial decisions.
The case involved three defendants charged with conspiracy under 18 U.S.C. § 2388 to interfere with U.S. armed forces during wartime through publication of the 'Chinese Monthly Review,' along with a substantive charge against John Powell; the statute applies only within U.S. jurisdiction, admiralty areas, and the high seas. During trial, the government sought to introduce testimony from a Korean War POW about the magazine's distribution and effects in a Chinese camp to prove intent and dangerous tendency, but the court excluded it due to the statute's jurisdictional limits, noting the evidence might relate more broadly to treason under a different statute. After press reports inaccurately described the judge as declaring the defendants guilty of treason based on the closed argument, the defense moved for a mistrial citing prejudicial publicity; the court granted the motion, reasoning that the inaccurate headlines risked improperly influencing the jury despite the arguments occurring outside its presence and that such coverage undermined fair trial rights.
The case concerned whether the California Workmen’s Compensation Act provided the exclusive remedy for the death of a Pan American employee killed in an airline crash on the high seas while performing job duties, thereby barring a wrongful death action by his widow under the federal Death on the High Seas Act. The court granted the airline’s motion for summary judgment, ruling that the state compensation law applied and precluded the federal claim. The core reasoning was that the Death on the High Seas Act was not intended to displace state workers’ compensation remedies, consistent with Supreme Court precedent allowing state compensation acts to abrogate admiralty remedies for employment injuries when they do not interfere with the uniformity of maritime law.
The case concerned a habeas corpus petition filed by Carmen, sentenced to death by a California state court for murder, who argued that the state court lacked jurisdiction because the Ten Major Crimes Act vested exclusive federal jurisdiction over murders committed by Indians in Indian Country. The California Supreme Court had upheld state jurisdiction after initially reversing it, finding the trial record insufficient to establish Indian status or location and later refusing to consider new evidence of tribal membership and a trust allotment in habeas proceedings. This federal court reviewed stipulations, referee findings, and evidence showing the petitioner and victim were Mono tribe members with ongoing tribal relations and that the crime occurred on an Indian allotment held in trust by the United States, to assess whether these facts triggered the federal statute.