ACTION AGAINST SHIP

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22893, 14 December 1939, Page 11

ACTION AGAINST SHIP

DISMISSED FOR WANT OF JURISDICTION ALLEGED ASSAULT ON MONTEREY IPEES3 ASSOCIATION TEEEGaAM.) WELLINGTON, December 13. In a reserved judgment delivered today the Chief Justice (the Rt. Hon. Sir Michael Myers) held that the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction in its capacity as an Admiralty Court to decide an action brought by a New Zealand subject against an American ship. Mrs Rose Mabel Hamilton, of Wellington, a widow, alleged in her writ that she had been assaulted by Michael McDonough, an American night steward on the Monterey, on the high seas between Honolulu and New Zealand on May 12. 1938, and an application was made to the Court to dismiss the action for want of jurisdiction. The action was against the Monterey. His Honour said that so far as the question depended upon jurisdiction conferred by statute, it was necessary as a foundation of jurisdiction that the claim should be for damage done by any ship. Assuming that the word damage in the statute included personal injury, the authorities showed that the ship must be the active cause of the damage. It was not sufficient that the injury was done merely on board the ship. It must be done by the ship, or by those in charge of the ship, with the ship as a noxious instrument. That could not possibly be said in the present case. The action was dismissed m accordance with the terms of the motion, q