Opinion ID: 539878
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Walker and Peymann

Text: 9 Sun principally relies on two cases to support its assertion that Mr. Kelley, as a supervisory officer, is barred from recovery. In Walker v. Lykes Bros. S.S. Co., 193 F.2d 772 (2d Cir.1952), Judge Learned Hand was presented with an injury incurred by a ship's master when a filing cabinet drawer in his office fell on him after a catch malfunctioned. The defendant argued that the duty to ensure that the catch operated correctly belonged to the master, and thus his own negligence caused his injury. 10 In Judge Hand's view, this situation did not present a claim of contributory negligence, as that term usually is employed in the law of torts. Rather, it presented an absolute bar to the plaintiff's recovery. To reach this conclusion, Judge Hand first acknowledged--albeit somewhat grudgingly 2 --the conventional rubric that contributory negligence is the breach of a duty to the wrongdoer. Id. at 773. He then drew a sharp distinction between this duty--which the law imposes upon the injured person, regardless of any conscious assumption of a duty towards the wrongdoer--and a duty which the injured person has consciously assumed as a term of his employment. Id. at 773. For breach of the general duty of care owed to the wrongdoer under a contributory negligence analysis, the plaintiff's recovery under the Jones Act is reduced; in other words, the comparative negligence of each act is assessed. By contrast, for breach of the duty of employee to employer, recovery is prohibited. 3 Applying this analysis, Judge Hand concluded: 11 In the case at bar, since the plaintiff was master of the ship, he fell within this doctrine, because it is well settled that the duty of the master in the case of damage to the ship is to do all that can be done towards bringing the adventure to a successful termination; to repair the ship, if there be a reasonable prospect of doing so at an expense not ruinous; just as it is his duty to care for the cargo, or not to overload the ship. Thus, if the plaintiff failed to repair the catches, although he was able to do so, his failure was not only contributory negligence in the first sense, but also a breach of his duty to the defendant which barred his recovery absolutely. 12 Id. at 774 (footnotes omitted). 13 The second case, Peymann v. Perini Corp., 507 F.2d 1318 (1st Cir.1974), cert. denied, 421 U.S. 914, 95 S.Ct. 1572, 43 L.Ed.2d 780 (1975), dealt with a chief engineer who injured himself in the engine-room by slipping off an oily pipe rail. The plaintiff charged that he should have been supplied with a stepladder. At trial, the plaintiff admitted that it was his duty to obtain a stepladder if needed, and to ensure that, among other things, the rail was free from oil. Id. at 1321. The First Circuit agreed with the trial court that a seaman cannot create the peril and then make a claim against the ship. Id. at 1322-23. 4