Opinion ID: 446789
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: THE INAPPLICABILITY OF Robins Dry Dock TO THIS CASE

Text: 127 Whatever the pragmatic justification for the original holding in Robins, the majority has extended the case beyond the warrant of clear necessity in requiring a physical injury for a recovery of economic loss in cases such as the one before the court. Robins prevented plaintiffs who were neither proximately nor foreseeably injured by a tortious act or product from recovering solely by claiming a contract with the injured party. The wisdom of this rule is apparent. This rule, however, has been expanded now to bar recovery by plaintiffs who would be allowed to recover if judged under conventional principles of foreseeability and proximate cause. 9 128 A. The Precise Holding of Robins Applies Only to Claims for Negligent Interference with Contract. 129 Because the centerpiece of this litigation has been Robins, 10 the holding of this oftcited case merits scrutiny. A ship's time charterer was required under contract to turn the vessel over to a dry dock for maintenance. The charterer owed no rent during the time the ship was under repair. The drydocker, who had contracted with the owner of the ship for the work, negligently damaged the ship's propeller. During the additional delay caused by repairs to the propeller, the charterer lost expected profits from the use of the ship. The charterer sued the shipyard for these economic losses. The Supreme Court denied relief, holding that the shipyard's damage to the propeller wronged only the owner of the ship. The Court further held that the charterer had lost merely the benefit of his contract for hire and had suffered no legally cognizable claim: 130 [The plaintiff's] loss arose only through [its] contract with the owners--and while intentionally to bring about a breach of contract may give rise to a cause of action, no authority need be cited to show that, as a general rule, at least, a tort to the person or property of one man does not make the tort-feasor liable to another merely because the injured person was under a contract with that other, unknown to the doer of the wrong. The law does not spread its protection so far. 131 275 U.S. at 308-09, 48 S.Ct. at 135, 72 L.Ed. at 292 (citations omitted). 132 Robins held only that if a defendant's negligence injures party A, and the plaintiff suffers loss of expected income or profits because it had a contract with A, then the plaintiff has no cause of action based on the defendant's negligence. B. Difficulties with Subsequent Extensions 133 It is a long step from Robins to a rule that requires physical damage as a prerequisite to recovery in maritime tort. The majority believes that the plaintiff's lack of any contractual connection with an injured party, taken with the Robins rule, forecloses liability: If a plaintiff connected to the damaged chattels by contract cannot recover, others more remotely situated are foreclosed a fortiori. Majority opinion at 1024. This conclusion follows readily from the reasoning that if uninjured contracting parties are barred from recovery, and if contracting parties have a closer legal relationship than non-contracting parties, then a party who is not physically injured and who does not have a contractual relation to the damage is surely barred. 134 This argument would be sound in instances where the plaintiff suffered no loss but for a contract with the injured party. We would measure a plaintiff's connection to the tortfeasor by the only line connecting them, the contract, and disallow the claim under Robins. In the instant case, however, some of the plaintiffs suffered damages whether or not they had a contractual connection with a party physically injured by the tortfeasor. These plaintiffs do not need to rely on a contract to link them to the tort: The collision proximately caused their losses, and those losses were foreseeable. These plaintiffs are therefore freed from the Robins rule concerning the recovery of those who suffer economic loss because of an injury to a party with whom they have contracted. 135 Because Robins provides an overly restrictive bar on recovery, courts have over the years developed a number of exceptions. 11 The traditional exceptions allow recovery for certain husband-wife claims, 12 recovery for negligent interference with contract when the interference results from a tangible injury to the contractor's person or property, 13 and recovery for persons employed on fishing boats to recover for lost income when the employment contract is disrupted by a third party's negligent injury to the ship or equipment. 14 136 Many opinions go beyond these traditional exceptions, both in the Fifth Circuit and in other courts. Our own Court has allowed a plaintiff to recover the added costs of performing a contract caused by a defendant's negligence, 15 and has employed this exception for maritime torts. 16 This Court also allowed a plaintiff to recover added costs in J. Ray McDermott & Co. v. S.S. Egero, 5 Cir.1972, 453 F.2d 1202, when a prime contractor recovered liquidated damages to a subcontractor after a vessel negligently dropped anchor on or near the pipelines which the contractor was constructing across a river bottom. 17 Canadian cases have also allowed recovery of additional expenses. 18 137 Although the majority says that this Court has not been the sole guardian of the Robins Dry Dock principle, the majority's support 19 is reminiscent of the Potemkin Village set up for Catherine the Great to visit. In both the Second and the Fourth Circuits courts have recently limited the applicability of the Robins rule in maritime torts. 138 The Second Circuit's opening volley on Robins was Petition of Kinsman Transit Co., 2 Cir.1968, 388 F.2d 821 (Kinsman II ), which has effectively limited the applicability of Robins to a small number of maritime torts. See Federal Commerce & Navigation Co. v. M/V Marathonian, S.D.N.Y.1975, 392 F.Supp. 908, aff'd, 2 Cir.1975, 528 F.2d 907 (per curiam), cert. denied, 1976, 425 U.S. 975, 96 S.Ct. 2176, 48 L.Ed.2d 799. The import of Kinsman II was to establish foreseeability as the test for liability instead of the requirement of physical injury. 20 The court rejected the requirement of physical damages without even bothering to distinguish Robins, and instead relied on customary negligence principles. Id. at 823-34. Although the Court in Kinsman II found that the damages were too tenuous and remote to allow recovery, the opinion represents an important departure from Robins because the Court was willing to rely on a case-by-case application of proximate cause principles rather than the blanket bar of Robins. 21 There is therefore no basis for the majority to say that Kinsman II's general analysis ... is compatible with our own. 139 Federal Commerce & Navigation Co. v. M/V Marathonian, S.D.N.Y.1975, 392 F.Supp. 908, aff'd, 2 Cir.1975, 528 F.2d 907 (per curiam), cert. denied, 1976, 425 U.S. 975, 96 S.Ct. 2176, 48 L.Ed.2d 799, also belies a blanket approval of Robins in the Second Circuit. In Marathonian, both the district court and the court of appeals reluctantly dismissed the plaintiffs' claims, but made it clear that the holding was narrow and was compelled by Robins in instances involving the factual contours of that case. In its opinion, the district court stated: 140 [W]ere this Court now free to write upon a tabula rasa and not constrained by the weight of precedent, we would reject the negligent interference with contract doctrine in favor of a negligence-causation-foreseeability analysis, such as that adopted by Chief Judge Kaufman in Petition of Kinsman Transit Co., 388 F.2d 821, 823-34 (2 Cir.1968).... 141