Court Opinion

ID: 6915836
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-23 22:41:01.396561+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:05:52.652418
License: Public Domain

LUMBARD, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) .
I cannot agree that we must subscribe to the principle that a shore-based worker who performs any labor on a ship, even though the ship is out of operation and tied fast to a dock for overhaul, should have extended to him a warranty of seaworthiness merely because the work which he is doing can be generally characterized in terms of the duties which a seaman could be expected to perform. It is not enough to categorize Halecki’s work as cleaning ship’s equipment. Here the inescapable fact is that *714Halecki, in spraying the generators with carbon tetrachloride, was doing something which a seaman could not do, which no seaman had ever done and which would expose the seaman’s life to serious danger if he even attempted it.
A summary of the evidence showing how the generators were cleaned by spraying with carbon tetrachloride shows the absurdity of assimilating this work to that of a seaman or of saying that the work “is of a kind that traditionally the crew has been accustomed to do.”
On Saturday, September 22, 1951 the pilot boat “New Jersey,” owned by the appellants, was turned over to Rodermond Industries, Inc. for its annual overhaul and inspection. It was moored at the Rodermond repair yard pier at the foot of Henderson Street, North River, Jersey City, New Jersey. A list of repairs, prepared by Rodermond the following Monday, September 24 provided that the crew was to remove and replace the eight cylinder heads for the port and starboard generators, and the contractor was to do some work on the cylinder heads. Under the same heading “Port' & Star Generators” it was provided,:
“Spray clean with carbon tetrachloride the armature and field windings to remove all traces of dirt and film. Close up and prove in good order.”
Rodermond in turn subcontracted with Halecki’s employer, the K & S Electrical Company, to do certain electrical work and to spray the generators with carbon tetrachloride, since neither ship nor shipyard was equipped or competent to do this work. The K & S foreman, Donald Doidge, was at work on the New Jérsey' from Monday, September 24, and on that day he consulted with the New Jersey’s chief engineer as to when the spraying should be done as “we know it has to be done when there is nobody else on board ship.” Doidge agreed with the chief engineer that it should be done on Saturday during the absence of the crew, since during the week members of the crew were working on the ship.
Pursuant to these arrangements, Doidge and Halecki made preparations on Friday for the Saturday spraying. Doidge, the shop foreman, had been an electrician for about 25 years and Halecki had worked with him for about 6 years. Not all their work was on ships; they cleaned generators by carbon tetrachloride spray in factories and buildings, wherever the generators were. On Friday they brought on board extra air hoses and a blower belonging to Rodermond. One air hose was used for the spray gun and the other was used underneath the generator as an exhaust to blow the fumes away from the man spraying. A high compression “blower” was placed so that it would exhaust foul air out through one of the two open doorways.
On Saturday morning, September 29, according to the previous arrangement, Doidge and Halecki came aboard to do the spraying. They found only the defendant’s watchman, Walter C. Thompson, and they told him to stay out of the engineroom and not to let anybody down. They brought with them three gas masks belonging to K & S Electric Company. Halecki wore a gas mask and did most of the spraying 10 to 15 minutes at a time with intervening rest periods of equal length. All the equipment for exhausting the fumes and the ship’s ventilating system were in operation and run by power supplied from generators on shore. Halecki took sick the next day and died two weeks later. There was sufficient evidence to support the jury’s finding that death was caused by carbon tetrachloride poisoning.
Despite history and logic, the trend of decisions in cases involving injuries and death on navigable waters, now further exténded by my distinguished colleagues, seems to be guided by what Justice Rutledge has frankly called a “humanitarian policy.” Seas Shipping Co. v. Sieracki, 1946, 328 U.S. 85, 95, 66 S.Ct. 872, 90 L.Ed. 1099. This policy seems to be based on the theory that judges are competent to determine that *715it is better that the shipowners should assume all the burdens because they are able to average them out through insurance or some form of protection against all the hazards of accident which may occur on shipboard to anyone coming on board. The result has been a progressive expansion, both qualitative and quantitative, in the duties and liabilities imposed upon shipowners.1 From a concept resting on negligence, seaworthiness has, by judicial development, become an absolute duty imposing liability without fault. From a duty running to those we traditionally consider as seamen, exposed to the hazards and discipline of the sea, it has been expanded to include a multitude of harbor workers who report for work in the morning and return to their homes at night. The burdens of proving lack of due care and of defending against the bar of contributory negligence are jettisoned by this judicial legislation. Where there is the slightest support for causation the only question for the jury is the amount of damages.
It may be argued that the initiative taken by the federal courts in imposing absolute liability is justified by their peculiar historical responsibility for admiralty law. And we are told that certain harbor workers come within the ambit of the warranty of seaworthiness because a shipowner cannot escape liability by delegating to others what is traditionally seamen’s work. Seas Shipping Co. v. Sieracki, 1946, 328 U.S. 85, 95, 66 S.Ct. 872, 90 L.Ed. 1099. Here we go further. When a lower court charges on both seaworthiness and negligence toward a business invitee, we must assume that the only justification for the charge on seaworthiness is that the shipowner may be found liable despite his own due care. By assimilating certain activities to maritime law, we extend the absolute liability of shipowners, in effect, beyond the shipyard gates. The owner, despite the utmost care, is liable for the activities of a specialist employed expressly because these activities were beyond the range of experience and competence of the ship’s crew. These circumstances rebut the contention that the shipowner is nullifying his liability by parcelling out ship’s work to others.
The anomaly of the result reached here is pointed up when we consider the restricted liability of the specialist’s employer, who is in the most favorable position to reduce the incidence of injury. Unlike the shipowner, the immediate employer’s liability is restricted to the insurance expenses of workmen’s compensation or to damages incurred due to his lack of due care. Although the shipowner was not Halecki’s employer and this was essentially an industrial injury resulting in the death of a shore-based electrician, an absolute liability of judicial creation is imposed upon the shipowner above and beyond the system developed by New Jersey to compensate for industrial accidents. I had thought that such far-reaching changes in rights and legal duties were solely within the province of the elected representatives of the people in Congress and not the proper business of judges. The traditional responsibility of the federal judiciary for admiralty does not justify such an expansion of liability.
Halecki risked all the hazards of the sea as one might experience them on a Saturday in late September while the ship was made fast to a bulkhead in Jersey City. He was not a seaman, he was not doing what any crew member had ever done on this ship or anywhere else in the world so far as we are informed. Whatever reasons there may be for extending the warranty of seaworthiness to stevedores or other harbor workers who work on board, they do not apply to those employed to do a special job of such a *716dangerous and unusual nature that it is beyond the competence of ship and shipyard, necessitates the removal and exclusion of the crew, and requires bringing extra equipment aboard for the safe performance of the hazardous activity.
The case of. Berryhill v. Pacific Far East Line, 9 Cir., 1956, 238 F.2d 385 certiorari denied 354 U.S. 938, 77 S.Ct. 1400, 1 L.Ed.2d 1537, is authority for the proposition that when the manner of doing the work is foreign to what the ship’s crew could do and involves the use of equipment not used or known on ships, there is no warranty of seaworthiness running to those who are injured in the course of doing such work by reason of any defect in the equipment so used. In that case the plaintiff was injured by the shattering of a grinding wheel brought on board by his employer, Todd Shipyards Corporation, for use in repairs being made on the “shaft keyway” on defendant’s ship; The Court of Appeals held there was no warranty of seaworthiness with respect to the grinding wheel. Judge Barnes pointed out that to hold otherwise would go beyond the Sieracki, Hawn and Petterson 2 cases as the grinding wheel was equipment that the ship could do without, and the shipowner may never have had any reason to know that such equipment existed. That the kind of equipment used is foreign to the vessel is just another way of saying that the work done is not the kind of work normally done by seamen.
My brothers say that this work was merely cleaning a generator and, as cleaning propulsion machinery is the kind of work which seamen would normally do, cleaning a generator is seamen’s.work and those who do it are entitled to a warranty of seaworthiness; This assimilates spraying with carbon tetrachloride to. all cleaning as if it were harmless and commonplace; it is a play on words which by a characterization avoids dealing with a difference in means which completely destroys the validity of the syllogism. Because seamen may be able to do some kind of cleaning does not make seamen of those who do another kind of cleaning which seamen have never done and cannot do; nor does it supply any reason why an outside specialist should be treated, or needs to be treated, like a seaman.
That such general characterization is not a solution is emphasized by Berge v. National Bulk Carriers Corp., 2 Cir., 251 F.2d 717. There the same panel of this court holds unanimously that there is no warranty of seaworthiness to a rigger, engaged in installing a tank bulkhead in the course of rebuilding a vessel, who was injured when the shearing of a defective shackle pin caused a chain tackle to fall and knock him from a scaffold. What Halecki did was no more the kind of work that the crew of a vessel was accustomed to do than was what Berge was doing. Indeed, it was less so. One might characterize Berge’s work as lowering a heavy load into the hold, a normal seaman’s duty done without abnormal risk of harm. Halecki’s work was entirely novel and foreign to what seamen had ever done and far more dangerous to anyone who might be aboard. As in Berge, the work required the cessation of ship’s operations and the removal of the crew.
Passing this point, I must also dissent from the majority’s view that under the New Jersey Death Statute, N.J.S. 2A:31-1 (1952), N.J.S.A., a maritime claim, such as Halecki’s, is not subject to the defense of contributory negligence. There is no basis for saying that the New Jersey legislature meant to abandon the defense of contributory negligence in such cases and it seems to me there is every reason as a matter of common sense and usual practice for saying that they did not mean these cases to be on a *717different basis. I would adopt the view of Curtis v. A. Garcia, 3 Cir., 1957, 241 F.2d 30. Furthermore, it is difficult enough for admiralty lawyers and judges to keep up with the changes and developments in this field without expecting the members of a state legislature, few if any of whom are admiralty lawyers, to take over sight unseen whatever may be held to come along in the kaleidoscope of maritime rights, as against the doctrine of contributory negligence with which New Jersey and her lawyers have long been familiar. To hold otherwise seems to me to embrace a pure fiction for the purpose of implementing “humanitarian policy.”
To refuse to extend the warranty of seaworthiness to Halecki and incorporate by reference comparative negligence info the New Jersey Death Statute would not leave persons in the position of Ilalecki’s survivors without a remedy. Besides the remedies against the employer normally incident to death by industrial accident in New Jersey, see R. S. 34:15-1, 34:15-7, 34:15-8, 34:15-9, N.J.S.A., R.S.Cum.Supp. 34:15-4, N.J.S.A., such persons apparently may alternatively elect to proceed against decedent’s employer under the Longshoremen’s and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, 33 U.S.C.A. § 901 et seq. See Davis v. Department of Labor and Industries of Washington, 1942, 317 U.S. 249, 63 S.Ct. 225, 87 L.Ed. 246; Dunleavy v. Tietjen & Lang Dry Docks, Cty. Ct.1951, 17 N.J.Super. 76, 85 A.2d 343, affirmed App.Div.1952, 20 N.J.Super. 486, 90 A.2d 84. Nor does our refusal foreclose actions against the shipowner or the shipyard for their failure to exercise due care. Indeed such an action was brought by this appellee against Rodermond Industries for its alleged negligence in the events which led up to Halecki’s death. Moreover our reversal in this action would permit retrial of the cause against the shipowner on the theory of negligence.
I would dismiss so much of the complaint as relies on a warranty of seaworthiness, and reverse and remand for a new trial on the issue of negligence.

. See Tetreault, Seamen, Seaworthiness, and the Rights of Harbor Workers, 39 Cornell L.Q. 381 (1954); The Tangled Seine: A Survey of Maritime Personal Injury Remedies, 57 Yale L.J. 243, 252 (1947); Gilmore and Black, The Law of Admiralty, 315-324, 358 (1957).

. Seas Shipping Co. v. Sieracki, 1946, 328 U.S. 85, 66 S.Ct. 872, 90 L.Ed. 1099; Pope & Talbot, Inc., v. Hawn, 1953, 346 U.S. 406, 74 S.Ct. 202, 98 L.Ed. 143; Petterson v. Alaska S.S. Co., 9 Cir., 1953, 205 F.2d 478, affirmed per curiam 1954, 347 U.S. 396, 74 S.Ct. 601, 98 L.Ed. 798.