Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/269/304/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 04:43:39+00:00

Document:
Justia › US Law › US Case Law › US Supreme Court › Volume 269 › United States v. New York & Cuba Mail S.S. Co.
1. The Act of December 26, 1920, providing, inter alia, that "alien seamen" found on arrival in ports of the United States to be afflicted with any of the diseases mentioned in § 35 of the Immigration Act of 1917 shall be placed in a hospital designated by an immigration official and treated, and that all expenses connected therewith shall be borne by the owner or master of the vessel, applies to seamen who are aliens in personal citizenship, without regard to whether the nationality of the vessel be foreign or domestic. P. 269 U. S. 310.
2. As applied to American vessels, this provision is not repugnant to the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, and is within the power of Congress over the exclusion of aliens. P. 269 U. S. 313.
297 F. 159 reversed; Dist. Ct. affirmed.
Certiorari to a judgment of the circuit court of appeals which reversed a judgment of the district court recovered by the United States from the Steamship Company, representing the hospital expenses incurred in curing a diseased seaman.
"shall be placed in a hospital designated by the immigration official in charge at the port of arrival and treated, all expenses connected therewith . . . to be borne by the owner . . . or master of the vessel, and not to be deducted from the seamen's wages,"
"the return of the alien seamen shall be enforced on or at the expense of the vessel on which they came, upon such conditions as the Commissioner General of Immigration, with the approval of the Secretary of Labor, shall prescribe, to insure that the aliens shall be properly cared for and protected, and that the spread of contagion shall be guarded against."
The Steamship Company, a Maine corporation, is the owner of a merchant vessel of American registry. On a voyage from New York to the West Indies and return, this vessel carried a seaman who was a citizen of Chile. On returning to New York, he was found by the immigration officials to be afflicted with a venereal disease, and, on the order of the Commissioner of Immigration, was placed in the Public Health Service hospital on Ellis Island for treatment. He was later discharged from the hospital as cured, and admitted into the United States. The steamship company having refused to pay the hospital expenses, the United States brought suit against it in the federal district court for the amount of such expenses. Judgment was recovered, which was reversed by the circuit court of appeals, on the ground that the Act applied only to seamen on foreign vessels. New York & Cuba Mail S.S. Co. v. United States, 297 F. 159. The case is here on writ of certiorari. 265 U.S. 578.
This decision is in conflict with the earlier decisions in Franco v. Shipping Corporation, 272 F. 542, and Castner v. Hamilton, 275 F. 203, in which the Act was applied to aliens brought in as seamen on American vessels.
The question of construction presented is whether the term "alien seamen," as used in the Act, means seamen who are aliens, as the government contends, or seamen on foreign vessels, as the steamship company contends -- that is, whether, in applying the Act, the test is the citizenship of the seaman or the nationality of the vessel.
We think the term "alien seamen" is not to be construed as meaning seamen on foreign vessels. The general principle that an alien, while a seaman on an American vessel, is regarded as being an American seaman in such sense that he is under the protection and subject to the laws of the United States, In re Ross, 140 U. S. 453, 140 U. S. 479, has no application to the question whether aliens employed on American vessels are included within the terms of a special statute dealing solely and specifically with "alien seamen," as such. And if the rule attributing to a seaman the nationality of the vessel should be applied to this Act so as to give to the term "alien seamen" the meaning of "seamen on foreign vessels," it would result, under the terms of its last clause, that an American seaman employed on a foreign vessel who was afflicted with an incurable disease, on being brought into an American port, could not be admitted into the United States, but would have to be returned; an anomalous result which, obviously, Congress did not intend.
any reference to the nationality of the vessels. Nor does it use the words "seamen on foreign vessels" or any equivalent phrase which would have been appropriate had it been intended to describe the seamen on such vessels.
This conclusion is emphasized when the Act is considered in the light of the Alien Immigration Act of 1917 and the legislative history showing the condition it was evidently the intention to correct. United States v. Morrow, 266 U. S. 531, 266 U. S. 535. The Act of 1917, inter alia, dealt specifically with "alien seamen," using that term, as shown by its general definitions and various provisions, as meaning "aliens employed on any vessel arriving in the United States from a foreign port." It provided that, if not within any of the classes excluded by reason of disease or otherwise, they might be admitted into the United States as other aliens, but, if not so admitted, prohibited them from landing, except for certain temporary purposes, under regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Labor, and it required the owner or master of "any vessel" coming from a foreign port to furnish a list of all its alien seamen and not to pay off or discharge them unless duly admitted or permitted to land (§§ 1, 2, 32-34, 36). And, by § 35 -- which was specifically referred to in the Act of 1920 -- it was provided that if "any vessel" carrying passengers, on arrival from a foreign port, had on board employed thereon any alien afflicted with any enumerated disability or disease which had existed when he shipped on the vessel and might then have been detected by competent medical examination, the owner or master of the vessel should pay a fine, and, pending its departure, the alien should be treated in hospital at the expense of the vessel.
There was, however, no provision expressly authorizing the hospital expenses incurred in the treatment of a diseased alien seaman to be charged to the vessel when it carried freight or the disease could not have been detected at the time that he shipped on the vessel.
"the responsibility of steamship lines and vessels for the expenses which arise from the frequent necessity of placing in hospitals alien seamen who, upon arrival at our ports, are found to be afflicted with various diseases, often of a loathsome or dangerous contagious character,"
"The bill simply provides that the care and treatment in hospital of diseased alien seamen be placed on the same basis as the care and treatment in hospital of diseased aliens -- namely at the expense of the ship or steamship company bringing the diseased alien seamen into this country. At present, there is a difference of opinion as to who shall pay the expenses of taking care of these alien seamen who come here and require medical or surgical treatment."
which it is in pari materia -- that is, as meaning aliens employed as seamen on any vessel arriving in the United States -- and that it was intended to extend the provisions of § 35 of that Act by providing that the hospital expenses incurred in treating and such diseased alien should be borne in all cases by the vessel bringing him in, whether carrying passengers or freight, and without reference to the time when the disease might have been detected. And it has been so construed and applied by the Department of Labor.
may lawfully be required to bear the expenses of their medical treatment.
Act Feb. 5, 1917, c. 29, 39 Stat. 874.
H.Rep. No. 173, 66th Cong., 1st Sess.
60 Cong.Rec. 66th Cong., 3d Sess., Pt. 1, pp. 600, 601.

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