Opinion ID: 689218
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Purpose and Policy Underlying the Wages Remedy

Text: 13 Under general maritime law, Flores is entitled to bring an action for maintenance and cure, a remedy available to compensate seamen who fall ill or become injured during their employment. The cause of action for maintenance and cure includes three specific items of recovery: (1) maintenance, which is a living allowance; (2) cure, which covers nursing and medical expenses[;] and (3) wages. Herbert R. Baer, Admiralty Law of the Supreme Court 6 (3d ed. 1979); see 1B Benedict on Admiralty Sec. 43 (Aileen Jenner ed., 7th ed. 1994); Grant Gilmore and Charles L. Black, Jr., The Law of Admiralty 309 (2d ed. 1975). Unearned wages are measured from the time of the seaman's incapacity until the end of his employment contract. See Archer v. Trans/American Serv., Ltd., 834 F.2d 1570, 1575 (11th Cir. 1988). 14 Although the recovery of unearned wages technically is a separate element of recovery from those for maintenance expenses or cure expenses, it is settled law that wages is a basic component of an award of maintenance and cure. Id. at 1574. For that reason, our references to maintenance and cure are meant to include the wages remedy. Maintenance and cure is a remedy with roots in the medieval sea codes; 1 it is a remedy designed to protect seamen from the perils of living and working at sea. To recover in a maintenance and cure action, the seaman need not suffer from illness or injury that is causally related to his duties, Calmar S.S. Corp. v. Taylor, 303 U.S. 525, 527, 58 S.Ct. 651, 653, 82 L.Ed. 993 (1938), as long as the seaman's incapacitation did not result from his own wilful misconduct. Garay v. Carnival Cruise Line, Inc., 904 F.2d 1527, 1530 (11th Cir.1990), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 1119, 111 S.Ct. 1072, 112 L.Ed.2d 1178 (1991). 2 15 The seaman's right to maintenance and cure was firmly endorsed in Harden v. Gordon, a famous circuit opinion by Justice Story: 16 Seamen are by the peculiarity of their lives liable to sudden sickness from change of climate, exposure to perils, and exhausting labour. They are generally poor and friendless, and acquire habits of gross indulgence, carelessness, and improvidence. If some provision be not made for them in sickness at the expense of the ship, they must often in foreign ports suffer the accumulated evils of disease, and poverty, and sometimes perish from the want of suitable nourishment. Their common earnings in many instances are wholly inadequate to provide for the expenses of sickness .... 17 11 F.Cas. 480, 483 (C.C.D.Me.1823) (No. 6,047). The Supreme Court has noted that [i]t has been the merit of the seaman's right to maintenance and cure that it is so inclusive as to be relatively simple, and can be understood and administered without technical considerations. Farrell v. United States, 336 U.S. 511, 516, 69 S.Ct. 707, 709-10, 93 L.Ed. 850 (1949). 18 The traditional breadth of the remedy, as well as its nature and purpose, support Flores's contention that the measure of his unearned wages should include the tips he would have earned had he not become disabled. The Supreme Court has repeatedly declared that the shipowner's liability for maintenance and cure was among 'the most pervasive' of all and that it was not to be defeated by restrictive distinctions nor 'narrowly confined.'  Vaughan v. Atkinson, 369 U.S. 527, 532, 82 S.Ct. 997, 1000, 8 L.Ed.2d 88 (1962) (quoting Aguilar v. Standard Oil Co., 318 U.S. 724, 730, 735, 63 S.Ct. 930, 933, 936, 87 L.Ed. 1107 (1943)). Moreover, [w]hen there are ambiguities or doubts, they are resolved in favor of the seaman. Vaughan, 369 U.S. at 532, 82 S.Ct. at 1000. The purposes of the maintenance and cure remedy include protecting poor and friendless seamen, encouraging shipowners to guard the safety and health of working seamen, and inducing seamen to accept duty at sea. Calmar, 303 U.S. at 528, 58 S.Ct. at 653. 19 The remedy has served its purposes well over the centuries. Until recently, no luxury cruise ships, no cabin stewards, and no system of compensation through tips from passengers existed to complicate the disabled seaman's simple right to recover wages. It is altogether fitting, however, that an ancient remedy born of the reality of the seaman's position should be applied to fit the reality of our modern times. That reality is reflected in the contract between Carnival and Flores, which acknowledges that the bulk of Flores's compensation would come not from the mere pittance of $45 a month that Carnival agreed to pay, but from the hundreds of dollars in tips Flores would receive each week from Carnival's passengers, at Carnival's urging. The contract itself stated the shipowner's own expectation that Flores's tips could be as much as twenty times more than his salary, which amounted to less than two dollars a day. That is the reality of the situation.