Ghen v. Rich
United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts
8 F. 159 (1881)
- Written by Dennis Chong, JD
Facts
In the nineteenth century, fishermen from Provincetown, Massachusetts, often hunted finback whales in the Massachusetts Bay off the coast of Cape Cod. The fishermen shot the whales with bomb lances, which killed the whales and caused their carcasses to sink. The carcasses then floated back to the surface or washed ashore one to three days later, often far from where the whales were killed. Once a carcass was found, the fisherman who had shot the whale could be identified by the fisherman’s personalized markings on the bomb lance. The custom in the Cape Cod area at the time provided that if a person found a finback-whale carcass on the beach, the finder would send word to Provincetown, and the fisherman who had shot the whale would send someone to the whale to remove the blubber. The finder would receive a small fee for finding and reporting the carcass. On April 9, 1880, Provincetown fisherman Ghen (plaintiff) shot and killed a finback whale with a bomb lance. Three days later, Ellis found the whale’s carcass on a beach 17 miles away. Contrary to custom, Ellis did not send word of the carcass to Provincetown and instead sold the carcass at auction to Rich (defendant), who harvested the blubber and oil from the carcass. Ghen sued Rich, seeking to recover the value of the whale.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Nelson, J.)
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