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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Part:         Session:         Page of 731

That was a case that gave me great trouble - oh, great trouble; I felt that there was some thing seriously wrong. The raft wasn't a ship that had been given a name in baptism and acquired a personality. Neither did it do any business, carry any trade, or carry on any enterprise of any sort. The Referees who passed on the case had been convinced it was a maritime case, but I overruled this when it came to me. When it came to me, I wrote quite an interesting opinion. I said that the raft was an adjunct to the land. If he had been standing on the dock and driving nails into the piles, there would have been no question about it. That had clearly, by previous decisions, been established that the dock was an extension of the land. It ran out onto the water, resting on such, but it was a total connection clear back to the land. So that was an extension of the land. If he had been standing on the dock, he would have been covered under compensation, but he was standing on this raft which he and his mate had rigged up for more convenient working. Although floating in the water, the raft's functional relationship to the whole problem was that it was an extension of the dock. It was attached to the dock and was serving the purposes of a dock, not the purposes of a floating vessel, a ship or even a rowboat. I held that that was it.





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