Frontera precedent stands true to form.
Frontera precedent stands true to form.
By Bryan O'Neill
Indus. Mar. Carriers, LLC v. Dantzler, Inc., 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 8943 (11th Cir. May 29, 2015)In an unpublished opinion issued on May 29, 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the long established precedent set in Frontera Fruit Co., Inc. v. Dowling, 91 F.2d 293, 294 (5th Cir. 1937) that in order to recover damages for wrongful seizure or arrest of a vessel, the party seeking damages must show malice, bad faith or gross negligence of the offending party. The defendant requested a court in Brazil to a vessel after it obtained a judgment from the court against the owner of M/V Industrial Fighter after counsel in Brazil represented to the court the vessel was owned by the judgment debtor. The time charterer of the vessel then informed the judgment creditor that another company from Germany actually was the owner. The owner then successfully petitioned the court in Brazil to release the vessel.The trial court issued summary judgment for the defendant. The 11th Circuit affirmed noting that the proper cause of action to seek damages for wrongful attachment and conversion of a vessel is wrongful attachment “not some other cause of action taken from common law.” Under the prior precedent of the Fifth Circuit adopted by the 11th Circuit, reliance on "the advice of competent counsel, honestly sought and acted upon in good faith is alone a complete defense to an action for malicious prosecution. "These are the types of mistakes that our admiralty procedures anticipate and accept as a necessary evil to be suffered in the interests of preventing parties from fleeing a court's jurisdiction before the dispute can be adjudicated. t a tool to re-dress good faith mistakes of a party’s identity though they may be costly.”The plaintiff sought to have the court reverse the nearly 80 year old precedent of Frontera but it declined to do so as it has been relied on by district courts for years and as one panel cannot overrule the decision of another panel.
