Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/151

 THE UABY BTEWART. 139 �inasmuch as the question of privity bas been elaborately argued, I M'ill pass upon that also. �The libellant was nol employed by the ahip, but by Mr. Donald, the stevedore. He was not a party to the coutract between the ship and the charterer. It is well settled that where a party is delinquent in a duty imposed by contract, no one but a party to the contract can maintain an action. It is only where a party neglects a duty imposed by law, in other words, a duty to the public, that an action will lie on the part of any one injured thereby, irrespective of privity. That is, if the injury complained of arose from the neglect of a pub- lic duty, any one injured may maintain an action, and the mere fact that there is a cOntract between one of the parties and a third per- son will not defeat the action. Now it can hardly be argued that furnishing a proper rope is a duty imposed by law. It is a duty imposed by charter-party alone, a duty due to the charterer alone, and for violation of which he alone can sue. It was not a duty to the public. Had, the masts of the ship, for instance, been inse- curely f astened and fallen and injured any one, that would have been a violation of a public duty, — a duty imposed by law on every one'to have no dangerous structures on his property, which may injure those who corne on the premises by the invitation or permission of the owner. But a rope can hardly be called a dangerous structure. The injury in the case at bar arose not from the rope itself, but from its use. The proximate cause of the accident, therefore, was the use of the rope by the stevedores, not the furnishing of the rope by the ship. �The cases of The Kate Cann, 2 Ped. Ebp. 241, and Cotightry v. Woolen Co. 56 N. Y. 124, quoted by counsel for libellant, do not militate against this view, but, on the contrary, sustain it. In the former the injury arose from the falling of some dunnage, which had been insecurely fastened. The neglect to f asten it properly and safely was clearly a violation of a duty imposed by law. So, too, in the latter case, where the injury arose from the falling of a scaffold on the defendant's premises. Ample authority for the doctrine laid down above may be found in the following cases : Alton v. Ry. Co. 19 C. B. (N. S.) 213; Tollit v. Sherstone, 5 M. & W. 288; Winterbottom v. Wright, 10 M. & W. 112; Collis v. Selden, L. E. 3 C. P. 496; Play- ford V. Telegraph Co. L. R. 4 Q. B. 705. I will sign a decree dismissing the libel, with costs. ��� �