Source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/274/316.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 09:55:59+00:00

Document:
[274 U.S. 316, 317] The Attorney General and Mr. arthur M. Boal, of Washington, D. C., for petitioners.
The respondent, an infant 18 years of age, while employed on board a vessel operated by petitioners, was injured by the fall of a strongback used to support a portion [274 U.S. 316, 318] of the hatch, and as a result suffered the amputation of a leg. A libel was filed in admiralty to recover damages in the sum of $15,000 against the petitioners and the United States in the federal District Court for the district of Maryland. The libel alleged that the injury was caused by negligence in failing to provide a safe place to work, and to use reasonable care to avoid striking respondent, and by the unseaworthiness and insufficiency of the gear and tackle employed on the vessel. By an amendment, further specifications of negligence were added to the effect that the United States had failed to provide a proper and sufficient gear or socket to support the strongback, that the officers of the vessel were incompetent, and that there was owing to the injured person a special duty because of his youth and inexperience. Libelant prayed that, if negligence should not be established, he have a decree for wages, maintenance and cure. After a trial, the District Court held that upon the evidence the accident was not due to the negligence alleged but to the grossly negligent way in which dunnage was taken out of the hold, and that under the decisions no recovery could be had for damages upon that ground. By the decree libelant was denied full indemnity by way of damages and awarded the sum of $500 as the cost of maintenance and cure, and this amount was paid and the decree satisfied. Phillips v. United States et al. ( D. C.) 286 F. 631.
Subsequently this action was brought in the Supreme Court of the state of New York against the petitioners-the United States not being joined-and removed to the federal District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The complaint alleges negligence on the part of the petitioners and their officers and employees in the control and operation of the vessel and appliances. The allegations of fact as to the way in which the accident happened are substantially the same in both cases. Petitioners answered in the present case, setting up, among other things, [274 U.S. 316, 319] the decree in the admiralty case as res judicata, and by stipulation of the parties this was argued before trial. The District Court at first sustained the plea, but, upon reargument, set aside its order to that effect and held the plea bad. A trial resulted in a verdict and judgment for respondent. The Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment, holding in respect of the plea of res judicata that the second action was based upon a different cause of action. 9 F.(2d) 902. And this presents the sole question for consideration here.
And see also, Werlein v. New Orleans, 177 U.S. 390 , 398-400, 20 S. Ct. 682. [274 U.S. 316, 321] Here the court below concluded that the cause of action set up in the second case was not the same as that alleged in the first, because the grounds of negligence pleaded were distinct and different in character; the ground alleged in the first case being the use of defective appliances, and in the second, the negligent operation of the appliances by the officers and coemployees. Upon principle, it is perfectly plain that the respondent suffered but one actionable wrong, and was entitled to but one recovery, whether his injury was due to one or the other of several distinct acts of alleged negligence, or to a combination of some or all of them. In either view, there would be but a single wrongful invasion of a single primary right of the plaintiff, namely, the right of bodily safety, whether the acts constituting such invasion were one or many, simple or complex.
The judgment of the court below, as shown by its opinion, was based, in the main if not entirely, upon Troxell [274 U.S. 316, 323] v. Del., Lack. & West. R. R., 227 U.S. 434 , 33 S. Ct. 274, which was construed as holding 'that it was one cause of action not to furnish safe cars, and another to use safe cars carelessly.' The opinion in that case is not to be read as announcing any such general rule. If so, in the light of the foregoing discussion, we now should feel obliged to disaffirm it. But the decision rests upon another and a narrow ground, and its authority must be confined accordingly. Mrs. Troxell as surviving widow prosecuted an action against the railway company under a state statute to recover for the death of her husband as the result of a negligent failure to provide safe instrumentalities. After a judgment against her, she brought a second action as administratrix under the federal Employers' Liability Act, alleging as ground of recovery negligence of a fellow servant. The first case was tried and decided exclusively upon the state law, under which law, as this court said, 'there could be no recovery for the negligence of the fellow servants of the deceased,' and consequently that ground, it was said, was not and could not be involved in or concluded by the first action-in other words, as matter of law recovery upon that ground was not open to her in the first action. Obviously, if the court had been of opinion that a recovery upon that ground of negligence could have been had in the action prosecuted under the state law, the decision would have sustained the view that there was but one cause of action.
It follows that here both the libel and the subsequent action were prosecuted under the maritime law, and every ground of recovery, open to respondent in the second case, was equally open to him in the first. But evidently in the first proceeding both court and counsel misinterpreted the effect of section 33, and proceeded upon the erroneous theory, that in admiralty the rule laid down in The Osceola, 189 U.S. 158, 175 , 23 S. Ct. 483, 487 (47 L. Ed. 760), 'that the seaman is not allowed to recover an indemnity for the negligence of the master, or any member of the crew, but is entitled to maintenance and cure, whether the injuries were received by negligence or accident,' was still in force. Otherwise, it is quite apparent from the language of the opinion that an amendment would [274 U.S. 316, 325] have been sought and allowed, pleading the ground of negligence afterwards set up in the second action. Nevertheless, the cause of action was one and indivisible, and the erroneous conclusion to the contrary cannot have the effect of depriving the defendants in the second action of their right to rely upon the plea of res judicata. Plaintiff's claim for damages having been submitted and passed upon, the effect of the judgment in the admiralty case as a bar is the same whether resting upon an erroneous view of the law or not. A judgment merely voidable because based upon an erroneous view of the law is not open to collateral attack, but can be corrected only by a direct review and not by bringing another action upon the same cause. Colburn v. Woodworth, 31 Barb. (N. Y.) 381, 384; Wolverton v. Baker, 86 Cal. 591, 593, 25 P. 54; Bettys v. The C. M. & St. P. R. Co., 43 Iowa, 602, 604; Bancroft v. Winspear, 44 Barb. (N. Y.) 209, 215, 216; Winslow v. Stokes, 48 N. C. 285, 67 Am. Dec. 242.

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