Opinion ID: 522203
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Locality

Text: 9 The legislative history of the Admiralty Extension Act demonstrates that its purpose was to correct such anomalies of the strict locality test as resulted when, for example, a ship struck a pier and injured parties onboard could recover under admiralty while those injured on land could not. Admiralty Jurisdiction--Extension, S.Rep. No. 1593, 80th Cong.2d Sess., reprinted in 1948 U.S.Code Cong. Service, 1898, 1899. The purpose of the Act was not to create new causes of action. As the Senate Report states: 10 Adoption of the bill will not create new causes of action. It merely specifically directs the courts to exercise the admiralty and maritime jurisdictions of the United States already conferred by article III, section 2 of the Constitution and already authorized by the Judiciary acts. Moreover there will still remain available the right to a common-law remedy which the Judiciary Acts (28 U.S.Code 41(3)) have expressly saved to claimants. 11 Id. at 1900. 12 The appellant maintains that our decision in Parker v. Gulf City Fisheries, Inc., 803 F.2d 828 (5th Cir.1986) requires us to find admiralty jurisdiction in this case. We disagree. In Parker, a ship captain aboard a vessel had telephoned his wife on shore, who noticed that he stuttered and appeared confused and forgetful. His wife spoke twice with a landside private physician about her husband's symptoms and informed his employer of them. Id. at 828-29. Later, after examination by the landside physician, the captain suffered a massive stroke. He sued his employer, claiming a failure to provide him adequate medical attention; and the employer complained against the private physician as a third party, asserting that his malpractice caused or aggravated the stroke. After the original parties settled, the court dismissed the third party action for want of admiralty jurisdiction. On appeal, we found admiralty jurisdiction because the physician failed to provide adequate treatment when the captain's wife sought medical advice on his behalf; holding that admiralty jurisdiction exists at least for the part of the negligence whose impact occurred at sea. Id. We also noted that 13 [I]njuries to workers aboard ship fall within the admiralty jurisdiction even though similar injuries to their counterparts on shore do not. Dr. Blanks knew he was treating a seaman aboard ship. That suffices. 14 Id. at 830. 15 Parker presents a unique fact pattern in which treatment (or a want of it) took place onboard a ship through an intermediary, just as though the seaman had inquired directly of the landside physician from shipboard. The medical advice was dispensed to him in an admiralty situs; and he had no opportunity to seek treatment on land, continuing to work on shipboard after the doctor had provided the advice. The dangers to commerce of causing illness to a sea captain on voyage are readily apparent. See Kelly v. Smith, 485 F.2d 520 (5th Cir.1973) (danger to commerce of rifle fire directed at vessel on navigable waters). 16 The concerns that prompted us to find admiralty jurisdiction in Parker and in Kelly, two fact situations at the extreme edges of that jurisdiction, are not present in this case. Today's plaintiff was a mud man, not the captain of the ship. His treatment did not take place during the course of a sea voyage, nor did the same dangers to commerce exist. The plaintiff was not treated in an admiralty situs as in Parker; and he never in fact returned to work, although he was aboard the drilling barge for a brief time after treatment. The plaintiff's physician, unlike the physician in Parker, was not knowingly treating a sea captain and on notice of the maritime context of the medical advice. 3 Finally, today's plaintiff had other options for medical treatment. 17 We do not imply that admiralty jurisdiction may not lie without the presence of each of these items. In fact, as we have noted, the Parker facts are most unusual. No single fact is dispositive in determining jurisdiction. The facts of this case do not lead us to conclude that this plaintiff meets the first prong of the Executive Jet test. 18 Nor does prior case law suggest finding a maritime location. In Watz v. Zapata Off-Shore Company, 431 F.2d 100 (5th Cir.1970), we found that a district court had jurisdiction over the claim of an employee injured when a hoist gave way while he was repairing a vessel on navigable waters. Id. at 111. In another products liability case, admiralty jurisdiction was found when a shrimp boat sank in navigable water, even though the negligent design may have occurred on shore. Jig The Third Corp. v. Puritan Marine Insurance Underwriters Corp., 519 F.2d 171, 174 (5th Cir.1975). See also Sperry Rand Corp. v. Radio Corp. of America, 618 F.2d 319, 321 (5th Cir.1980); Moser v. Texas Trailer Corp., 623 F.2d 1006, 1013 (5th Cir.1980). By contrast, the plaintiff in today's case seeks to bootstrap his claim into federal court by arguing that his condition merely worsened onboard the ship. The flaw in the argument, however, is that the alleged medical malpractice did not take place on navigable waters as it did in Parker, Watz and Jig the Third. 19 The stated purpose of the Act was to correct inequities and not to create new causes of action. If the doctors committed medical malpractice, there is a common-law remedy in state court. We see no reason for expanding admiralty jurisdiction to cases with such scant involvement of maritime locations. Considering prior case law and the legislative history in light of the facts of this case, we agree with the trial court that a maritime locality is lacking.