Divided Damages

Divided Damages in Maritime Law

Note: There is more information on maritime/admiralty law here.

The following is a definition of Divided Damages, produced by Tetley, in the context of admiralty law: The former method of apportioning damages from a ship collision under the general maritime law of civil law countries, as well as under English and American admiralty law, whereby such damages were equally divided between the ships involved in the collision, regardless of the degree to which each of them was to blame. Divided damages differed from the traditional contributory negligence (see this maritime law term in this legal dictionary) rule of apportionment of damages, which precluded a plaintiff from recovering any damages from a negligent defendant if the plaintiff himself was at fault in even the slightest degree. The divided damages method was eventually replaced by the proportionate fault (see this maritime law term in this legal dictionary) method of apportionment under the Collision Convention 1910 (see this maritime law term in this legal dictionary) and national legislation giving effect to that Convention, and in the United States, by the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Reliable Transfer Co. 421 U.S. 397, 1975 AMC 541, [1975] 2 Lloyd’s Rep. 286 (1975). See Tetley, Int’l C. of L., 1994 at pp. 471-483, 489, 497; Tetley, M.L.C., 2 Ed., 1998 at p. 50; Tetley, Int’l. M. & A. L., 2003 at pp. 223-228.

Divided Damages in Admiralty Law

For information on divided damages in this context, see the entry on divided damages in the maritime law encyclopedia.