Court Opinion

ID: 9446616
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:59:40.643732+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:43.202613
License: Public Domain

LUMBARD, Circuit Judge
(concurring) .
My concurrence in that part of the majority opinion which approves sending to the jury the unseaworthiness count, although there is no diversity of citizenship, rests on reasons quite ■ different from those which Judge MEDINA states, and I feel that they are of sufficient importance to warrant discussion.
First, the Jones Act, 41 Stat. 1007 (1920), 46 U.S.C.A. § 688, itself authorizes this action to be tried at law and to a jury. Second, even if the only source of jurisdiction of the unseaworthiness count was in admiralty, such a count may be tried to a jury when it is tried simultaneously with a count under the Jones *449Act at law. It seems to me unfortunate that Judge Medina’s opinion, instead of ruling on either one or both of these bases for jury action, chooses to place the emphasis instead on “pendent jurisdiction” which thus becomes a cure-all for whatever a federal court feels will assist in the tidy and expeditious administration of justice. It seems to me that pendent jurisdiction is inapplicable both because the federal admiralty courts have adequate power to hear the unseaworthiness claim in any event, and because the invocation of the doctrine does not fully resolve the issue presented. Moreover, the application of pendent jurisdiction is inconsistent with the rationale of our prior decision in Paduano v. Yamashita Risen Rabushiki Kaisha, 2 Cir., 1955, 221 F.2d 615, where we held that such maritime actions are not included in 28 U.S.C. § 1331 (1952), which statute confers general federal question jurisdiction on the district courts, because the historic separateness of the admiralty jurisdiction must be preserved in the absence of an express congressional mandate to alter it.
I
A — The Jones Act
The Jones Act itself constitutes congressional authorization for the commencement of the unseaworthiness action on the law side of a federal court and for its trial to a jury if the jurisdictional requirements of 28 U.S.C. § 1331 (1952) are otherwise met,1
2whether or not a negligence count under the Act is pleaded, provided only that the plaintiff is of the class which is covered by the Act as currently construed. I am aware that no court has adopted this view, although several seem to have intimated it,3 but it seems to me consonant with the history of the Act and with the repeated declarations of the Supreme Court in construction of it.
The lack of judicial attention to the terms of the Act itself is difficult to account for, since it is the provision of the Act allowing the plaintiff to make an “election” for an action “at law” with jury trial that has given rise to the problem in almost every case including this one. Instead, attention has, for example, been given to the far broader jurisdictional question whether substantially all in personam maritime claims may be said to arise “under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States” within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 1331 (1952), and therefore be susceptible of trial on the law side of a federal court in the absence of diversity of citizenship.3 But the issue presented by such cases is far broader than need be considered in the solution of the problem confronted here.
The Jones Act deals only with that aspect of maritime law governing seamen’s remedies for personal injury which the Supreme Court has stated are to be considered as a unit and are to be liberally regarded by the courts.4
*450In relevant part the Act provides:
“Any seaman who shall suffer personal injury in the course of his employment may, at his election, maintain an action for damages at law, with the right of trial by jury, and in such action all statutes of the United States modifying or extending the common-law right or remedy in cases of personal injury to railway employees shall apply; * *
The language of the Act with its apparently broad grant of permission to sue “at law” for “damages” for “personal injury” does not exclude an action based upon liability without fault known as unseaworthiness. On its face the Act appears to permit the seaman to sue at law for all claims that he may have for damages for personal injury sustained in the course of employment, and permits him the added advantage of certain remedial statutes originally passed for the benefit of railway workers. Only by reading the clause beginning “and in such action” as a deliberate limitation on the broad authorization of the opening clause for an action “at law” for “damages” for “personal injury” can the opposite result be reached. The question therefore is whether the second clause ought to be read as stating that the only action subject to the election authorized by the Act for a trial at law and to a jury is the action analogous to the railway workers' action for negligent injury. Nothing in the statutory language itself predicts such a result.
The statutory history is of little help. The Act, § 33 of the 1920 Amendments to the Merchant Marine Act,5 appears to have passed through both Houses of Congress without debate, and without discussion in committee reports,6 and it is therefore undoubtedly true that as to the specific question here considered the Congress cannot be said to have expressed any intention. Ought the general language of the Act nevertheless to be approached with a presumption of some limitation on the grant? I think not.
In Paduano v. Yamashita Kisen Kabu-shiki Kaisha, 2 Cir., 1955, 221 F.2d 615, we placed great reliance on the fact that ever since 1875 the statute conferring general “federal question” jurisdiction on the district courts has been assumed to be subject to an implied exception for maritime matters. We might therefore find that in the absence of a specific manifestation of intention to alter this historic (albeit implied) exception, maritime jurisdiction remains maritime. Even the discovery of so strong a presumption would not end the problem, however, since the Jones Act itself specifically removes a maritime claim from the admiralty courts at the plaintiff’s election. The Supreme Court held in Panama R. Co. v. Johnson, 1924, 264 U. S. 375, 44 S.Ct. 391, 68 L.Ed. 748, that the remedy afforded seamen under the railway Acts was given in modification of and consequently was part of the maritime law. The question would therefore remain whether in allowing an election under the Act for an action at law with a jury trial the Congress should be presumed to have intended to carve up the mode of trial for seamen’s maritime claims for personal injury and to have provided the election as to the new maritime count but not as to the old.7
*451Despite the generality of the statutory language, if in 1920 there was a significant difference in the nature of the claims for unseaworthiness and the new claim afforded under the railway Acts it might be argued that the Congress, in recognition of the difference, intended to provide an altered mode of trial only for the new negligence count. Before proceeding to examine this possibility it is well to note however that it contains an element of fiction. Jury trial for these maritime matters was not new in 1920. Ever since 1789 it has been available in the state courts by virtue of the “saving clause,” 1 Stat. 76-77, now 28 U.S.C. § 1333(1) (1952), and in the federal courts by virtue of the same clause coupled with the grant of jurisdiction at law in diversity, 28 U.S.C. § 1332 (1952). Only maritime claims asserted in the federal courts at law and in the absence of diversity would have been subject to the supposed exception in the Jones Act. But the broad language of the Act provided for juries in all courts which try actions “at law” without apparent exceptions. Nevertheless, it is not impossible that such an exception was contemplated for the federal courts if indeed there was a significant difference in the nature of the claims. It appears, however, that there was not.
The doctrine that an action for unseaworthiness imposes a species of liability “without fault” for personal injury peculiar to maritime law is of very recent vintage, appearing first in the Supreme Court in Mahnich v. Southern S.S. Co., 1944, 321 U.S. 96, 64 S.Ct. 455, 88 L.Ed. 561 and Seas Shipping Co. v. Sieracki, 1946, 328 U.S. 85, 66 S.Ct. 872, 90 L.Ed. 1099.8 Earlier, in Baltimore S.S. Co. v. Phillips, 1927, 274 U.S. 316, 47 S.Ct. 600, 71 L.Ed. 1069, for example, the owner’s liability for injuries due to unseaworthiness was thought to turn on his “negligence.”9 It may have been true, of course, that a very severe duty of diligence was placed upon the owner to provide a seaworthy ship with seaworthy appliances. But if there was such a duty of care in excess of that familiarly required at common law, it is now plain that a similarly heightened duty of diligence was imposed by the Jones Act as well. See Cortes v. Baltimore Insular Line, 1932, 287 U.S. 367, 53 S.Ct. 173, 77 L.Ed. 368. Thus, in 1920 at least, no distinction could have been drawn between the absolute character of the maritime duty imposed by the action for unseaworthiness, and the duty of due care imposed by the incorporation of the railway statutes in the new Act. There was a difference between the old law and the new duty of course, but it was the difference between a liability for the negligent provision of the vessel, and its negligent operation. It was liability for the latter which Chelentis v. Luckenbach S.S. Co., 1918, 247 U.S. 372, 38 S.Ct. 501, 62 L.Ed. 1171, held was not imposed by the exclusive maritime law, and it was apparently to circumvent the Chelentis decision that the 1920 amendment was enacted. It is difficult to find that the Congress which spoke in the broad terms of the Jones Act nevertheless should be presumed to have intended to distinguish between the modes of trial appropriate to the proof of two negligence counts.
Furthermore, the recent growth of the scope of the unseaworthiness remedy to encompass an increasing proportion of those cases formerly regarded as involving only operating negligence, see Gilmore & Black, The Law of Admiralty, § 6-39 (1957), thus rendering somewhat *452superfluous the incorporation of the railway acts into the maritime law, suggests that there would have been considerable wisdom in the view that seamen’s remedies should be treated as a unit by the courts. At least it is true that in the light of this development' there is no good purpose served by a distinction in the mode of trial of these counts especially as it creates untoward problems of judicial administration. Since the- language that the Sixty-sixth Congress used in no way intimates that it regarded these claims as other than a single action “at law” for “damages” there does not seem to me now to be any reason for .supposing that it intended otherwise.
In the early cases a view was taken of Jones Act remedies that would probably have precluded the analysis I have suggested had the view been upheld. In dictum in Panama R. Co. v. Johnson, 1924, 264 U.S. 375, 44 S.Ct. 391, 392, 68 L. Ed. 748, the Supreme Court first suggested that the phrase “at his election” meant that the plaintiff in order to sue under the railway provisions of the Jones Act had to seek “either the relief accorded by the old rules or that provided by the new rules. The election is between alternatives accorded by the maritime law as modified * * *■” 264 U.S. at pages 388, 389, 44 S.Ct. at page 394. See also Pacific S.S. Co. v. Peterson, 1938, 278 U.S. 130, 137, 138, 49 S.Ct. 75, 73 L.Ed. 220. If this implication had been carried forward it would have meant that the Act provided only an “election” to choose the railroaders’ remedies in lieu of the old maritime counts, and did not'provide permission for an action at law to qualified suitors seeking redress based on maritime counts for personal injuries. This was a curious view to take of a remedial statute, and the.Supreme Court has recently found a footnote reference sufficient to discredit it. McAllister v. Magnolia Petroleum Co., 1958, 357 U.S. 221, 222, note 2, 78 S.Ct. 1201, 2 L.Ed.2d 1272.
In another line of cases the Supreme Court appears to have taken the view that .seamen’s remedies are to be regarded as a unit for purposes of trial. In Baltimore S.S. Co. v. Phillips, 1927, 274 U.S. 316, 47 S.Ct. 600, 71 L.Ed. 1069, the Court held that a federal “splitting” rule would operate against a plaintiff who pleaded only one of the two claims for unseaworthiness and operating negligence and that the doctrine of res judicata would bar the later assertion of the unlitigated claim.10 The possibility of such estoppel by judgment is of course not conclusive of the question of the existence of jurisdiction at law and to a jury for the seaman’s unseaworthiness claim. Attention has recently been called to ■the fact that it may be doubted whether the Baltimore rule would apply if the Jones Act claim for operating negligence were pleaded on the law side of a federal court in which there was no jurisdiction to hear the maritime claim. Jenkins v. Roderick, D.C.Mass.1957, 156 F.Supp. 299, 300.11 It seems to me, however, that this is somewhat aside from the point. Only if it were supposed that the Congress did not deal with “two grounds” for the same maritime “cause of action” would the Act be read to grant jurisdiction for an action at law for only “one-half” of the cause of action. This is an area in which both of the “halves” are created *453by federal law and the subject is controlled by the Congress in “its substantive as well as its procedural features.” Panama R. Co. v. Johnson, 1924, 264 U.S. 375, 386, 44 S.Ct. 391, 393, 68 L.Ed. 748. This is not a case in which the second “ground” comes from a body of local law over which the Congress could not or plainly did not exert power. It seems to me anomalous to assume that the inclusive federal power was exercised so as to create a purposeless dilemma in the mode of trial.
For these reasons12 I would hold that the Jones Act, in permitting an action “at law” for “damages” for “personal injury” to seamen, permitted them such an action based on the maritime doctrine of unseaworthiness as well as the legislative maritime doctrine of negligent operation.13 This is precisely the result reached by the court by a somewhat more elaborate route, so that whenever a Jones Act claim is pleaded at law and is tried with a claim in unseaworthiness, the claims may now be tried together in a common law action to a jury without regard to an independent basis of jurisdictional law for the unseaworthiness count.14
B — Jury Trial in Admiralty Cases In the closing lines of its opinion the majority states categorically the principle that if a claim is regarded as on the admiralty side of the district court it must then be tried to the court without a jury, as has been customary in admiralty proceedings. It apparently assumes, since it nowhere discusses the question, that if the claim were properly on the law side of the district court the jury-right would automatically attach.15 It thus converts the question of the propriety of jury trial, which it has already decided on a priori standards of convenience, into one of jurisdiction, which it similarly decides on the ground of convenience. I do not believe that, apart from the Jones Act, it is necessary or desirable to reach difficult questions of jurisdiction in deciding the question presented here. If I did not believe that the *454Act provided for jurisdiction at law I would hold that an unseaworthiness count properly pleaded in admiralty may be tried there to a jury if in the court’s discretion it is tried simultaneously with a related claim at law under the Jones Act, whether or not there is an independent basis of jurisdiction of the maritime count at law.16 Since the convenience of joint trial of the unseaworthiness count to a jury is the only ground offered to support each step of the court’s decision, it seems to me that this would be a more direct and therefore adequate response to the underlying problem. The court could exercise control over the joinder of such admiralty and law claims when it decided the motion to consolidate the separate actions for purposes of trial. If the delay would be untoward because of really serious docket congestion, or if serious prejudice might result to the objecting party, the court for reasons sufficient to overcome the obvious desirability of joint trial could deny the motion. Once consolidation is achieved, however, the same practical reasons which persuade the court that jury trial is appropriate would carry the unseaworthiness count to the Jones Act jury.
It is true that this solution is not without some difficulty, since such precedent as there is on the matter of jury trial for non-jury counts joined with counts "triable to a jury under Constitution or statute points in the direction of preservation of the separate modes of trial to court and jury. Thus when the equity and law courts were merged, an effort was made to determine whether the claim asserted was “primarily legal” or “primarily equitable” and the determination governed the mode of trial selected. The mere presentation of a claim at law for damages was not of itself enough to take a “primarily equitable” claim to a jury. See 5 Moore’s Federal Practice §§ 38.16-38.19. We could apply a similar approach and simply hold that the Jones Act claim is always “primary” when accompanied by a count in unseaworthiness. But one may imagine cases in which the issue of negligence might be so much more doubtful than that of the unseaworthiness of the vessel as to render the holding fictional.
Of course it would be possible to preserve the separate modes of trial even after consolidation by simply having the court decide the unseaworthiness counts. Under Pacific S.S. Co. v. Peterson, 1928, 278 U.S. 130, 49 S.Ct. 75, 73 L.Ed. 220, if the jury returned a Jones Act verdict for the plaintiff that would be the end of the matter. If it found for the defendant the determination of the maritime count would be up to the court. Unlike the majority I do not believe that the resulting problems in the nature of res judicata or collateral estoppel would be insurmountable. For that matter, as I will show below, I do not believe that these problems can be avoided even by the court’s method of solution. But as we are unanimous in the conclusion that it is proper to try both counts to the jury, I am not dissuaded by the distant analogy of the law-equity merger and its attempts to preserve historically separate modes of trial. The point is that the problem of the propriety of joint jury trial is not made more amenable to solution by the discovery of pendent jurisdiction of the maritime count on the law side unless it is found that the Seventh Amendment guarantees a jury right on the unseaworthiness claim, a matter which the court nowhere discusses.
The majority expressly declines to employ the route I propose because it says: (1) as against the trial of certain admiralty counts to a jury the discovery of a hitherto nearly unknown jurisdiction at law over maritime matters is “least likely to affect adversely the general structure of the admiralty jurisdiction,” and (2) because the step of trying an admiralty count to a jury is “bold” when contrasted with the timid assumption of a novel jurisdiction at law. It could *455be maintained, I think, that the extension of coordinate jurisdiction of the federal courts at law poses as great a threat as can be imagined to what remains of the exclusivity of the admiralty prerogatives in seamen’s cases. However, I merely note that so long as the rule of joint trial to a jury is confined to those admiralty claims which are tried with a related Jones Act claim there is absolutely no difference in practical effect between considering the trial of certain admiralty matters when joined with claims at law as sui generis and trying them to a jury, and treating some of them as properly brought at law solely in order to reach the same result. The two routes seem equally capable of giving rise to further erosions of admiralty prerogatives. Not only has the majority’s dealing with jurisdiction accomplished no good; it seems to me that it may give rise to considerable harm.
II
A — Pendent Jurisdiction
But the majority, by ruling that an unseaworthiness claim for which statutory jurisdiction exists only in admiralty may not be tried to a Jones Act jury, has chosen to consider the issue of jury trial to be a jurisdictional issue which it resolved by finding pendent jurisdiction of the admiralty count on the law side of the federal court. I cannot agree with the application of this doctrine to sustain jurisdiction in a federal law court over a count for which there is federal jurisdiction in a federal court of admiralty, even if the result in cases such as these will not be to work an increase of federal jurisdiction at the expense of the state courts.
The origin of the concept of pendent jurisdiction was, as the majority notes, the serious problems of judicial administration which resulted from the existence of separate federal and state claims for the same injury. If the state claim could not be tried in a federal court when substantially identical federal claims were tried there, in many cases there would have been a complete duplication of the effort of litigation in the state courts. The alternative to such duplication would have been an untoward extension of the doctrine of res judicata to require the plaintiff to forego his state claim if he litigated and lost in the federal courts, despite the fact that the federal courts never purported to have jurisdiction of the state claim. Hurn v. Oursler, 1933, 289 U.S. 238, 53 S.Ct. 586, 77 L.Ed. 1148, was the basic solution to the dilemma, and the bedrock on which it rested was that without “pendent” jurisdiction the state claim could not have been tried at all in the federal forum.
Furthermore, the Hurn rationale arises in an area which is not practically susceptible of legislative control except by occasional intervention in areas in which the federal-state overlap is very frequent. See 28 U.S.C. § 1338(b) (1952). It has been noted that the very fact that a Constitutional barrier to the Hurn doctrine might have been thought to exist indicates the strength of the doctrine and its ability to overcome the relatively minor non-constitutional issue presented here. Jenkins v. Roderick, D.C. D.Mass.1957, 156 F.Supp. 299, 301. But the issue of jurisdiction with which the court believes itself to be confronted here is plainly within easy legislative grasp, as we so forcefully noted in Padu-ano v. Yamashita Risen Rabushiki Rai-sha, 2 Cir., 1955, 221 F.2d 615. Moreover the problem is one which exists wholly within the framework of the federal courts, and which is amenable to solution by the simple device either of joint trial, or gradual evolution of the doctrine of res judicata. If it does appear that the Congress has not vested jurisdiction of these claims in the federal law courts, it is not the function of those courts to invent a new basis of jurisdiction.
Finally, the majority’s resort to pendent jurisdiction is least satisfactory when it rests frankly on its only sound basis, viz., that it is desirable to avoid what would be difficult problems of res judicata if separate trials were held, or if joint trial to court and jury separately *456were the rule. It seems to me that no conceivable adaptation of the pendent jurisdiction rationale could cope with the situation presented when a plaintiff who does not possess diversity from the defendant now pleads a Jones Act count at law and demands a jury, and pleads his unseaworthiness count by a libel in rem and in personam in admiralty. Assuming that the actions are consolidated for purposes of trial, the court’s present logic requires that the count in admiralty, where the jury may not intrude, be tried to the court without a jury, since the claim is in admiralty and since “pendent jurisdiction” could hardly be thought to have destroyed that traditional basis of jurisdiction.
I believe, however, that the court would find the considerations of convenience sufficiently compelling to reach the result of joint trial to the jury in such a case. It could do so of course by applying the Baltimore17 rule to require that the unseaworthiness count be pleaded at law or lost. But this would merely be an oblique way of holding that the “election” provided by the Jones Act includes both counts, and that they may not be divided, which merely states what I have already suggested, that the Jones Act provides an affirmative basis of jurisdiction of the unseaworthiness count at law. Or the court might hold that, although pleaded in admiralty, the count may nevertheless be tried to a jury because it is tried with the Jones Act count, which is simply to state, as I have alternatively suggested, that claims properly pleaded in admiralty may, in an appropriate and limited class of cases, be tried to a jury. Thus resort to “pendent jurisdiction” is unnecessary.
B — Jurisdiction Under 28 U.S.C. § 18S1
Finally, I believe that the majority’s decision that there is pendent jurisdiction of the maritime claim on the law side of the federal court is in conflict with our decision in Paduano v. Yama-shita Kisen Kabushiki Kaisha, supra, which Judge Medina reaffirms but distinguishes by confining it to its facts. In Paduano we held that an unseaworthiness count brought on the law side of a federal court did not fall within the jurisdictional requirements of 28 U.S.C. § 1331. In the absence of diversity of citizenship, and since, as the majority here points out, no one asked us to permit a transfer to the admiralty docket, we dismissed the action.
We gave two reasons for the result we then reached.18 The first of these was that maritime matters do not fall within the rationale which apparently gave rise to § 1331, viz., that there ought to be a federal forum of first instance for the vindication of federal rights. Since as to maritime matters there has since 1789 been separate federal jurisdiction in admiralty, no extension of jurisdiction at law was necessary to assure litigants of a federal forum. The second reason given was that whereas the Congress has seen fit to use special statutory grants when it desired to modify the prerogatives of admiralty, as by the provision of jury trial for certain maritime matters, it has made no such grant with regard to unseaworthiness claims.
Thus the foundation- of Paduano was that the federal courts of admiralty have since the first Judiciary Act provided an adequate federal forum for the proper trial of all maritime matters, and that in the absence of express congressional in*457tervention the courts themselves would not be the innovators of a novel jurisdiction. Yet the majority now holds that despite the fact that the unseaworthiness claim could have been pleaded and tried to a federal admiralty court a novel jurisdiction at law is appropriate solely because of the desirability of jury trial for which it believes the Congress has not otherwise provided. I think that the two views cannot be reconciled.
It is of course true that to hold, as I have alternatively suggested, that the adjective law of admiralty may in these cases be judicially developed is itself inconsistent with our emphasis in Paduano on congressional control of such matters. But this conflict is surely less fundamental than that created by the court’s resort to a novel jurisdiction.
Furthermore, the conflict of this decision with Paduano is more than merely theoretical. The result will be a nearly total abandonment of Paduano. It will be a simple matter for all plaintiffs who now desire .a jury trial to plead both an unseaworthiness count and its related Jones Act count in every case.19 The cases will be few if any in which it will be possible to say that the Jones Act claim is so frivolous as to be unable to support the “pendent” claim and take it to the jury.
Thus it seems to me that the majority has for all practical purposes abandoned without discussion the substance of the jurisdictional grounds used to support the decision in Paduano, while it has used as its justification here a doubtful proposition of federal power.
It seems to me both unnecessary and most unfortunate that we give further support to the vague and troublesome doctrine of pendent jurisdiction. It is a highly salutary principle that the federal courts may not assume jurisdiction unless jurisdiction has been unequivocally and constitutionally conferred upon them by an act of the Congress. At a time when much is said and written about the desirability of curtailing federal jurisdiction and when the Congress has but recently enacted legislation toward that end, 28 U.S.C. § 1332, as amended 72 Stat. 415 (1958), we should not look the other way.

. On these facts we need not consider the availability of jurisdiction under other federal statutes. See, e. g., Lykes Bros. S.S. Co. v. Grubaugh, 5 Cir., 1942, 128 F.2d 387; McDonald v. Cape Cod Trawling Corp., D.C.D.Mass.1947, 71 F.Supp. 838.

. See, e. g., McCarthy v. American Eastern Corp., 3 Cir., 1949, 175 F.2d 724, 726, 727; Balado v. Lykes Bros. S.S. Co., 2 Cir., 1950, 179 F.2d 943, 945. These cases rejected the possibility that the Jones Act required an “election” between a claim of unseaworthiness and a claim of operating negligence. They construed the “election” affirmatively as providing that “an injured seaman, instead of suing in admiralty, could at his option assert his cause of action at law regardless of diversity * * * ” 175 F.2d at page 726. This affirmative construction does not appear to be based on the ground used to reject the alternative construction of the “election,” viz., that an election between counts might work an es-toppel by judgment. But see Jenkins v. Roderick, D.C.D.Mass.1957, 156 F.Supp. 299, 300.

. See, e. g., Doucette v. Vincent, 1 Cir., 1952, 194 F.2d 834; Jordine v. Walling, 3 Cir., 1950, 185 F.2d 662.

. See, e. g., McAllister v. Magnolia Petroleum Co., 1958, 357 U.S. 221, 78 S.Ct. *4501201, 2 L.Ed.2d 1272; Cortes v. Baltimore Insular Line, 1932, 287 U.S. 367, 53 S.Ct. 173, 77 L.Ed. 368; Baltimore S.S. Co. v. Phillips, 1927, 274 U.S. 316, 47 S.Ct. 600, 71 L.Ed. 1069.

. 41 Stat. 1007 (1920).

. See S.Rept. 573, H.Rept. 1093, H.Rept. 1102, H.Rept. 1107, 66th Cong., 2d Sess. 1920.

. The doubtful authority of the floor debates suggests that such a presumption should not be applied to the Act’s sponsor, Senator Jones. In response to a question directed to the effect on admiralty jurisdiction of another provision of the 1920 amendments, the Senator replied: “I will say to the Senator that this deals very largely with admiralty matters, and I am not familiar with admiralty practice.” 59 Cong.Rec., part 7, p. 6992, May 13, 1920. I cite this only to indicate the extent to which the attribution of a presumption of intention to preserve the status quo of admiralty practice may become fictional.

. The earlier eases announcing an absolute liability in actions tor cargo damage do not appear to have been thought controlling. See, e. g., The Caledonia, 1895, 157 U.S. 124, 15 S.Ct. 537, 39 L. Ed. 644.

. The circuit courts wore divided on the question whether due diligence would satisfy the obligation to provide a seaman with a seaworthy vessel. Compare The Tawmie, 5 Cir., 1936, 80 F.2d 792 and Burton v. Greig, 5 Cir., 1921, 271 F. 271, with The H. A. Scandrett, 2 Cir., 1937, 87 F.2d 708. In The Fullerton, 9 Cir., 1908, 167 F. 1, 8, 11, the court seems to have taken both views.

. Referring to the alleged difference in claims for unseaworthiness and operating negligence the Court used language closely paralleling the Act itself: “In either view, there would be but a single wrongful invasion of a single primary right of the plaintiff, namely, the right of bodily safety » * * ” 274 U.S. at page 321, 47 S.Ct. at page 602.

. The Baltimore rule could be applied without undue hardship even in this circumstance, however, by imposing the requirement that an appropriate libel be filed simultaneously in admiralty. Thus it may also be doubted whether the compartmentalized character of the district court’s jurisdiction over these claims would, even in the situation supposed, be allowed to overcome the salutary rule of the Baltimore case.

. An alternative possibility suggested by Turcich v. Liberty Corp., 3 Cir., 1954, 217 F.2d 495, 493 should be noted.

. I am aware that a problem of the applicability of the three-year statute of limitations on the Jones Act count for operating negligence to the unseaworthiness count may be raised by this approach. The facts here do not present the problem. It is enough to note that the application of the limitation may not be a necessary result, and, with the opposite emphasis, to point to McAllister v. Magnolia Petroleum Co., 1958, 357 U.S. 221, 78 S.Ct. 1201, 2 L.Ed.2d 1272, with particular reference to the con-curing opinion of Mr. Justice Brennan.

. As the court notes, the retention of the maintenance and cure count by the district court was agreed to by both parties.

. It makes this assumption although it does not discuss the applicability of the Seventh Amendment to the unseaworthiness count once it is found to be properly on the law side, and apparently believes that the fact that the claim is “pendent” to a Jones Act count is sufficient ground for trial to a jury of all issues, including application of the definition of unseaworthiness itself. It has been held that the Amendment does not apply because the remedy of “divided” damages for unseaworthiness when the plaintiff is contributorily negligent, prescribed as a matter of federal law for unseaworthiness actions, Pope & Talbot, Inc. v. Hawn, 1953, 346 U.S. 403, 74 S. Ct. 202, 98 L.Ed. 143, is not a “common law” remedy. Jenkins v. Roderick, D.C.D.Mass.1957, 150 E.Supp. 299, 302-304. The difficulty with this suggestion is that it would undermine the basis of federal jurisdiction at law since if the action is not one for a “common law” remedy it is not “saved” by the saving clause, 28 U.S.O. § 1333(1) (1952), and is exclusively for the federal admiralty courts. See 71 Harv.L.Rev. 1359, 3362 (1958). Furthermore, even if this objection were overcome by assuming a difference in meaning for the words “common law” as used in the amendment and the saving clause, jury trial would be defeated even for unseaworthiness actions based on the diversity jurisdiction at law, 28 U.S.C. § 1332 (1952). It is difficult to believe that this is a necessary consequence of the holding in Pope & Talbot, supra. It seems more reasonable, if there is any doubt of the applicability of the Seventh Amendment, that the common-law may now be regarded as competent to divide damages in certain cases.

. Whether the unseaworthiness count can be separately pleaded in admiralty ■when there is a basis for jurisdiction of it at law and the Jones Act count is pleaded at law is a separate question. See note 17, infra.

. If the Jones Act does provide an independent basis of jurisdiction at law, the “election” provided by the Act may require that both claims be pleaded and tried on a single side of the district court.

. Although the case of American Insurance Co. v. Canter, 1828, 1 Pet. 511, 26 U.S. 511, 7 L.Ed. 242, was relied upon for the proposition that the classes of “Cases” over which jurisdiction is enumerated in Article III are historically recognized as separate, it was not suggested that they were ever regarded as exclusive, and therefore reliance on the case was not critical to the result.

. The Paduano case itself, as Judge Medina implies, is not disturbed, since the plaintiff there could not have maintained a colorable action under the Jones Act.