Docket No. 25.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
on behalf of
Albert Jackson Byington,
Claimant,
v.
GERMANY.
PARKER, Umpire, rendered the decision of the Commission.
This case is before the Umpire for decision on a certificate of the National Commissioners[a] certifying their disagreement.
From the record it appears that Albert Jackson Byington, an American national, then 40 years of age, was a passenger on the Lusitania at the time that vessel went down. He was thrown into the water, a distance of some 60 feet, falling on his back, sustaining minor bruises, injuring his spine, and suffering severe shock. After being rescued he went to London, where he remained 19 days, and then journeyed to Sao Paulo, Brazil, where he maintained an office and where his principal business interests were located.
The claimant is by profession an electrical and mechanical engineer. For more than ten years prior to sustaining the injuries complained of he had been practising [sic] his profession at Sao Paulo and elsewhere in Brazil. His promotion, construction, industrial, and fruit-growing operations were on a considerable scale. He was en route to London in the interest of one of the Brazilian ventures with which he was connected when he sustained the injuries of which he complains.
The claim is being made that these injuries produced permanent traumatic neurasthenia resulting in impairment of memory, loss of initiative, loss of decision, and general impairment of mental faculties, and that this condition has incapacitated him from the efficient and successful direction and supervision of the numerous ventures in which he is interested.
It is clear from the record that he claimant suffered severe shock. The evidence of the extent and duration of these injuries is far from satisfactory. From the failure of the claimant himself to make any disclosure whatever with reference to his state of health in affidavits of a comparatively recent date, which he has filed in support of his claim, and from the failure of physicians in the affidavits bearing a comparatively recent date to make any reference to the claimant’s state of health subsequent to December, 1918, it may reasonably be inferred that his injuries have not proven of a permanent nature.
The claimant had with him on the Lusitania quite an extensive wardrobe, a valuable set of pearl studs, and other personal effects and cash, aggregating in value $3,398, all of which were lost.
Applying the rules announced in the Lusitania Opinion and in the other decisions of this Commission to the facts as disclosed by the record, the Commission decrees that under the Treaty of Berlin of August 25, 1921, and in accordance with its terms the Government of Germany is obligated to pay to the Government of the United States on behalf of Albert Jackson Byington the sum of ten thousand dollars ($10,000.00) with interest thereon at the rate of five per cent per annum from November 1, 1923, and the further sum of three thousand three hundred ninety-eight dollars ($3,398.00) with interest thereon at the rate of five per cent per annum from May 7, 1915.
Done at Washington October 2, 1924.
EDWIN B. PARKER,
Umpire.
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[a] Dated September 23, 1924.
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