Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/622

ÔIO, FEDERAL REPORTER. �geûGral, a valid claim for a' marine tort against the owners giveg a maritime lien upon the offending vessel. Since writ- ing the foregoing, Ifind the same views expressed and ably eoforced by Judge Peady in Holmes v. 0. e C. B. Co. 5 Fed. E^p. 75. The claims against the owners of this. steam-boat, then, being ail of a maritime character of wbich this court bas jurisdiction, and she being engaged in the domestic commerce of . tbis state, the question' is whetber congress bas the consti- tional power to pass a etatute declaring that the hmit of the liability of the owpers upon ail the claims for loss arising out of this disaster, happening without their privity or knowledge, sh»ll be the value of the yessel and her pending freight upon th^ir,$urrendering the same. This statute came before the supreme court for con sideration in the case of Norwich Co. v. Wright, 13 Wall. 104. The court tbere distinctly held that, so far as this statute limita the liability of the ship-owner for the torts of the master and crew upon the surrender of the Tessel and her pending freight, the rule of the statute was the rule of the general maritime law. The statute, perhaps, gives in certain cases relief where the ship and freight are not surrendered in specie, and in that respect may go beyond the rule of the maritime law ; but such cases need not now be con- sidered, since in this case a surrender of the vessel was made and there was no freight to be surrendered. The court also held that the statute, in giving the ship-owner a right to take "appropriate proceedings in any court to enforce his claim for limitation of liability," by necessary implication gave him the right to take those proceedings in the district courts of the United States which are vested with exclusive jurisdic- tion in ail maritime and admiralty causes, saving to suitors in ail cases a common-law remedy where the common law is competent to give it. The district courts, and they alone, were held to be the courts competent to exercise the jurisdic- diction over such cases, because the causes were maritime in their nature, and the. relief to be given was not a remedy which the common law was competent to give. �In reference to the rule of limitation of liability on sur- render of the vessel and the freight being already the rule of ����