Source: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Steamboat_Company_v._Chase
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 07:33:46+00:00

Document:
ERROR to the Supreme Court of Rhode Island.
'SECTION 16. If the life of any person crossing upon a public highway with reasonable care, shall be lost by reason of the negligence or carelessness of such common carriers, or by the unfitness or negligence or carelessness of their servants or agents, in this State, such common carriers shall be liable to damages for the injury caused by the loss of life of such person, to be recovered by action on the case, for the benefit of the husband or widow and next of kin of the deceased person.
'SECTION 21. In all cases in which the death of any persons ensues from injury inflicted by the wrongful act of another, and in which an action for damages might have been maintained at the common law had death not ensued, the person inflicting such injury shall be liable to an action for damages for the injury caused by the death of such person, to be recovered by action on the case for the use of his or her husband, widow, children, or next of kin,' &c.
exclusive original cognizance of all civil causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction was vested in the District Courts; that the courts of common law had only such jurisdiction of marine torts as was conferred by the saving clause in the ninth section of the act, and that actions for damages for loss of life did not come within the clause.
The court, however, sustained the jurisdiction; and verdict and judgment having been given for the plaintiff in $12,000, and the Supreme Court of the State having affirmed that judgment, the cause was removed to this court.
The question is, can a court of common law exercise jurisdiction, and give a remedy to a suitor for a consequential injury growing out of a marine tort, when no remedy for such injury exists in the admiralty?
Or, assuming that under the general jurisdiction of courts or admiralty cognizance of such action could be entertained by a district court of the United States, can a suitor have a remedy in a court of common law, when the right to such action is created by a State statute, passed subsequent to September 24th, 1789?
The obvious purpose of the Constitution and of the ninth section of the Judiciary Act, was to create a maritime court for the purpose of administering the universal law of the seas upon the basis of the civil system, known to maritime states, in distinction from a court familiar only with the limited jurisprudence of the common law system. Indeed, there is an obvious propriety in excluding the courts of common law from adjudicating upon subjects which are, from their nature, of admiralty cognizance, except to the extent recognized and permitted by the acts of Congress. A jury of landsmen unfamiliar with the rules and necessities of navigation, is imperfectly qualified to administer justice in a case, the turning-point in which, on the question of liability, can be settled only after a skilled and intelligent weighing of acts done by the respective parties in the exercise of a science requiring special knowledge and aptitude to understand.
'It could not have been the intention of Congress by the exception in that section, to give the suitor all such remedies as might afterwards be enacted by State statutes, for this would have enabled the States to make the jurisdiction of their courts concurrent in all cases, by simply providing a statutory remedy for all cases. Thus the exclusive jurisdiction of the Federal courts would be defeated. In the act of 1845, where Congress does this, the language expresses it clearly. There is added 'any concurrent remedy which may be given by the State laws, where such steamer or other vessel is employed."
It is not to be presumed that it was the intention of Congress, at the moment that it was given to the Federal courts the exclusive cognizance of civil causes of admiralty jurisdiction, to save to the common-law courts any greater right than it conferred upon the admiralty courts. It is an existing common-law remedy which is saved to suitors for rights recognized by the admiralty.
It is important to observe that the privilege is a personal one to suitors. It is not a jurisdiction conferred on courts, or a power vested in State legislatures to create new rights of action, affecting subjects coming within the law of the sea.  Nowhere have the courts intimated that claims founded on marine torts, where the right of the party to proceed in rem, or in personam, in the admiralty to enforce such claims is not recognized, he can pursue such claims under a right given by State laws, in the common-law courts.
A suit to recover damages for loss of life resulting from a collision of two vessels on the seas is in its nature proper for admiralty cognizance. The suit is founded on the collision itself, a subject exclusively cognizable in the admiralty; and by the act of 1789, the derivative suit, if cognizable anywhere, should be exclusively cognizable in the admiralty. If, from an omission by Congress to create by a new statute a right to maintain it there, such a suit cannot be so proceeded in, then there still exists the same but no greater hardship on suitors than yet exists in several States, which have never, up to this day, in derogation of the common law, enacted statutes giving an action for damages where death results from a tort.
We insist, therefore, that the courts of common law have only the right to exercise a concurrent jurisdiction over such subjects of admiralty cognizance as they nder the Constitution and the acts of Congress are permitted to deal with at all.  With respect to subjects of recognized admiralty cognizance at the time of the passage of the act of 1789, the State legislatures could provide common-law remedies, and may by subsequent legislation enlarge or modify these remedies: preserving always the distinctive characteristics of common law procedure. But the case is different with respect to subjects not of recognized admiralty cognizance. And as yet no civil remedy to next of kin for damages consequent on an injury resulting in the loss of life of their relative is as yet known to the admiralty, Congress not yet having given any.
The words 'extend to' in the provision of the Federal Constitution, that the judicial power shall extent to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, do not imply that the nation shall exhaust this jurisdiction.
The Federalist (No. 45) says, 'The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all objects which in the ordinary course of affairs concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.' The object of Rhode Island in passing this statute plainly was but to protect the lives of her citizens. It relates exclusively to persons, and does not apply to things which are generally the subject of admiralty jurisdiction. As it applies to the case at bar, it in no way interferes with any exercised power of the Federal government, to regulate commerce between the States or with foreign nations. It provides that the right of action which Cook would have had against the steamboat company, had they not killed him, should survive to his administrator, and provides nothing more. The effect of it is simply to take from careless persons that immunity from punishment which the common law tolerates, if carelessness destr ys its victims. If Cook had been injured, no matter how much, so long as had not been killed, no question would have been made here, that an action at common law could have been maintained by him under a State statute, for then the remedy at common law and the common-law remedy would have coincided. The statute providing that the right of action with the common-law remedy shall survive, cannot change the jurisdiction.
Reply: The grant of jurisdiction by the Constitution to the Federal courts of 'all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction,' and the broad declaration by the act of 1789, that such jurisdiction is 'exclusive' of all State and Federal courts of common law, is poorly satisfied by the declaration that all that is thus exclusively vested is a right to proceed in rem, and that the common-law courts are only prohibited from making an inanimate object a defendant. If a form of procedure respecting a subject, and not the subject itself, is all that distinguishes the exclusive jurisdiction of courts of admiralty from courts of common law, then much learning and zeal in argument have been wasted before this court and by the bench, in the effort to define and settle the limits of these two ancient conflicting jurisdictions.
^1 Revised Statutes, chapter 176. Of Actions.
^2 The Genesee Chief, 12 Howard, 457; The Hine, 4 Wallace, 556.
^3 The Moses Taylor, 4 Wallace, 412.
^4 Such action was not allowed in England until 9 Victoria (1846), when it was given by the statute known as Lord Campbell's act. There was no legislation on this subject by any of the United States earlier than the English statute, and most of the American statutes are, in substance, copies of the English statute.
^5 The Moses Taylor, 4 Wallace, 431.
^7 The Belfast, 7 Wallace, 624.
^8 New Jersey Steam Navigation Co. v. Merchants' Bank, 6 Howard, 390; The Hine v. Trevor, 4 Wallace, 568.
^9 New Jersey Steam Navigation Co. v. Merchants' Bank, 6 Howard, 390.
^10 United States v. Bevans, 3 Wheaton, 386; Smith v. Maryland, 18 Howard, 71; Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheaton, 195.

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