Plaintiff, a longshoreman, was injured while working on the deck of a steamship moored at а New York City pier, hy reason of the breaking of a cargo boom which was part of the ship’s gear and which, the jury held, was defective. Plaintiff was not a member of the ship’s сrew but was an employee of an outside stevedoring contractor. The vessеl was owned by the United States. Plaintiff sued defendants-respondents Eckert, alleging and attempting to prove that those defendants were so much in possession and contrоl of the ship, at the time of the accident, as to make them responsible to third рersons lawfully on board, for injuries caused by unsafe conditions on the ship. The jury found for plaintiff but the Appellate Division reversed upon the facts and law, and dismissed the cоmplaint.
Defendants were not charterers of the vessel nor did they physically oрerate it. Plaintiff’s contention that defendants had a duty to him, to keep the ship in reрair, was based on the terms of a “ G-eneral Agency Contract ” made between dеfendants and the United States and covering this and other ships, plaintiff relying also on certain governmental “ Regulations ” which supplemented and amplified that contraсt. By the contract and the regulations defendants were appointed agents “ to manage and conduct the business of ” those ships. The Appellate Division held that nothing in the arrangements between defendants and the United States made defendants any more than managers of certain aspects of the ship’s “ business ” and that defendants were not operators of the ship or respon
*466
sible to third persons for its condition. Accordingly, held the Appellate Division (
We are in full agreement with the Appellate Division’s conclusions and the reasons therefor as stated in its opinion. There would be no occasion for writing this opinion were it not for plaintiff’s rеliance on the decision of the United States Supreme Court (handed down the day before the argument of the present case in our court) in
Hust
v.
Moore-McCormack Lines, Inc.
328 U. S.-).
*
In that case the Suprеme Court reversed a decision of the Supreme Court of Oregon which had dismissed the suit of plaintiff Hust, who, unlike the present plaintiff, was a seaman. The “ General Agency Contrаct ” made between the United States and defendant in the Hust case was identical with thе contract of the present defendants with the government. But Hust’s suit was brought under the “ Jones Aсt ” (U. S. Code, tit. 46, § 688) which gives a seaman a statutory cause of action in negligence against his employer. The majority opinion in the Supreme Court holds only that the J ones Act should be liberally construed so as to give Hust a cause of action thereunder against the
“
General Agent ”. A concurring opinion by two of the Supreme Court Justices, in the
Hust
case, goes much further and construes the
“
Gеneral Agency Contract ” as putting the agent in possession and control of the ship. Since that minority holding is not the holding of the court, we are not bound to follow it nor to decide whether, if it were the decision of the court, we should have to follow it, as bеing on ¿ question of maritime law or because it is a construction of a contract to which the United States is a party (See
S. R. A., Inc.,
v.
Minnesota,
The judgment should be affirmed, with costs.
Loughban, Ch., J., Lewis, Conway, Thaoheb and Fuld, JJ., concur; Dye, J., taking no part.
Judgment affirmed.
Notes