total loss
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 75 U.S. 377 - The Baltimore · 1869Most cited · 359 citing opinions
Evidence, however, that the injured vessel is sunk is not of itself sufficient to show that the loss was total, nor is it sufficient to justify the master and owner in abandoning the vessel or the cargo unless it appears that the circumstances were such that the vessel could not be raised and saved, or that the cost of raising and repairing her would exceed or equal her value after the repairs were made.
How often courts cite the cases defining “total loss”
Court decisions citing the 2 opinions that defined “total loss” — 448 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 2 definitions, chronological · 1807–1869
- ORIGINAL
There are situations in which the delay of the voyage, the deprivation of the right to conduct it, produce inconveniences to the insured, for the calculation of which the law affords and can afford no standard. In such cases there is, for the time, a total loss: and in this state of things the insured may abandon to the underwriter, who stands in his place, and to whom justice is done, by enabling him to receive all that the insured might receive. A capture by an enemy and an embargo by a foreign power are admitted to be within this rule, and a complete arrest by a belligerent not an enemy, seems, in reason, to be equally within it.
in marine insurance; abandonment after capture