Court Opinion

ID: 9446724
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:16:55.949612+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:45.384247
License: Public Domain

WOODBURY, Circuit Judge
(concurring) .
Since we do not have to decide the question in this case, I would refrain from expressing so strongly the view that efficient administration of justice requires submission to a jury of a claim for unseaworthiness under the general maritime law whenever jurisdiction over that claim on the law side rests upon the joinder with and pendency of that claim with a claim for negligence under the Jones Act. Perhaps in most situations when Jones Act and unseaworthiness claims are joined it would be better to have a jury pass upon both claims at once. But I would leave the district judges free in their discretion to decide the unseaworthiness claim themselves on the basis of the testimony submitted at a trial by jury of the Jones Act claim. I see no reason why a district judge cannot preside over a jury trial at law and sit in admiralty at the same time and I would leave the way open for a judge to do so if in the exercise of his sound discretion that should seem the appropriate procedure in any particular case. At least, I would not in this case indicate that he ought not do so if he saw fit.
Aside from this relatively minor matter, I heartily concur in Chief Judge Magruder’s excellent and interesting analysis of the law of unseaworthiness. I say this even though in Doucette v. Vincent, 1 Cir., 1952, 194 F.2d 834, 838, I did indicate, I am afraid too casually and with too implicit reliance on authority, that liability for unseaworthiness does not depend upon a shipowner’s negligence and that the owner’s duty to provide a seaworthy ship is a form of absolute duty.