Rescue and the Law

Rescue and the Law

One blustering day two years ago David Warshauer, 31, Brooklyn truckman, and his brother-in-law, Irving Tuchyner, set out from Oceanside. L. I. in a 16-ft. motorboat, headed for Sheepshead Bay. The wind swept them off their course, far out to sea. Their gasoline gave out, they drifted for five days without food or water. On the sixth day, according to Warshauer, they sighted the S. S. Conte Biancamano, crack passenger liner of the Lloyd Sabaudo Line. When the steamer came within hailing distance, the castaways waved distress signals, shouted for help. Passengers and crew waved back, they said, but the liner sailed by without stopping. Two days later Coast Guardsmen rescued the drifting men, rushed them to a hospital where Tuchyner died. David Warshauer, permanently crippled by a gangrenous infection in both feet, brought suit for $200,000 against the Lloyd Sabaudo Line (now integrated with the Italian Line). His lawyers went before Federal Judge Robert Porter Patterson last week. They cited numerous admiralty statutes, including a law passed by Congress in 1912, which holds a ship's master criminally liable if he fails to go to the rescue, provided no serious danger to his own vessel, crew or passengers is involved. The lawyers sought to prove that it followed from these facts that the vessel's owners could also be held legally responsible--a point of law which has never been tested in court. Counsel for the steamship line argued that the case should be dismissed because the Federal Court had no jurisdiction and because the evidence was insufficient. He declared that the two men had mistaken the identity of the ship, had, in fact, never been sighted by the Conte Biancamano. Judge Patterson postponed decision until both sides complete their briefs.

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