Source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/274/427.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 11:02:17+00:00

Document:
[274 U.S. 427, 428] Messrs. Claude L. Johnson and J. F. Pierson, both of New Orleans, La., for petitioner.
He was employed by the Foundation Company in [274 U.S. 427, 429] September, 1919, as a helper to a boilermaker. He was sent with the boilermaker on board the steamship La Grange, then afloat on the Mississippi river at New Orleans. The task to be performed was to add 8 feet to the smokestack of the steamer. The two men were furnished ladders to ascend to the top of the stack and while engaged in the work Messel was brought directly over the mouth of the steam escape pipe running from the engine room. While he was so engaged, scalding steam was allowed to escape from the pipe. It overcame him, and inflicted serious injuries.
The Foundation Company excepted to the petition on the ground that it disclosed no legal cause of action, but, in the event that the exception should be overruled, the [274 U.S. 427, 430] company admitted the averments of the petition, save that it charged that the petitioner was guilty of gross negligence, and assumed the risk, and that the injuries received were due to his own fault or were caused by the negligence of a fellow servant. It denied the extent of the damage; said that the petitioner was precluded from bringing his action under article 2315 of the Civil Code, but must bring it under the state Workmen's Compensation Act.
The Court of Appeal of the Parish of Orleans, to which the case was then taken on appeal, held that the objections to the constitutionality of the Workmen's Compensation Act could not be sustained. It further decided that, if the petitioner's right of action was not under the Workmen's Compensation Act, the state courts had no jurisdiction of such demands ratione materiae; that it had twice decided that the state court was without Workmen's Compensation Act, where the Workmenhs Compensation Act, where the plaintiffs sustained injuries while aboard a ship under a maritime contract; that these decisions were in accord with the opinion of the Supreme [274 U.S. 427, 431] Court of Louisiana in Lawson v. New York & P. R. Steamship Co., 148 La. 290, 86 So. 815, and with the decisions of this court in Southern Pacific v. Jensen, 244 U.S. 206 , 37 S. Ct. 524, L. R. A. 1918C, 451, Ann. Cas. 1917E, 900, affirmed in Knickerbocker v. Stewart, 253 U.S. 149 , 40 S. Ct. 438, 11 A. L. R. 1145, and State v. Dawson, 264 U.S. 219 , 44 S. Ct. 302, and in Peters v. Veasey, 251 U.S. 121 , 40 S. Ct. 65; and that an employee like Messel, who suffered injury upon a vessel under a maritime contract of employment, could not obtain compensation in a state court of Louisiana.
'The work in which plaintiff was engaged at the time he was injured was maritime in its nature; his employment was a maritime contract, and his claim for damages was enforceable in the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction. For that reason, before the passage of the Act of Congress of October 6, 1917 (U. S. Comp. St. 991(3), 1233), the Employers' Liability Act was not pertinent, and did not deprive the plaintiff of the right of a common-law remedy. We say 'common-law,' because article 2315 of the Civil Code of this state is only an embodiment of the common-law right of action for tort, viz.: 'Every act whatever of man that causes damage to another obliges him by whose fault it happened to repair it."
The fact that Messel, in the alternative, asked for a recovery under the Workmen's Compensation Act, could not defeat him in his continuous request to proceed under article 2315, and as the original action invoked article 2315, and he is still invoking the remedy provided by that article, there would seem to be no opportunity for the [274 U.S. 427, 434] operation of the prescription of one year provided by the Louisiana Workmen's Compensation Act. Messel's attack upon the Workmen's Compensation Act as unconstitutional under the Constitution of Louisiana was entirely irrelevant and should be rejected as surplusage.
The principles applicable to Messel's recovery, should he have one, must be limited to those which the admiralty law of the United States prescribes, including the applicable section of the federal Employers' Liability Act, incorporated in the maritime law by section 33, c. 250, 41 Stat. 988, 1007 (Comp. St. 8337a); Robins Dry Dock & Repair Co. v. Dahl, 266 U.S. 449 , 45 S. Ct. 157; Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. v. Kierejewski, 261 U.S. 479, 480 , 43 S. Ct. 418; Knickerbocker Ice Co. v. Stewart, 253 U.S. 149 , 40 S. Ct. 438, 11 A. L. R. 1145; The Osceola, 189 U.S. 158 , 23 S. Ct. 483; Panama R. Co. v. Johnson, 264 U.S. 375 , 44 S. Ct. 391; Baltimore S. S. Co. v. Phillips (decided May 16, 1927) 274 U.S. 316 , 47 S. Ct. 600; Engel v. Davenport, 271 U.S. 33 , 46 S. Ct. 410; Panama R. Co. v. Vasquez, 271 U.S. 557 , 46 S. Ct. 596.

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