Source: http://openjurist.org/539/f2d/264/stockman-v-john-t-clark-and-son-of-boston-inc
Timestamp: 2015-04-19 21:14:01
Document Index: 789401774

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 901', '§ 919', '§ 921', '§ 921', '§ 902', '§ 902', '§ 903', '§ 903', '§ 902', '§ 902', '§ 902', '§ 920']

539 F2d 264 Stockman v. John T Clark & Son of Boston Inc | OpenJurist
539 F. 2d 264 - Stockman v. John T Clark & Son of Boston Inc	Home539 f2d 264 stockman v. john t clark & son of boston inc
539 F2d 264 Stockman v. John T Clark & Son of Boston Inc 539 F.2d 264
45 A.L.R.Fed. 227
John A. STOCKMAN, Claimant, Respondent,v.JOHN T. CLARK & SON OF BOSTON, INC.,andAmerican Mutual Liability Inc. Co., Employer/Carrier, Petitioners,Director, Office of Workers' Compensation Programs, UnitedStates Department of Labor, Party in Interest.
Argued Jan. 5, 1976.Decided July 27, 1976.
George O. Driscoll, Chestnut Hill, Mass., for petitioners.
Joseph P. Flannery, Boston, Mass., with whom Joseph G. Abromovitz and Kaplan, Latti & Flannery, Boston, Mass., were on brief, for John A. Stockman, respondent.
Linda L. Carroll, Atty., U. S. Dept. of Labor, with whom William J. Kilberg, Sol. of Labor, and Laurie M. Streeter, Associate Sol., Washington, D. C., were on brief, for Director, Office of Workers' Compensation Programs, party in interest.
This petition for review, brought by an employer and its compensation carrier, raises a difficult question of interpreting the 1972 amendments to the Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act (the Act). 33 U.S.C. § 901 et seq.
Working on the Boston waterfront for his employer, John T. Clark & Son of Boston, Inc. (Clark), John A. Stockman sustained an inguinal hernia on October 1, 1973, while removing the contents of a container1 which had previously been off-loaded from a vessel. Clark and its insurer, acknowledging liability under Massachusetts workmen's compensation law, furnished Stockman with medical care and paid him compensation at the maximum weekly state rate of $80 during the seven weeks that he was disabled. Stockman claimed, however, that he was entitled to be compensated at the much higher rate provided in the Longshoremen's and Harborworkers' Compensation Act. Total benefits payable under the Act for the period of disability in question exceeded those payable under Massachusetts law by more than $700. When Clark and its carrier refused to acknowledge that Stockman was covered by the Act, the matter was referred to an Administrative Law Judge, § 919, who ruled after hearing that Stockman was covered. Clark and the carrier appealed from this ruling to the Benefits Review Board (the Board), § 921(b) (1976 Supp.), which affirmed the decision of the Administrative Law Judge. Thereafter they brought this petition, § 921(c) (1976 Supp.).
* The difficulty in determining Stockman's coverage arises from the essential ambiguity of the 1972 amendments insofar as they describe, or fail to describe, the employees for whom coverage is afforded. As was developed at the hearing before the Administrative Law Judge, Stockman was a regular employee of Clark who had for three years prior to his injury worked at Berth 5 of the Boston Army Base, an area adjacent to Boston Harbor. Clark is both a stevedore, i. e. a firm engaging directly in the unloading of vessels, and a terminal operator.2 Clark's Boston Army Base facility was used both to unload vessels that berthed there, and to store and warehouse cargo which had either been unloaded there or been brought in containers from vessels berthed elsewhere.
At the time Stockman sustained a hernia, he was at Berth 5 of the Boston Army Base "stripping" (removing cargo from) a container. The container had been discharged from a vessel that had berthed during the previous three days at Berth 17, Castle Island, a facility located approximately two miles by land or 700-800 feet across water from the Boston Army Base. Under the terms of its contract with Sea-Land Corporation, the owner of the container, Clark was "to unload vessels as they come into port (and) discharge the containers." However, Sea-Land's container vessels did not dock at the Army Base since they require a special crane and berth not available there. Sea-Land's vessels berthed instead at Castle Island, where the containers were put ashore; chassis with wheels were provided; and those containers having full loads for a particular consignee were hitched to a truck-tractor and hauled directly to their ultimate destinations, to be unloaded by the consignee. Some containers would not, however, contain a full load for one consignee and it was up to Clark to strip them, separate their contents by orders, and hold the goods for pickup by consignees. In such cases, as there were no facilities at Castle Island either for stripping or for "stuffing" (placing cargo in) containers, the containers would first be hauled by an independent trucking firm, engaged by Sea-Land, to Clark's Boston Army Base facility. There Clark would remove the contents from the containers, place them on pallets, and hold them for pick-up by truckers for the various consignees. The container Stockman was stripping had been hauled overland from Castle Island by a truck furnished by the Boston-Taunton Transportation Company under contract with Sea-Land; and Stockman was removing the contents and placing them on pallets at Berth 5 of the Boston Army Base when he sustained his injury.
At the hearing various descriptions were offered of Stockman's job-title. Mr. Kelley, Clark's treasurer, called Stockman a "freight handler" as "that's the insurance code classification that he would fall under". Stockman himself testified that he was classified as a crane operator and for casual work on the dock. He said he drove chisels, stuffed and stripped containers, and shifted cargo. The parties stipulated that Stockman was "employed as a longshoreman with collateral ratings as a cooper and extra dock laborer". Stockman was a member of the International Longshoremen's Association, AFL-CIO, and Clark a member of the Boston Shipping Association, Inc. Under an agreement between the ILA and the Shipping Association, containers within 50 miles of a port (other than ones handled by the "beneficial owners" of the cargo) had to be stuffed and stripped by ILA longshore labor working on a "waterfront facility, pier or dock."II
The relevant provisions of the Act against which Stockman's claim of coverage must be measured are §§ 902(3), 902(4) and 903(a), all as amended in 1972. Section 903(a), entitled "coverage", is sometimes referred to as the "situs" requirement, and provides as follows:
Section 902(3), sometimes referred to as the principal "status" requirement, defines and limits the term "employee" to,
"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 (exclusive of a master or member of a crew of any vessel, or any person engaged to load, unload or repair any small vessel under eighteen tons net)."
There is also the following definition of "employer" in § 902(4),
The Administrative Law Judge, whose reasoning the Benefits Review Board affirmed, ruled that Stockman's injury occurred at a location within the situs requirements of § 903(a). He found that Stockman was employed to unload containers at Berth 5 of the Boston Army Base; that Berth 5 adjoins navigable waters "and is used for the general cargo operations of loading and unloading vessels, although the stripping of containers received from Berth 17, Castle Island is considered a terminal operation"; and that Stockman's injury met the Act's situs requirements since wharf and terminal areas are specifically mentioned in § 903(a). The Administrative Law Judge attached no weight to the fact that the container had not been discharged from a vessel at Berth 5 of the Boston Army Base but had been driven two miles overland from Castle Island, Berth 5 being, in any event, a "terminal adjoining navigable waters". And even were this not so, Clark's Army Base facilities were an "other adjoining area customarily used by an employer in . . . unloading . . . a vessel," since any and all Sea-Land containers that were to be stripped were customarily trucked there from Castle Island as an integral step in the process of unloading a vessel.
The Administrative Law Judge went on to rule that Clark, being both a stevedore and terminal operator, was an "employer" within § 902(4) since it employed longshoremen to perform some of this work.
Finally, the Judge held that Stockman met the status definition of "employee" under § 902(3), being engaged in "maritime employment". The Judge thought that little attention should be paid labels such as longshoreman or "freight handler". Stating that it was not the label given but "the nature of the work being performed" that was determinative, the Judge held that "(u)ntil the contents were removed from the containers the unloading procedure had not been completely executed. The unloading of this container was an integral and sequential part of the process of unloading cargo from a vessel. Cf. Powell v. Cargill, Inc., (74-LHCA-172 (October 8, 1974)); Richardson v. Great Lakes Storage & Contracting Co., et al., 74-LHCA-223 (October 18, 1974)". The Judge continued,
"The fact that the containers had to be trucked two miles across the channel for unloading is not significant. The containers, at this point, were not being picked up from storage for further trans-shipment, but were merely being transported for unloading. If the containers had been stripped by longshoremen at the Castle Island facility where they arrived, this work activity would, in my view, have been clearly covered by the Act. Claimant should not be denied the protection and coverage of the Act merely because circumstances required his Employer to have longshoremen perform the stripping function at another waterfront facility two miles away. Cf. Crampton v. Cargill, Incorporated, 74-LHCA-215 . . . . Such a finding would not be within the humanitarian goals of the Act.
. . . I hold that the Claimant was injured in a shoreside area while he and his Employer were engaged in maritime employment within the coverage of the Act."
In affirming, the Benefits Review Board held it to be "now well settled" that a claimant like Stockman was within the jurisdictional reach of the Act. It said that stripping and stuffing containers were "maritime employment", and that the temporary resting of containers for three days prior to stripping was immaterial to the maritime nature of the employment.
While the Board's determination is consistent with its other recent rulings finding coverage for most handlers of ship's cargo at piers and waterfront terminals, whatever their precise function, judicial decisions to date construing the 1972 amendments reflect a sharp difference of opinion over the reach of the Act. A divided panel of the fourth circuit has ruled that terminal employees, as distinct from those immediately engaged in taking cargo from (or putting it on) a vessel lying at its berth, are not covered even when injured in an area more immediately adjacent to the ship's berth than was the Boston Army Base here. Terminal employees are not, in its view, engaged in maritime employment within the meaning of § 902(3). I.T.O. Corp. v. Benefits Review Board, 529 F.2d 1080 (4 Cir. 1975), reargued en banc May 4, 1976. The court felt that while the 1972 amendments enlarged the "situs" so as to provide compensation for injuries occurring at designated shoreside facilities as well as on shipboard, they narrowed the "status" requirement so as to limit coverage to only maritime workers engaged most directly in traditional employment, e. g., in cases of longshoremen, those immediately engaged, at the time of injury, in the direct loading or unloading of a vessel itself. To give effect to its interpretation of the amendments, the fourth circuit read into the Act the notion of "point of rest", a point shoreward of which the handling of cargo would cease to be covered by the Act.
A divided second circuit panel has rejected altogether the fourth circuit's point of rest approach. Pittston Stevedoring Corp. v. Dellaventura, --- F.2d ----, Nos. 76-4042, -4009, -4043, -4249 (July 1, 1976) (Friendly, J.). In Pittston, one of the employees was a "checker" who, like Stockman, was stripping a container of goods destined to different consignees at a waterfront area remote from where the ship had been unloaded. The court held that stripping was the "functional equivalent" of sorting cargo discharged from a ship, and was covered by the Act.
From the present judicial melange3 can be gathered the truth of Judge Friendly's remark:
"Given the importance of the question, the number of courts of appeals endeavoring to find an answer, and the divergence of opinion already manifested, it seems unlikely that the opinion of any court of appeals will be the last word to be said." At ----.IV
Before expressing our views on the merits, we turn to several preliminaries. First, we consider whether in deciding the scope and coverage of the Act, we should give weight to the presumption stated in § 920 that "the claim comes within the provisions of this chapter". We think not. This provision relieves an injured employee from a perhaps bothersome burden in cases where coverage is uncontested, and it may well denote a policy favoring coverage in close cases; but we do not think it bears on the decision before us calling for a general construction of "whether Congress placed the line at the 'point of rest' or much further landward". Pittston, supra, at ----. This basic interpretative decision must precede any application of the presumption.
Second, we do not see the decision before us as one where we owe a special deference to the decision of the Board (and of the Administrative Law Judge, whose views were seemingly carried forward in the Board's shorter opinion). Judge Craven, dissenting in I.T.O., supra, 529 F.2d at 1091, quoted the Supreme Court in NLRB v. Boeing,