Opinion ID: 1725638
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Potential Effect

Text: To determine the potential effect on maritime commerce, we must imagine an incident of the same general character as the incident under consideration as having occurred, not in the location in which it actually occurred, but in the busiest conceivable sea lane. From that premise, we must then postulate the possible effect on commercial shipping of the occurrence in that latter location. Sisson, 497 U.S. at 363, 110 S.Ct. at 2896 (a court must assess the general features of the type of incident involved to determine whether such an incident is likely to disrupt commercial activity); Price v. Price, 929 F.2d 131, 135 (4th Cir.1991) (under Foremost and Sisson, we must project more generally the composite genre of the tort or its essential elements and determine whether traditional maritime commerce will be affected). Thus, in Foremost, the Court held that a collision on the Amite River in Louisiana between an eighteen foot pleasure boat towing a water skier and a sixteen-foot `bass boat' potentially interfered with maritime commerce, notwithstanding the facts that neither vessel had ever been engaged in commercial maritime activity and that the situs of the accident had been seldom, if ever, used for commercial activity. Foremost Insurance Co. v. Richardson, 457 U.S. 668, 678, 102 S.Ct. 2654, 2660, 73 L.Ed.2d 300 (1982) (Powell, J., dissenting). The Foremost Court, as Sisson later more fully explained, supported [its] finding of potential disruption... with a description of the likely effects of a collision at the mouth of the St. Lawrence Seaway, ... an area heavily traveled by commercial vessels. Sisson, 497 U.S. at 363, 110 S.Ct. at 2896 (emphasis added). In Sisson itself, the Supreme Court held that an action based on fire damage to a Lake Michigan marina and to vessels docked therein invoked admiralty jurisdiction, notwithstanding the facts that the vessel in which the fire originated was a 56-foot pleasure yacht, id., at 360, 110 S.Ct. at 2894, and that no commercial vessels were docked at the marina at the time of the fire. Id. at 363, 110 S.Ct. at 2896. Because, the Court noted, fire poses a perennial danger to commercial vessels, the genre of the occurrence involved in Sisson fire on a vessel docked at a marina on navigable watersconstituted a potential hazard to maritime commerce. Id. at 362-63, 110 S.Ct. at 2895. Under these principles, we must conclude that the incident of which Choat complains a fatal collision on navigable waterpotentially affects maritime commerce. Were an incident of this genre to occur at the mouth of the St. Lawrence Seaway, Foremost, 457 U.S. at 675, 102 S.Ct. at 2658, emergency personnel could be called to rescue victims or to retrieve casualties. Such rescue activities could interrupt commercial shipping. See Complaint of Bird, 794 F.Supp. 575, 579 (D.S.C.1992) (commotion conceivably arising from attempts to rescue a [man overboard] in a crowded seaway would potentially have an impact on maritime commerce); Sinclair v. Soniform, Inc., 935 F.2d 599, 602 (3d Cir.1991) (possibility that commercial vessels would be diverted to respond to distress signals to aid a diver suffering from decompression sickness potentially affected maritime commerce). Thus, because the occurrence of an incident of this general character potentially affects maritime commerce, the first criterion of the jurisdictional analysis is met.