Source: https://openjurist.org/364/us/325
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 12:22:46+00:00

Document:
Mr. Harvey Goldstein, Las Vegas, Nev., Mr. S. Eldridge Sampliner, Cleveland, Ohio, for petitioner.
Mr. Lucian Y. Ray, Cleveland, Ohio, for respondent.
The petitioner asks damages for personal injuries he allegedly sustained in a shipboard accident while a crew member aboard the respondent's Great Lakes vessel, the tanker Orion. His complaint alleges respondent's liability both for negligence under the Jones Act, 46 U.S.C. § 688, 46 U.S.C.A. § 688, and for unseaworthiness under the general maritime law;1 a claim for maintenance and cure is also alleged. The parties settled the claim for maintenance and cure at the trial, which was before a jury in the District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. Judgment was entered for the respondent on the unseaworthiness and Jones Act claims upon a verdict directed by the trial judge on the ground of insufficiency of the evidence. The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed. 271 F.2d 194. We granted certiorari, 362 U.S. 909, 80 S.Ct. 661, 4 L.Ed.2d 618.
Michalic did not report the accident at the time but continued working until January 6, 1956, a week later, when the vessel was laid up for the winter. Meanwhile he treated the toe every night after work in hot water and Epsom salts. He was at his home from January 6 to March 15 and used hot boric acid soaks 'practically every day.' He was called back to the Orion on March 15. On April 1, 1956, he reported to the Orion's captain that '(m)y leg was so bad, so painful, I couldn't take it no more * * *. I want a hospital ticket.' The captain gave him the ticket after filling out a report in which he stated that Michalic told him that on December 28, 1955, 'While working with pumpman in pumproom man said he dropped a wrench on his foot and his toe has been sore ever since.' This was the first notice respondent had of any accident.
At the hospital in April, a diagnosis was made of 'an infected left great toe nail and gangrene of the left great toe secondary to the Buerger's Disease.' During the spring three amputations were performed on the left leg. first the great left toe, next the left leg below the knee and then part of the leg above the knee. Medical experts, three on behalf of the petitioner and one for the respondent, differed whether, assuming that the wrench dropped on Michalic's left great toe on December 28, there was a causal connection between that trauma and the amputations. This plainly presented a question for the jury's determination. Sentilles v. Inter-Caribbean Corp., 361 U.S. 107, 80 S.Ct. 173, 4 A.L.R.2d 142, and we do not understand that the respondent contends otherwise.
'One is an absolute duty, the other is due care. Where * * * the ultimate issue (is) seaworthiness of the gear * * *. The owner has an absolute duty to furnish reasonably suitable appliances. If he does not, then no amount of due care or prudence excuses him, whether he knew, or could have known, of its deficiency at the outset or after use. In contrast, under the negligence concept, there is only a duty to use due care, i.e., reasonable prudence, to select and keep in order reasonably suitable appliances. Defects which would not have been known to a reasonably prudent person at the outset, or arose after use and which a reasonably prudent person ought not to have discovered would impose no liability.' 247 F.2d, at page 637.
Thus the question under Michalic's unseaworthiness claim is the single one as to the sufficiency of the proofs to raise a jury question whether the wrench furnished Michalic was a reasonably suitable appliance for the task he was assigned. To support the Jones Act claim, however, the evidence must also be sufficient to raise a jury question whether the respondent failed to exercise due care in furnishing a wrench which was not a reasonably suitable appliance.
The Jones Act claim is double-barreled. Michalic adds a charge of negligent failure to provide him with a safe place to work to the charge of negligence in furnishing him with a defective wrench. However, the case was not tried, nor is it argued here, on the basis that the charge of negligence in failing to provide a safe place to work rests solely on evidence tending to show a cramped and poorly lighted working space, regardless of the suitability of the wrench. On the contrary, Michalic also makes the allegedly defective wrench the basis of this charge, arguing in effect that the described conditions under which he was required to do the work increased the hazard from the use of the defective wrench. Under that theory, the relevance of the testimony is only to the charge of furnishing a defective wrench and the causal connection between that act and his injury. Phrasing the claim as a failure to provide a safe place to work therefore adds nothing to Michalic's case, and he was not entitled to have that claim submitted to the jury as an additional ground of the respondent's alleged liability.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed and the cause remanded to the District Court for a new trial. It is so ordered.
Judgment of Court of Appeals reversed and cause remanded to the District Court for new trial.
For the reasons set forth in his opinion in Rogers v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 352 U.S. 500, 524, 77 S.Ct. 443, 459, 1 L.Ed.2d 493, MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER is of the view that the writ of certiorari was improvidently granted.
Mr. Justice HARLAN with whom Mr. Justice WHITTAKER and Mr. Justice STEWART join, dissenting.
At the opening of a Term which finds the Court's docket crowded with more important and difficult litigation than in many years, it is not without irony that we should be witnessing among the first matters to be heard a routine negligence (and unseaworthiness)1 case involving only issues of fact. I continue to believe that such cases, distressing and important as they are for unsuccessful plaintiffs, do not belong in this Court. See dissenting opinions in Rogers v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 352 U.S. 500, at pages 524, 559, 77 S.Ct. 443, at pages 459, 478.
The District Court, finding that the evidence presented no questions for the jury, directed a verdict for the respondent. The Court of Appeals, in an opinion which manifests a conscientious effort to follow the precepts of the Rogers case, unanimously affirmed, after a painstaking assessment of the record. 6 Cir., 271 F.2d 194. My own examination of the record and of the opinion of the Court of Appeals convinces me that there is no warrant for this Court overriding the views of the two lower courts.
The core of petitioner's case was the condition of the wrench, his unsafe-place-to-work theory having evaporated in thin air, as the Court recognizes. Having had to abandon his original theory that the claw of the wrench had defective teeth (since the wrench was toothless), petitioner testified (1) that the instrument was an 'old beat-up wrench * * * all chewed up on the end' (whether at the claw or handle does not appear); and (2) that the wrench had slipped off nuts at various times during the operation (albeit petitioner had before the accident successfully removed some 15 out of 20 nuts without mishap).
Judged by any reasonable standard this evidence, fragmentized or synthesized as one may please, did not in my opinion make a case for the jury. The additional factors on which the Court relies add nothing to the inherent deficiencies of petitioner's testimony which the Court seems to recognize did not of itself make out a case of either negligence or unseaworthiness. If it is permissible for a jury to rationalize 'into being' a defective wrench from this sort of evidence, then wrenches have indeed become dangerous weapons for those operating vessels on the Great Lakes. If the rule of Rogers means that in FELA cases4 trial courts are deprived of all significant control over jury verdicts, and juries are in effect to be allowed to roam at large, I think the lower federal courts should be so told. See Harris v. Pennsylvania R. Co., 361 U.S. 15, 25, 80 S.Ct. 22, 29, 1 L.Ed.2d 1 (dissenting opinion). At least this would be better than continuing to require the lower courts to operate in what must be an atmosphere of increasing bewilderment over what is expected of them in these federal negligence cases.
The parties tried the case in the District Court, and argued it here and in the Court of Appeals, as raising issues both of negligence under the Jones Act and unseaworthiness under the general maritime law. We therefore need not be concerned with the confusing language of the complaint and whether it may be read as pleading a claim solely on the theory of negligence.
The trial judge ordered the second mate's testimony to be stricken from the record when it appeared that the mate left the Orion on December 19. The Court of Appeals nevertheless considered the testimony so far as it concerned the condition of the tools. 271 F.2d at page 196. We think the action of the Court of Appeals was correct in light of the testimony of respondent's own witnesses, from which it is reasonable to infer that the tools used on December 28 had been in the toolbox for some time prior to December 19.
The trial judge rested his action partly on a supposed variance between the complaint and the proof at the trial. The complaint alleged that the wrench was 'an old defective wrench in an unseaworthy condition in that the teeth and grip of the wrench were worn and defective.' (Emphasis supplied.) Michalic and all the witnesses at the trial who testified about the wrench described its claw as smooth-faced and without teeth. We see no fatal variance and in any event respondent waived reliance on any by expressly disclaiming surprise at the trial.
The petitioner does not invoke the District Court's jurisdiction on grounds of diversity of citizenship. Thus there is jurisdiction on the law side of the court of the unseaworthiness claim only as 'pendent' to jurisdiction under the Jones Act. Romero v. International Terminal Operating Co., 358 U.S. 354, 380 381, 79 S.Ct. 468, 484—485, 3 L.Ed.2d 368. However, the question expressly reserved in Romero, 358 U.S. at page 381, 79 S.Ct. at page 485—whether the District Court may submit the 'pendent' claim to the jury—is not presented by the case. The Orion was a Great Lakes vessel and the petitioner is entitled to a jury trial of his unseaworthiness claim under 28 U.S.C. § 1873, 28 U.S.C.A. § 1873. See Troupe v. Chicago, D. & G. Bay Transit Co., 2 Cir., 234 F.2d 253; The Western States, 2 Cir., 159 F. 354; Jenkins v. Roderick, D.C., 156 F.Supp. 299.
See note 1 of the Court's opinion, 364 U.S. at page 325, 81 S.Ct. at page 8.
'The Court: That is the date plaintiff gave. Were you on the vessel on that day, December 28?
The pumpman, whom petitioner was helping, testified that the wrench used by petitioner was one of three that had been procured four or five years before; that they were used only once a year; and that he had inspected the wrenches just before taking them out of the tool chest on the day in question.
The Jones Act, here involved, incorporates the standards of the Federal Employers' Liability Act, 45 U.S.C.A. § 51 et seq.

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 § 1873
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 § 51