American River Transportation v. United States, Corp of Eng

Faced with “the unenviable task of deciding whether an impossibly obscure law (the [RHA]) prevails over a hopelessly anachronistic one (the Limitation Act),” we are — as the Fifth Circuit once described it — “adrift on muddied waters that lie at the convergence of two desultory streams of nineteenth century thought.” Univ. of Tex. Med. Branch at Galveston v. United States, 557 F.2d 438, 441 (5th Cir.1977) (agreeing with commentary from 1957 that the Limitation Act “has been due for a general overhaul for the past seventy-five *441years; seventy-five years from now that statement will be still…