Docket No. 4.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
on behalf of
May Davies Hopkins Gilmer, Administratix of the Estate of Albert Lloyd Hopkins, Deceased, and May Davies Hopkins,
Claimants,
v.
GERMANY.
PARKER, Umpire, rendered the decision of the Commission.
This case is before the Umpire for decision on a certificate of the two National Commissioners[b] certifying their disagreement.
The United States on behalf of May Davies Hopkins Gilmer, Administratrix of the Estate of Albert Lloyd Hopkins, Deceased, asserts this claim for losses suffered by her and by her minor child, May Davies Hopkins, the widow and child respectively of Albert Lloyd Hopkins, an American citizen, who as a passenger went down with the Lusitania.
Germany’s liability has been determined by this Commission in its “Opinion in the Lusitania Cases”[c] handed down November 1, 1923. The American nationality of the claimants at the time and ever since the sinking of the Lusitania is established. Nothing remains, therefore, but to apply the principles and rules laid down by the Commission in the Lusitania cases to the facts as disclosed by the record and assess the damages sustained by the claimants as measured by such rules. These facts, briefly stated, are:
At the time of Hopkins’ death he was 44 years of age. His widow, 41 years of age, to whom he had been married 9 years, and an only child, May Davies Hopkins, issue of that marriage, then past 7 years of age, survived him. The widow married Lieutenant-Colonel Ellison Lindsay Gilmer, of the United States Coast Artillery Corps, some five years thereafter.
Hopkins was a graduate of a polytechnic institute and was thoroughly trained in the shipbuilding industry, in which he had been engaged for a number of years, most of which time he was in the employ of the Newport News Ship Building and Dry Dock Company. In 1904 he was receiving from that company a salary of $4,000 per annum. This salary and his position with the company were advanced from time to time during aperiod of ten years until at the time of his death he was president of the company receiving a salary of $25,000 per annum. While slight of stature, he was healthy, active, and industrious. His habits were good, and he enjoyed the confidence of his business associates. His life expectancy was 25 ½ years. The life expectancies of both his widow and child exceeded his.
In the testimony offered on behalf of the claimants great emphasis is laid on the fact that the responsible position which Mr. Hopkins occupied in the business world and his station in life necessitated his spending his entire salary in maintaining himself, his wife, and their child. As one witness expressed it, “the demands and scale of living imposed upon Mr. Hopkins in his home life by reason of his high connections in the business and social worlds” consumed his entire salary. Another witness testifies that there were “no signes of Mr. Hopkins having passed from the stage of a salary-consuming man of business to the stage of a saving and investing man of business”. The inference is that business as well as social considerations influenced him in spending his entire salary, which constituted his only source of income, maintaining his domestic establishment. He carried a life-insurance policy of $10,000 payable to the estate, which was collected and disbursed by his widow as administratrix in paying the debts of the estate and the costs of administration.
This left his widow and her young daughter without any source of income for their maintenance save the widow’s personal exertions and the generosity of the members of her family, who were not, without personal sacrifice, financially able to support them.
No claim is put forward for the value of personal property lost with Hopkins.
Applying the rules announced in the Lusitania Opinion to these facts, the Commission decrees that under the Treaty of Berlin of August 25, 1921, and in accordance with its terms the Government of the United States on behalf of (1) Mrs. May Davies Hopkins Gilmer the sum of fifty thousand dollars ($50,000.00) and (2) the minor, May Davies Hopkins, the sum of eighty thousand dollars ($80,000.00), both said sums to bear interest at the rate of five per cent per annum from November 1, 1923.
Done at Washington February 21, 1924.
EDWIN B. PARKER,
Umpire.
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[b] Dated February 14, 1924.
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