Source: https://m.openjurist.org/444/us/69
Timestamp: 2020-07-04 14:36:42
Document Index: 532133843

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2', '§ 3', '§ 3', '§ 903', '§ 2', '§ 902', '§ 2', '§ 3', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 3', '§ 3', '§ 2', '§ 3', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 3', '§ 902', '§ 3', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 902', '§ 3', '§ 903', '§ 2', '§ 902']

444 US 69 Pfeiffer Company Inc v. Ford | OpenJurist
444 U.S. 69 - Pfeiffer Company Inc v. Ford
444 US 69 Pfeiffer Company Inc v. Ford
100 S.Ct. 328
62 L.Ed.2d 225
P. C. PFEIFFER COMPANY, INC., et al., Petitioners,
Diverson FORD et al.
Reargued Oct. 1, 1979.
Section 2(3) of the Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act, as amended in 1972, defines an employee as "any person engaged in maritime employment, including any longshoreman or other person engaged in longshoring operations. . . ." The question in this case is whether two workers were engaged in "maritime employment," as defined by § 2(3), when they sustained injuries for which they sought compensation. Respondent Ford was injured on a public dock in the Port of Beaumont, Tex., while employed by petitioner P. C. Pfeiffer Co. and while fastening onto railroad flatcars military vehicles that had been delivered to the port by ship, stored, and then loaded the day before the accident onto the flatcars. Respondent Bryant, while working as a cotton header for petitioner Ayers Steamship Co. in the Port of Galveston, Tex., was injured while unloading a bale of cotton from a dray wagon into a pier warehouse. Cotton arriving at the port from inland shippers enters storage in cotton compress-warehouses, then goes by dray wagon to pier warehouses, and later is moved by longshoremen from the warehouses onto ships. Both Ford's and Bryant's claims for coverage were denied by Administrative Law Judges applying the "point of rest" doctrine whereby maritime employment would include only the portion of the unloading process that takes place before the stevedoring gang places cargo onto the dock and the portion of the loading process that takes place to the seaside of the last point of rest on the dock. The Benefits Review Board reversed both decisions, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. On remand for reconsideration in light of this Court's decision in Northeast Marine Terminal Co. v. Caputo, 432 U.S. 249, 97 S.Ct. 2348, 53 L.Ed.2d 320, which rejected the "point of rest" theory, the Court of Appeals reaffirmed its earlier opinion.
Before 1972, neither Ford nor Bryant could have received compensation under the Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act because his injury occurred on land. The pre-1972 Act was simply an effort to fill the gap in workmen's compensation coverage created by this Court's decision in Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen, 244 U.S. 205, 37 S.Ct. 524, 61 L.Ed. 1086 (1917), which held that state compensation systems could not reach longshoremen injured seaward of the water's edge.1 A single situs requirement in § 3(a) of the Act governed the scope of its coverage. That requirement limited coverage to workers whose "disability or death result[ed] from an injury occurring upon the navigable waters of the United States (including any dry dock) . . . ." 44 Stat. 1426. In light of Jensen and the limited purpose of the Act, the situs test was understood to draw a sharp line between injuries sustained over water and those suffered on land. Thus, in Nacirema Operating Co. v. Johnson, 396 U.S. 212, 218-220, 90 S.Ct. 347, 351-352, 24 L.Ed.2d 371 (1969), this Court held that the Act did not extend to injuries occurring on a pier attached to the land. Although the Court recognized that inequities might result from rigid adherence to the Jensen line, the Court concluded that "[t]he invitation to move that line landward must be addressed to Congress, not to this Court." 396 U.S., at 224,2 90 S.Ct. at 354.
Congress responded with the Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act Amendments of 1972 (1972 Act).3 The Act now extends coverage to more workers by replacing the single-situs requirement with a two-part situs and status standard. The newly broadened situs test provides compensation for an "employee" whose disability or death "results from an injury occurring upon the navigable waters of the United States (including any adjoining pier, wharf, dry dock, terminal, building way, marine railway, or other adjoining area customarily used by an employer in loading, unloading, repairing, or building a vessel)." § 3(a), 33 U.S.C. § 903(a). The status test defines an employee as "any person engaged in maritime employment, including any longshoreman or other person engaged in longshoring operations, and any harborworker including a ship repairman, shipbuilder, and shipbreaker . . . ." § 2(3), 33 U.S.C. § 902(3). To be eligible for compensation, a person must be an employee as defined by § 2(3) who sustains injury on the situs defined by § 3(a).
This Court first considered the scope of § 2(3)'s status requirement in Northeast Marine Terminal Co. v. Caputo, 432 U.S. 249, 97 S.Ct. 2348, 53 L.Ed.2d 320 (1977). That case concerned the claims of two workers, Blundo and Caputo. Blundo was on a pier checking cargo as it was removed from a container when he suffered a fall.4 Caputo sustained injury while rolling a loaded dolly into a consignee's truck.5 We recognized that neither the 1972 Act nor its legislative history states explicitly whether workers like Blundo and Caputo, who handle cargo between sea and land transportation, are employees within the meaning of § 2(3). The Court found, however, that consideration of the legislative history in light of the remedial purposes behind the expansion of coverage reveals a clear intent to cover such workers. 432 U.S., at 267-278, 97 S.Ct., at 2359-2365.
We explained that application of the point-of-rest test would be inconsistent with congressional intent. First, the concept, although well known in the maritime industry, was not mentioned in the Act or its legislative history. Second, the standard excludes from coverage employees like Blundo whose work was shifted landward by the use of containers. Third, the test conflicts with the express purpose of the Act because it allows workers to walk in and out of coverage as their work moves to different sides of a point of rest. Id., at 275-276, 97 S.Ct., at 2363. In sum, "[a] theory that nowhere appears in the Act, that was never mentioned by Congress during the legislative process, that does not comport with Congress' intent, and that restricts the coverage of a remedial Act designed to extend coverage [was] incapable of defeating our conclusion that Blundo and Caputo [were] 'employees.' " Id., at 278-279, 97 S.Ct., at 2365.
Petitioners urge that Ford and Bryant are not covered by the 1972 Act because they were not engaged in "maritime employment."6 Petitioners suggest that a person is engaged in maritime employment only if, on the day of his injury, he could have been assigned to perform work upon the navigable waters of the United States. By navigable waters, the petitioners do not mean the broad situs defined in § 3(a), as amended by the 1972 Act; rather they refer to places seaward of the Jensen line. In other words, petitioners argue that the 1972 Act covers only workers who are working or who may be assigned to work over the water itself. They say that this formulation follows congressional intent to cover all workers who, before 1972, could have walked in and out of coverage during any given day.7
Petitioners' position is plainly inconsistent with the language and structure of the 1972 Act. The Act, as noted above, contains distinct situs and status requirements. The situs test of § 3(a) allows recovery for an injury suffered on navigable waters or certain adjoining areas landward of the Jensen line. This test defines the broad geographic coverage of the Act. Section 2(3) restricts the scope of coverage by further requiring that the injured worker must have been engaged in "maritime employment." This section defines the Act's occupational requirements. The term "maritime employment" refers to the nature of a worker's activities. Thus, § 2(3) uses the phrase "longshorem[e]n or other person[s] engaged in longshoring operations" as one example of workers who engage in maritime employment no matter where they do their job. Since § 3(a) already limits the geographic coverage of the Act, § 2(3) need not provide that longshoremen are covered only if they work in certain places. The use of the term "maritime employment" in § 2(3), therefore, provides no support for the proposition that the statutory definition of an employee imports a geographic limitation narrower than the one defined in § 3(a).8
The difficulty with petitioners' position becomes even plainer when their interpretation is applied to a single statutory provision that contains both the status and the situs requirement. Section 2(4), 33 U.S.C. § 902(4), defines an "employer" as one "any of whose employees are employed in maritime employment, in whole or in part, upon the navigable waters of the United States" as broadly defined by § 3(a). If the term "maritime employment" referred only to work that might take employees seaward of the Jensen line, then the broader situs test in the final clause of this section would become virtually superfluous. We decline the invitation to construe "maritime employment" so as to create two differing situs requirements in a single sentence. By understanding the term "maritime employment" to embody an occupational rather than a geographic concept, we give the two phases in § 2(4) distinct and consistent meanings.
The discussion of coverage in the legislative history9 also shows that Congress intended the term "maritime employment" to refer to status rather than situs. Committees in both Houses of Congress recognized:
"To take a typical example, cargo, whether in break bulk or containerized form, is typically unloaded from the ship and immediately transported to a storage or holding area on the pier, wharf, or terminal adjoining navigable waters. The employees who perform this work would be covered under the bill for injuries sustained by them over the navigable waters or on the adjoining land area. The Committee does not intend to cover employees who are not engaged in loading, unloading, repairing, or building a vessel, just because they are injured in an area adjoining navigable waters used for such activity. Thus, employees whose responsibility is only to pick up stored cargo for further trans-shipment would not be covered, nor would purely clerical employees whose jobs do not require them to participate in the loading or unloading of cargo."10
This legislative history discusses workers solely in terms of what they are doing and never in terms of where they are working.11
Land-based workers who do not handle containerized cargo also may be engaged in loading, unloading, repairing, or building a vessel. The Senate Subcommittee on Labor heard testimony that 30%-35% of ship repair work is done on land.12 Furthermore, the usual longshoring crew includes some men whose duties may be carried out solely on the land. A typical loading gang consist of persons who move cargo from a warehouse to the side of a ship, frontmen who attach the load to the ship's gear for lifting aboard the vessel, and a hold gang which stores cargo inside the ship.13 Although the workers who carry the cargo to shipside and the frontmen who attach the cargo to the lifting devices need not board a ship to carry out their duties, they are incontestably longshoremen directly engaged in the loading process. Even the petitioners concede that some land-based workers are covered by the 1972 Act.14
The issue in this case thus becomes whether Ford and Bryant are the kind of land-based employees that Congress intended to encompass within the term "maritime employment." Both men engaged in the type of duties that longshoremen perform in transferring goods between ship and land transportation. If the cotton that Bryant was unloading had been brought directly from the compress-warehouse to a ship, his task of moving cotton off a dray wagon would have been performed by a longshoreman.15 Similarly, longshoremen—not warehousemen like Ford—would fasten military vehicles onto railroad flatcars if those vehicles went directly from a ship to the railroad cars.16 The only basis for distinguishing Bryant or Ford from longshoremen who otherwise would perform the same work is the point-of-rest theory. That is, longshoremen in the Ports of Beaumont and Galveston would have performed the work done by Bryant and Ford had the cargo moved without interruption between land and sea transportation. Our unanimous opinion in Northeast Marine Terminal expressly decided that application of the point-of-rest test to define the scope of maritime employment would be contrary to congressional intent. Id., at 275-279, 97 S.Ct., at 2363-2365. Thus, there is no principled basis for distinguishing Ford and Bryant from longshoremen who have been injured while performing the same tasks.
We believe that § 2(3)'s explicit use of the terms "longshoreman" and "other person engaged in longshoring operations" to describe persons engaged in maritime employment demonstrates that workers doing tasks traditionally performed by longshoremen are within the purview of the 1972 Act. We do not suggest that the scope of maritime employment depends upon the vagaries of union jurisdiction. 432 U.S., at 268, n. 30, 97 S.Ct., at 2359, n. 30. Instead, the crucial factor is the nature of the activity to which a worker may be assigned. Persons moving cargo directly from ship to land transportation are engaged in maritime employment. Id., at 267, n. 28, 97 S.Ct., at 2359, n. 28.17 A worker responsible for some portion of that activity is as much an integral part of the process of loading or unloading a ship as a person who participates in the entire process. We therefore hold that Ford and Bryant were engaged in maritime employment because they were engaged in intermediate steps of moving cargo between ship and land transportation.18
At oral argument, petitioners conceded that some workers who never set foot on a vessel are covered by § 2(3). Petitioners acknowledged that a land-based longshoreman operating a crane that lifts goods from ship to dock is covered by the Act, although they argued that such a worker is not engaged in maritime employment. Tr. of Oral Arg. 10-11. Petitioners apparently assume that a person engaged in "longshoring operations" is not necessarily engaged in "maritime employment." See id., at 14-16. But the language of § 2(3) provides that an employee is "any person engaged in maritime employment, including any longshoreman or other person engaged in longshoring operations, and any harborworker including a ship repairman, shipbuilder, and shipbreaker. . . ." 33 U.S.C. § 902(3). The petitioners' argument supposes that the word "including" means "and" or "as well as." We understand the word "including" to indicate that "longshoring operations" are a part of the larger group of activities that make up "maritime employment." See Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary 581 (1973).
In fact, the language of the situs requirement lends independent support to the conclusion that Congress focused on occupation rather than location. The covered situs includes specific areas adjoining navigable water or any "other adjoining area customarily used by an employer in loading, unloading, repairing, or building a vessel." § 3(a), 33 U.S.C. § 903(a). See also § 2(4), 33 U.S.C. § 902(4).