Source: https://proceedings.nyumootcourt.org/2019/03/prejudgment-interest-in-hybrid-jones-act-unseaworthiness-claims/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 04:41:28+00:00

Document:
Are plain­tiffs who raise hybrid claims for unsea­wor­thi­ness under the com­mon law of admi­ral­ty and neg­li­gence under the Jones Act inel­i­gi­ble to obtain pre­judg­ment inter­est? In this Con­tri­bu­tion, Nate Blevins (’19) dis­cuss­es the inter­ac­tion of admi­ral­ty com­mon law and the Jones Act—along with the Fed­er­al Employ­ers Lia­bil­i­ty Act incor­po­rat­ed therein—that has led to a cir­cuit split on this issue. Ulti­mate­ly, this Con­tri­bu­tion argues that, con­trary to the rule in most cir­cuits, a plain­tiff who pre­vails on both counts of a hybrid claim should be eli­gi­ble for pre­judg­ment inter­est.
This Con­tri­bu­tion argues that, con­trary to the major­i­ty of cir­cuits which have ruled on this ques­tion, a plain­tiff who pre­vails on both counts of a hybrid claim should be eli­gi­ble for pre­judg­ment inter­est. This approach is more con­sis­tent with admi­ral­ty law’s long­stand­ing recog­ni­tion of pre­judg­ment inter­est as essen­tial to a plaintiff’s due com­pen­sa­tion, and the Supreme Court’s cur­rent prece­dent on recov­er­able dam­ages under the Jones Act.
First, admi­ral­ty law has tra­di­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized pre­judg­ment inter­est as an appro­pri­ate rem­e­dy for sea­men. Low­er court deci­sions such as Mar­tin v. Har­ris incor­po­rat­ed Mon­essen into Jones Act jurispru­dence oper­at­ing under the (cor­rect) premise that courts must apply FELA prece­dents unless the hold­ing is “ana­lyt­i­cal­ly lim­it­ed to rail­roads or is oth­er­wise inap­po­site to the sea.”29 Where the Mar­tin court erred was its appli­ca­tion of that premise to pre­judg­ment inter­est. In that respect, the Court’s hold­ing in Mon­essen is both ana­lyt­i­cal­ly lim­it­ed to rail­roads and inap­po­site to the sea.
This “tra­di­tion­al hos­pi­tal­i­ty” is espe­cial­ly impor­tant in light of decades of Supreme Court deci­sions which have “con­sis­tent­ly rec­og­nized that the [Jones] Act ‘was reme­di­al, for the ben­e­fit and pro­tec­tion of sea­men’” and that the law’s “‘pur­pose was to enlarge that pro­tec­tion, not to nar­row it.’”34 If the Jones Act “did not elim­i­nate pre-exist­ing reme­dies avail­able to sea­men” at com­mon law pri­or to its enact­ment,35 and pre­judg­ment inter­est indis­putably was such a pre-exist­ing rem­e­dy,36 then it fol­lows that the Jones Act does not elim­i­nate pre­judg­ment inter­est as an avail­able rem­e­dy.
Sec­ond, the Supreme Court’s most recent rul­ing on recov­er­able dam­ages under both admi­ral­ty law and the Jones Act lends fur­ther cre­dence to this interpretation—that plain­tiffs who pre­vail on both counts of a hybrid claim should be award­ed pre­judg­ment inter­est. The Court has endorsed an expan­sive, plain­tiff-friend­ly view of the Jones Act’s pur­pose.
Although not con­cerned with pre­judg­ment inter­est specif­i­cal­ly, the rea­son­ing under­ly­ing the Court’s deci­sion places it in clear con­flict with those cir­cuits which have held that the inclu­sion of Jones Act neg­li­gence as part of a hybrid claim pre­cludes an award of pre­judg­ment inter­est. Yet under the law of sev­er­al cir­cuits, assert­ing a Jones Act claim for neg­li­gence as part of a hybrid claim can pre­clude reme­dies oth­er­wise avail­able under admi­ral­ty law. This appli­ca­tion of Mon­essen’s bar on pre­judg­ment inter­est awards to hybrid claims turns the Supreme Court’s under­stand­ing of the Jones Act on its head, view­ing it as a cap to the pro­tec­tion the law will offer to injured sea­men, rather than an expan­sion of already exist­ing legal pro­tec­tions.
Pre­judg­ment inter­est “ensure[s] that an injured par­ty is ful­ly com­pen­sat­ed for its loss” and “helps achieve the goal of restor­ing a par­ty to the con­di­tion it enjoyed before the injury occurred.”47 In light of the Supreme Court’s posi­tion that “[f]ull com­pen­sa­tion has long been rec­og­nized as a basic prin­ci­ple of admi­ral­ty law[,]”48 treat­ing a law meant to expand pro­tec­tions for a par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble class of work­ers as a bar to recov­er­ing dam­ages long con­sid­ered part of an injured worker’s due com­pen­sa­tion seems a plain dis­tor­tion of the Jones Act’s most fun­da­men­tal pur­pos­es.
As Jus­tice Sto­ry observed near­ly two cen­turies ago, sea­men are “liable to sud­den sick­ness from change of cli­mate, expo­sure to per­ils, and exhaust­ing labour” and so “courts of mar­itime law have been in the con­stant habit of extend­ing towards them a pecu­liar, pro­tect­ing favor and guardian­ship” because they “are emphat­i­cal­ly the wards of the admi­ral­ty.”49 Although mar­itime com­merce has changed immense­ly over the past 200 years, the sea­men whose work ensures its con­tin­ued vital­i­ty remain nonethe­less vul­ner­a­ble to many of the same per­ilous risks.50 Grant­i­ng pre­judg­ment inter­est is far from a wind­fall for plain­tiffs, nor does it impose unrea­son­ably large lia­bil­i­ties upon defen­dants; rather, it is sim­ply a means to make the injured par­ty whole.
1. Nate Blevins is a 3L at New York Uni­ver­si­ty School of Law. This Con­tri­bu­tion is based on the prob­lem posed to the team at the 2017 Robert F. Wag­n­er Nation­al Labor and Employ­ment Law Moot Court Com­pe­ti­tion host­ed by New York Law School. The views expressed in this piece do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect the views of the author. Rather, this arti­cle is a dis­til­la­tion of one side of the argu­ments made by the team at the Wag­n­er Com­pe­ti­tion.
2. See, e.g., Carlisle Pack­ing Co. v. San­dan­ger, 259 U.S. 255, 258 (1922) (“The ves­sel and her own­er are … liable to an indem­ni­ty for injuries received by sea­men in con­se­quence of the unsea­wor­thi­ness of the ship[.]”).
3. 46 U.S.C. § 30104.
4. Alvin B. Rubin & David P. King, New Car­go from Old Ports: Recent Sig­nif­i­cant Mar­itime Per­son­al Injury Cas­es, 8 Mar. Law. 1, 21 (1983).
5. City of Mil­wau­kee v. Cement Div., Nat. Gyp­sum Co., 515 U.S. 189, 194 (1995) (cit­ing admi­ral­ty cas­es which approved awards of pre­judg­ment inter­est dat­ing back to the 1790s).
6. Id. at 196 (inter­nal cita­tions and quo­ta­tion marks omit­ted).
7. David Gray Dou­glas, The Cur­rent Sta­tus of the Avail­abil­i­ty of Pre­judg­ment Inter­est in Admi­ral­ty, 17 Tul. Mar. L.J. 283, 296 (1993) (“In most cir­cuits, courts vir­tu­al­ly auto­mat­i­cal­ly award pre­judg­ment inter­est.”).
8. City of Mil­wau­kee, 515 U.S. at 196 (quot­ing Stan­dard Oil Co. of N.J. v. South­ern Pacif­ic Co., 268 U.S. 146, 158 (1925)).
9. 46 U.S.C. § 30104.
10. 45 U.S.C. §§ 51–60.
11. 486 U.S. 330 (1988).
13. Id. at 337 (“We can dis­cern a suf­fi­cient­ly clear indi­ca­tion of leg­isla­tive intent with regard to pre­judg­ment inter­est under the FELA, how­ev­er, when we con­sid­er Con­gress’ silence on this mat­ter in the appro­pri­ate his­tor­i­cal con­text. In 1908, when Con­gress enact­ed the FELA, the com­mon law did not allow pre­judg­ment inter­est in suits for per­son­al injury or wrong­ful death.”).
16. See, e.g., Mar­tin v. Har­ris, 560 F.3d 210, 220 (4th Cir. 2009) (“[T]he hold­ing in Mon­essen that pre­judg­ment inter­est is not avail­able in [a] FELA case is explic­it­ly incor­po­rat­ed into the Jones Act.”).
17. Nevor v. Mon­eypen­ny Hold­ings, 842 F.3d 113 (1st Cir. 2016).
18. Magee v. U.S. Lines, Inc., 976 F.2d 821 (2d Cir. 1992).
19. Mar­tin v. Har­ris, 560 F.3d 210 (4th Cir. 2009).
20. Wyatt v Pen­rod Drilling Co., 735 F.2d 951 (5th Cir. 1984).
21. Petersen v. Chesa­peake & Ohio Ry. Co., 784 F.2d 732 (6th Cir. 1986).
22. See, e.g., Nevor, 842 F.3d at 116 (not­ing that “[t]he award of pre­judg­ment inter­est … [is] a ques­tion of first impres­sion with­in this cir­cuit”).
29. 560 F.3d 210, 220 (4th Cir. 2009).
30. 486 U.S. at 337.
32. See Del Col v. Arnold, 3 U.S. 333, 334 (1796) (affirm­ing an admi­ral­ty award that includ­ed 10% inter­est from the date of a ship’s cap­ture).
33. City of Mil­wau­kee, 515 U.S. at 196.
34. Id. at 417 (quot­ing The Ariz. v. Anelich, 298 U.S. 110, 123 (1936)).
35. 557 U.S. at 415; see also, e.g., Am. Exp. Lines, Inc. v. Alvez, 446 U.S. 274, 282 (1980) (“Nor do we read the Jones Act as sweep­ing aside gen­er­al mar­itime law reme­dies.”).
36. See City of Mil­wau­kee, 557 U.S. at 415 (“Through­out our his­to­ry, admi­ral­ty decrees have includ­ed pro­vi­sions for pre­judg­ment inter­est.”).
37. 557 U.S. 404 (2009).
39. Id. at 414 n.4 (“[T]he pre-Jones Act evi­dence sup­ports the con­clu­sion that puni­tive dam­ages were avail­able at com­mon law where the denial of main­te­nance and cure involved wan­ton, will­ful, or out­ra­geous con­duct.”).
40. 189 U.S. 158 (1903).
41. 557 U.S. at 415–16.
42. 46 U.S.C. § 30104.
43. 557 U.S. at 416.
45. Id. at 417 (inter­nal quo­ta­tion marks omit­ted).
47. City of Mil­wau­kee v. Cement Div., Nat. Gyp­sum Co., 515 U.S. 189, 195–96 (1995).
49. Hard­en v. Gor­don, 11 F. Cas. 480, 485 (C.C.D. Me. 1823).
50. See, e.g., Rafael Yitzhak Lefkowitz, Inci­dence of Injury And Ill­ness In Mer­chant Sea­far­ers, Yale School of Pub­lic Health, Pub­lic Health The­ses (2013), avail­able at http://elischolar.library.yale.edu /ysphtdl/1165 (find­ing an aver­age inci­dence of 9.8 injuries per 100 sea­men over a four-year sam­ple peri­od).

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