Opinion ID: 27770
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: In re American Oil Co.14

Text: 18 The district court appears to have concluded, and the government contends vigorously on appeal, that in American Oil, we departed from the traditional rule that because the Coast Guard acts out of a duty, its actions are not voluntary, and it therefore cannot bring a salvage claim. 15 A brief analysis of American Oil shows that this view of our precedent is incorrect. 19 In American Oil, a tanker moored dockside in the Houston Ship Channel and laden with six million gallons of gasoline and heating oil caught fire and was in danger of exploding. 16 Firefighters from Houston, eighteen other cities and towns, and three Coast Guard stations battled the blaze from midnight into the next morning, when they ran out of the kind of foam required to fight petrochemical fires. 17 The Coast Guard was forced to buy more foam from remotely located commercial sources and have it flown to Houston on Air Force and Navy planes. 18 In thus assisting the Coast Guard, the Air Force and Navy incurred expenses totaling $89,676.60. 19 The government presented, and the district court approved, a salvage claim in that amount, which did not include any charges for the direct costs incurred by the Coast Guard. 20 We upheld the award, noting both that Congress had expressly authorized the Air Force and the Navy to make salvage claims 21 and that local firefighting units, rather than the Coast Guard, bore the primary legal responsibility for fighting dockside fires. 22 Therefore, we reasoned, the government could recover the expenses for salvage services rendered by the Air Force and the Navy to the Coast Guard in aid of its providing assistance to the vessel. 23 20 Our American Oil opinion went further than was required to decide that case, however. We concluded from the relevant statutory language, 24 which we regarded as permissive and not mandatory, 25 that the Coast Guard had discretion whether to aid persons and save property in peril. Possibly inadvertently, we then opened the door to the Coast Guard's future assertion of salvage claims: 21 [T]he National Government has apparently concluded as a matter of policy to make a salvage claim for services rendered by the U.S. Coast Guard to the extent, and only to the extent, that the Coast Guard used the services and supplies of the Air Force and Navy. This does not mean that the Coast Guard has no right to salvage for its own services and supplies. The pre-existing duty bar to salvage by the U.S. Coast Guard has not been sustained by the Courts. 26 22 This passage, clearly dictum, has had a mixed reception among courts and commentators. Some courts — perhaps including the district court in this case — have correctly recognized that our American Oil discussion of the Coast Guard's entitlement to assert a salvage claim was dictum. 27 Other courts — rather inexplicably, given the reasoning and facts of American Oil — have viewed it as a holding. 28 Furthermore, the old rule against salvage recovery for the Coast Guard still finds considerable support among authors of admiralty treatises, who urge that the Coast Guard ought not usually be permitted to assert a salvage claim. 29 For present purposes it suffices that American Oil 's discussion of the Coast Guard's ability to bring salvage claims was dictum and therefore provides no jurisprudential support for the district court's holding on this issue. Whether, as a general proposition, the Coast Guard may bring a salvage claim remains an open question in this Circuit; we need not address it here and therefore reserve it for a later day.