The Poetry corner

Time once again, boys and girls, to venture into the land where, mysteriously, what should be dry, almost unintelligible court decisions about inconsequential disputes become instead dry, unintelligible poetry — about those same disputes. Back in 1973, a sailor named Richard Mackensworth went to court seeking unpaid wages for a commercial voyage he had made in 1972. He sued the ship’s owner, American Trading Transportation Company, in a Pennsylvania federal court.

The company’s lawyers tried to get the case dismissed on the ground that the company didn’t do business in Pennsylvania, arguing that Mackensworth would have to sue them in another state. Mackensworth’s lawyer, a fellow named Harry Lore, instead of filing a conventional legal brief in response, composed a limerick:

Admiralty process is hoary With pleadings that tell a sad story

Of Libels in Rem —

The bane of sea-faring men The moral: Better personally served than be sorry.

Thus “inspired,” the shipping company’s attorneys came up with their own poetic response: Admiralty lawyers like Harry Both current and those known from lore

Be they straight types, mixed or fairy

Must learn how to sidestep ourbore.

For Smith, not known for his mirth

With his knife out for Mackensworth

With Writs, papers or Motions to Quash

Knows that dear Harry’s position don’t wash.

As federal District Judge Edward Becker then explained, “Overwhelmed by this outburst of pure creativity,/we determined to show an equal proclivity,/ Hence this opinion in the form of verse, even if not of the calibre of Saint-john Perse,” an understatement if ever there was one. (Saint-john Perse, incidentally, for those who aren’t exactly poetry buffs, was a French diplomat and poet who was awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize for literature.) Becker thereupon wrote his entire opinion in the rather shabby poetry in which one finds court opinions written from time to time. A sampling: The motion now before us has stirred up a terrible fuss. And what is considerably worse,

it has spawned some preposterous doggerel verse.

Judge Becker certainly got that part right. But let us continue:

The plaintiff, a man of the sea, after paying his lawyer a fee, filed a complaint of several pages to recover statutory wages. The pleaded facts remind us of a tale that is endless.

A seaman whom for centuries the law has called “friendless”

is discharged from the ship before voyage’s end

and sues for lost wages, his finances to mend.

The defendant shipping company’s office is based in New Yorkcity,

and to get right down to the nitty gritty,

it has been brought to this Court by long arm service,

which has made it extremely nervous.

Long arm service is a procedural tool

founded upon a “doing business” rule.

But defendant has no office here, and says it has no mania

to do any business in Pennsylvania.

Plaintiff found defendant had a ship here in June ’72,

but defendant says that ship’s business is through.

Asserting that process is amiss,

it has filed a motion to dismiss.

***

The first question is whether, under the facts,

defendant has done business here to come under Pennsylvania’s long arm acts.

If we find that it has, we must reach question two,

whether that act so applied is constitutional under Washington v. International Shoe.

Defendant runs a ship known as the SS Washington Trader,

whose travels plaintiff tracked as GM is said to have followed Nader.

He found that in June ’72 that ship rested its keel

and took on a load of cargo here which was quite a big business deal.

In order for extraterritorial jurisdiction to obtain,

it is enough that defendant do a single act in Pa. for pecuniary gain.

And we hold that the recent visit of defendant’s ship to Philadelphia’s port

is doing business enough to bring it before this Court.

The case actually involved a highly technical issue — whether the shipping company had sufficient “minimum contacts” with Pennsylvania to justify suing it in the federal court located in Pennsylvania. As can be seen — well, sort of — Becker concluded that docking a ship in Philadelphia was a sufficient “contact,” and said that American would have to defend itself there.

The English author G. K. Chesterton once observed that, “The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” And now Judge Becker has proven that, even if federal civil procedure is (now) a subject about which the poets haven’t been silent — they should have.

The English author G. K. Chesterton once observed that, “The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” And now Judge Becker has proven that, even if federal civil procedure is (now) a subject about which the poets haven’t been silent — they should have.