Nickerson v. Tyson

Decided March 15, 1812

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1812-03-15

This action was assumpsit, to recover a sum of money as contribution, in the nature of general average, upon a loss which happened to the schooner Polly, of which the plaintiffs were owners, on a voyage from Baltimore to Lisbon, the defendant being a freighter on said vessel. The action was tried upon the .issue of non assumpsit, before Parker, J., at the last November term in this county.

Cited in Black's (1910)’s definition of “Average”

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1812-03-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently August 1885

1 district · 2 state decisions

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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By the Court.

¶1The -plaintiffs are not entitled to contribution upon the facts reported. Here was no deliberate act done for the preservation of the whole, except the separating the masts and rigging from the hull, after they were carried overboard by the violence of the weather. At the utmost, all that the plaintiffs could claim would be a contribution proportioned to their value, when thus hanging by the side of the vessel. But in fact the cargo has been held already to pay a salvage to another vessel, which was the means of finally saving it to its owners.

¶2Plaintiffs nonsuit.