Opinion ID: 689218
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Carnival's Remaining Arguments

Text: 31 In addition to those that we have disposed of in the course of our prior discussion, Carnival makes other arguments that merit a response. For one thing, Carnival contends that applying traditional principles of contract law to the contract in this case leads to the conclusion that Flores's claim should be rejected. The district court denied Flores's claim for that reason, but Flores's claim is not for breach of contract. It is for maintenance and cure. The Supreme Court has declared that the right to maintenance and cure differs from rights normally classified as contractual. Vaughan, 369 U.S. at 532, 82 S.Ct. at 1000. The shipowner's duty to provide maintenance and cure is contractual in the sense that it has its source in a relation which is contractual in origin, but, given the relation, no agreement is competent to abrogate the incident. Cortes v. Baltimore Insular Line, Inc., 287 U.S. 367, 371, 53 S.Ct. 173, 174, 77 L.Ed. 368 (1932); see Dowdle v. Offshore Express, Inc., 809 F.2d 259, 263 (5th Cir.1987) (the seaman's right to unearned wages also may not be contractually abrogated). Our analysis of Flores's claim is not confined to contract law. Instead, it is enough for our purposes that Flores's contract anticipated both that the seaman would receive tips, and that those tips would form the bulk of his employment income. 32 Carnival also argues that including tip income in the definition of wages for maintenance and cure purposes will lead to fraudulently inflated claims and leave ships at the mercy of unscrupulous seamen. Carnival points out that cabin stewards generally are not required to report their tip income and could easily inflate that which they had received in order to increase their recovery. 5 We reject this argument for three reasons. First, if the threat of fraudulent claims is sufficiently serious, Carnival can institute a system in which tips are reported, or even funnelled through a central point for bookkeeping purposes on the way to the recipients. Cruise lines have created the current system of tips as wages for their own economic benefit, and they are free to make such modifications as their interests require. 33 Second, courts are in the business of distinguishing valid from invalid claims. Disabled seamen are not the only individuals with an incentive to give less than truthful testimony. Criminal defendants have an even stronger incentive to lie, but the courts have not proven powerless to protect their judgments in criminal cases from the effect of false testimony. We have held, for example, that the jury as factfinder is not compelled to accept the uncontradicted testimony of a criminal defendant and can even infer that the opposite of that testimony is true. See United States v. Allison, 908 F.2d 1531, 1535 (11th Cir.1990), cert. denied, 500 U.S. 904, 111 S.Ct. 1681, 114 L.Ed.2d 77 (1991); see also United States v. Goggin, 853 F.2d 843, 846 (11th Cir.1988); United States v. Bennett, 848 F.2d 1134, 1139 (11th Cir.1988). Likewise, an admiralty court has authority, in proper circumstances, to reject as untruthful even uncontradicted testimony concerning the amount of tip income a seaman earned before becoming unable to continue work. Moreover, the court can consider the amount of tips the ship told the seamen he could expect as well as the amount of tips those who remained on board actually received. 34 Finally, we reject Carnival's possibility of fraud argument because it would be grossly unfair to deprive all seamen in Flores's position of any semblance of a fair recovery simply because some might attempt to recover more than the amount to which they are entitled. While it is not certain that some seamen will obtain more than they are entitled if we allow them to include lost tip income in the measure of unearned wages, it is certain that all seamen will receive less than they are entitled if we do not permit them to do so. 35