Philadelphia & Reading R. Co. v. Warren Foundry & Machine Co.

I agree with the district court that the steamer’s people have not sustained the burden which rests upon them of proving a change of course on the part of the schooner. It is not easy to understand how they could have mistaken a green light for a red one; but it is still more difficult to believe in so sudden and complete a change by the schooner as would account for the collision. The “stereotyped excuse,” as it has come to be called, from an energetic remark of Grier, J., in Haney v. Baltimore Steam Packet Co. 23 How. 291, “always improbable, and generally false,” that the sailing vessel…