Opinion ID: 389134
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The 1960 Amendments to the SAA

Text: 12 The 1960 amendment to the Suits in Admiralty Act ... was an outgrowth of severe jurisdictional problems facing the plaintiff with a maritime claim against the United States. Both the Suits in Admiralty Act and the Public Vessels Act authorized suits on the admiralty side of the district courts, and were viewed as providing the exclusive remedy for claims within their coverage.... 13 A plaintiff with a contract claim against the United States for more than $10,000 often found himself in a difficult position. He had to choose between proceeding in the district court under one of the admiralty Acts, and proceeding in the Court of Claims under the Tucker Act, (28 U.S.C. §§ 1346(a) (2), 1491.) And he had to choose his forum wisely, for cases were not transferrable between the district courts and the Court of Claims, and an incorrect choice could result in the applicable statute of limitations having run by the time the error was discovered. The solution of filing claims in both the district court and the Court of Claims was unavailable, because under 28 U.S.C. § 1500 the Court of Claims has no jurisdiction over any claim that is the subject of a pending suit in any other court.... 14 .... 15 It was the difficulty in determining the appropriate forum for a maritime claim against the United States that moved Congress to amend the Suits in Admiralty Act in 1960. The amendment first passed by the House in 1959 was designed to ameliorate the harsh consequences of misfilings by authorizing the transfer of cases between the district courts and the Court of Claims. The transfer provision would prevent dismissal of suits which would become time-barred when the appropriate forum had finally been determined. But the Senate Committee on the Judiciary found the House bill inadequate: 16 The transfer bill would operate to prevent ultimate loss of rights of litigants but it did nothing to eliminate or correct the cause of original erroneous choices of forum while it could increase the existing delays. 17 Accordingly, the committee, while accepting the House amendment, proposed several additional amendments, whose purpose was stated succinctly as follows: 18 The purpose of the amendments is to make as certain as possible that suits brought against the United States for damages caused by vessels and employees of the United States through breach of contract or tort can be originally filed in the correct court so as to proceed to trial promptly on their merits. 19 Two amendments were designed to clarify the jurisdictional language of the Suits in Admiralty Act. (In the first of these, of concern to us on this appeal,) the committee added language authorizing suits against the United States where a suit would be maintainable if a private person or property were involved. The prior version of the Act had authorized suits against the United States only when suits would be maintainable if the vessel or cargo were privately owned, operated, or possessed, and that language had generated considerable confusion. 20 United Continental Tuna, 425 U.S. at 172-73, 175-76, 96 S.Ct. at 1324-26 (footnotes omitted). 10 21 It was the drafters' intention that cases which sounded in contract on the one hand, and hence within the jurisdiction of the Court of Claims, and sounded in tort on the other, and hence within the subject matter jurisdiction of the district courts, be first directed to the correct court. Only in this way could transfer from one court to another, with its attendant delay and expense, be avoided altogether. But the scope of an SAA cause of action, as compared to a cause of action for which a district court already had jurisdiction under the FTCA, was no concern of the drafters. Nowhere in the legislative history is there any indication that actions over which the district court already had jurisdiction at law were in any way undesirable from that point of view, to the end that such actions should be maintained, if at all, in admiralty under the SAA. In short, the scope of alternative remedies for claims over which the district courts already had exclusive subject matter jurisdiction, under either the FTCA or the SAA, was of no concern to Congress. See generally S.Rep.No.1894, 86th Cong., 2nd Sess., reprinted in (1960) U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News 3583 (reprint cited hereafter). 22 Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of courts that have considered the question have read a good deal more into the 1960 amendments. In De Bardeleben Marine Corp. v. United States, supra, for example, this court had before it an appeal from an apportionment of damages in an action arising out of injuries allegedly sustained as a result of reliance on a faulty navigation chart. The chart was issued by the Government, and the gravamen of the complaint was negligent misrepresentation. There appears to have been no real dispute between the parties that for the plaintiff to state a claim upon which relief could be granted, the action had to be maintained under the SAA. It was apparent that the claim could not have been pressed under the FTCA, for the Supreme Court had long before held, in United States v. Neustadt, 366 U.S. 696, 81 S.Ct. 1294, 6 L.Ed.2d 614 (1961), that the FTCA's exception from waiver of sovereign immunity of any claim arising out of ... misrepresentation, 28 U.S.C. § 2680(h), included claims of negligent misrepresentation. 451 F.2d at 142. 23 What the Government was arguing for on appeal was a holding that FTCA exceptions from waiver of immunity should also apply in actions under the SAA. The Government reasoned that, since that case was brought under the SAA, and since the FTCA expressly precluded suits for negligent misrepresentation under that Act, we should therefore infer an exception from waiver of immunity under the SAA. In effect the Government was asking us to attribute as implied exceptions to waiver of immunity under the SAA all the exceptions expressly provided for under the FTCA. This the court declined to do, but, citing only the Senate Report on the 1960 amendments, supra, it accepted the Government's premise that all maritime torts were comprehended by the SAA remedy: 24 (T)he legislative history shows that almost on the eve of a probable enactment of a narrowly constructed solution to conflicts in jurisdiction between the Court of Claims and the District Courts, Congress ... set out to solve the underlying problems by eliminating the historic restriction of SIA-PVA liability to noncontractual claims relating to ships or cargo. It was to assimilate the Government to the private person in relation to any or all transactions giving rise to liability in the Admiralty. 25 451 F.2d at 145. With but one exception, every court that has since ruled on the issue has agreed that maritime torts against the United States, of whatever kind, must be brought under the SAA or not at all. 11 26 The De Bardeleben court was plainly concerned with keeping the case before it out of the FTCA. If that Act applied to the facts of that case, plaintiffs could not maintain their theory of the case, as a result of which, at least in the area of maritime torts, the Government might be under no practical duty of care respecting the representations made on Government-issued navigation charts. This was a result with which the court was unsympathetic, even though, in holding only that FTCA exceptions were not applicable to suits under the SAA, the court went on to hold that the Government did not breach its duty under the appropriate standard of care. The object was clear: Congressional policy considerations applicable to FTCA actions were not applicable to suits under the SAA, and it was in the latter category that all maritime torts against the United States fell. 12 27 It was a similarly broad reading of the purpose and effect of the 1960 amendments to the SAA which later drew the attention of the Supreme Court. In United Continental Tuna Corp. v. United States, 499 F.2d 774 (9th Cir. 1974), the Ninth Circuit held that the 1960 amendments to the SAA brought all maritime torts within the expanded scope of that Act, including claims against public vessels, the subject matter of the PVA, which Congress had neither amended nor repealed by the 1960 amendments. 13 On certiorari the Supreme Court reversed. The Court rejected the contention that it was any part of Congress' intent to expand the scope of one remedy, the SAA, at the expense of another, the PVA, when both remedies were within the exclusive jurisdiction of the district courts. Congress' sole concern was the conflict in jurisdiction between the district court and the Court of Claims in that category of cases that might fall within the scope of the admiralty acts, either the SAA or the PVA, on the one hand, or the Tucker Act, on the other. The solution was to expand the jurisdiction of the district court under the SAA: (Congress) attempted to eliminate the confusion between these two categories by expanding the scope of the Suits in Admiralty Act at the expense of the Tucker Act thereby virtually eliminating the quasi-admiralty jurisdiction of the Court of the Claims under the Tucker Act. Id., 425 U.S. at 179, 96 S.Ct. at 1328.