I'm a boater and a lawyer. So what could be better than an admiralty law
case. For years I've read discussions here about the COLREGS, better
known as the Rules of the Road for boating. Inevitably, someone will
declare that the overtaking vessel must give way and that any resulting
collision is the fault of that vessel's captain, that's it, no question,
case closed. Well guess again. According to the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the Ninth Circuit in the recently decided case of Crowley Marine v.
Maritrans, you must look at all of the factors and assign blame on a
comparative fault basis. In this case, the captain of the overtaking
vessel was judged to be 30% and fault when it struck another vessel and
the captain of the struck vessel was 70% at fault, not withstanding that
the overtaking vessel had violated Rule 13(a) by failing to give way. It
didn't help that the captain of the vessel that was struck had "serious
medical and alcohol problems" according to the court. There were also
some other unusal facts pecuilar to the case, but the precedent
established is that every case will be judged on it's own facts with no
hard and fast rules for assigning fault.

Here's a link if you'd like to read a case that discusses maritime law
going all the way back to the 12th century.

http://tiny.cc/NfV1I

Interesting for those who like this sort of thing.