Court Opinion

ID: 9469372
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:38:42.536111+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:21.323534
License: Public Domain

GEE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Today we add our tiny kernel of chaos to an area already and admittedly “hopelessly inconsistent” (maj. op. at 333) and characterized by doubly and sometimes trebly overlapping remedies — some antediluvian, some decreed by Congress, some recently confected by the courts. This hash has been produced, as one commentary cited in the majority opinion notes, by a tendency on the part of courts “to ignore unequivocal statutory language which limits the rights of a given party”1 and by their amiable willingness “to pour the remedy with a heavy hand” (maj. op. at 330) from the stores of maritime employers. Analogizing to Gaudet’s2 treatment of the nonstatutory remedy for wrongful death created in Moragne3 the majority brings to life and action one horrible from Justice Powell’s parade in dissent:
Thus, it would be possible in theory for a person injured at sea to recover for his personal injuries and, following his death, for his survivors to attempt to bring suit under the High Seas Act. But certainly the Act would not be read as allowing the subsequent action.
Gaudet, 414 U.S. at 600, 94 S.Ct. at 822. And, true to the tradition noted above, my brothers brush aside express statutory language that by implication forbids a wrongful-death action following a decedent’s judgment. 4 Dealing as they do with a statutory remedy and congressional language closely in point, their decision is even more radical than Gaudet. And since I thought and think, with all deference, that decision a wrong one, this one seems to me far more so. I respectfully dissent.

. Schill, Moragne-Gaudet: Three If by Sea, 13 Hous.L.Rev. 917 (1976).

. Sea-Land Services v. Gaudet, 414 U.S. 573, 94 S.Ct. 806, 39 L.Ed.2d 9 (1974).

. Moragne v. States Marine Lines, 398 U.S. 375, 90 S.Ct. 1772, 26 L.Ed.2d 339 (1970).

. The substitution provision of the Death on the High Seas Act, 46 U.S.C. § 765, provides that where one who suffers injuries covered by the Act dies while his personal injury action is pending, that action may be converted by his personal representative into one under the Act for wrongful death.