Court Opinion

ID: 9455106
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:11:21.438611+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:27.585539
License: Public Domain

COFFIN, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I concur in the court’s conclusion and share what seems to be its ultimate rationale. The purpose of this separate statement is to underscore that rationale, which, in my view, is more strongly supported by the relevant cases than the court’s opinion reflects.
There are two elements in'the Federal Employees’ Compensation Act which together support denial of contribution to appellee: the immunity from suit by the injured party conferred on the government by section 8116(c); and the provisions establishing and protecting the Employees’ Compensation Fund as a source for payment of the obligations stemming from the government’s absolute liability for benefits.
The significance of the first element springs from the basic justification of contribution. As Prosser succinctly states it,
“There is obvious lack of sense and justice in a rule which permits the entire burden of a loss, for which two defendants were equally, unintentionally responsible, to be shouldered onto one alone, according to the accident of a successful levy of execution, the existence of liability insurance, the plaintiff’s whim or spite, or his collusion with the other wrongdoer, while the latter goes scot free.” Prosser, Torts (Hornbook Series, 3d ed. 1964), p. 275.
In the case where one of the tortfeasors is immune from suit by the injured party — our case — -the rationale behind contribution no longer exists, for there is no possibility of the arbitrary, fortuitous, or collusive choice of defendants which underlies contribution. That the government may go “scot free” may be somewhat unfair, but the unfairness stems not from the law of contribution but from the fact that the government is given immunity under section 8116(c) in exchange for strict liability for specified benefits for all injuries of its covered employees.
*348Weyerhaeuser S. S. Co. v. United States, 372 U.S. 597, 83 S.Ct. 926, 10 L.Ed.2d 1 (1963), helps appellee not at all. The Court observed, at 601, 83 S.Ct. at 929 that “[t]here is no evidence whatever that Congress was concerned with the rights pf unrelated third parties” in passing section 8116(c). This observation has no bearing here because, as noted above, immunity from contribution arises from tort immunity not by legislative intent but because the underlying justification for contribution no longer exists when one tortfeasor is ^immune from suit by the injured party.' Even were appellee to have had a direct cause of action in tort against the government, it could not rely on Weyerhaeuser to recover for its payments to the injured government employee. Weyerhaeuser was, as the whole opinion and sequence from grant of certiorari to holding indicate, strictly the product of a unique admiralty doctrine in which payments to victims are included in defining damages to be shared.* The Court there found no intent to disrupt the age-old doctrine of divided damages in admiralty eases; I find no intent to alter the traditional rule that tort immunity yields contribution immunity. See Prosser, supra at 277; 19 A.L.R.2d 1003; 26 A.L.R.3d 1283.
The second element in this case is the linkage of a compensation scheme based on absolute liability with a fund which is protected in part by a recoupment provision when employees are injured by others, section 8132. Its significance for our case, it seems to me, was settled by Pope & Talbot, Inc. v. Hawn, 346 U.S. 406, 411-412, 74 S.Ct. 202, 98 L.Ed. 143 (1953), in which the Court held, as to a similar scheme, that preventing the employer from recouping benefits paid would frustrate the purpose of the statute. Surely that same frustration occurs here if appellee can defeat recoupment. That there was no right of contribution in Pope & Talbot did not weigh heavily on the Court’s mind and does not seem to me to detract at all from the authority of the case as applied to our situation. I concede that it might not be conclusive if appellee’s right were of a more compelling nature. Compare Wallenius Bremen G.m.b.H. v. United States, 409 F. 2d 994 (4th Cir. 1969) with United Air Lines, Inc. v. Wiener, 335 F.2d 379 (9th Cir. 1964), cert. denied, 379 U.S. 951, 85 S.Ct. 452, 13 L.Ed.2d 549 (1964).
The presence of this statutory fund and scheme is also an adequate basis for distinguishing Zarrella v. Miller, 100 R.I. 545, 217 A.2d 673 (1966), which gives the court so much concern. The Rhode Island court was willing to subject a husband, who could not be sued by his wife, to liability for contribution to a joint tortfeasor. It thus applied contribution where the traditional justification — the possibility of a captious choice of defendant — was lacking; but, as the court there points out, with the marital relationship removed from the case by a change in party plaintiff, there was no reason for recognizing the interspousal immunity. This, reasoning does not apply to allow contribution from an employer subject to a workmen’s compensation system. A change of party plaintiff from injured victim to liable tortfeasor would not remove the fact that the legislative purpose would be frustrated if third parties could defeat the recoupment provision. Pope & Talbot, Inc. v. Hawn, supra.

 For this reason I see no useful purpose in speculating what appellee’s recovery would have been if appellee had a direct cause of action. It would have recovered its damages — but without inclusion of any amount paid to the employee. Moreover, the court’s reference to $4,-300 seems to imply that in contribution each party is obligated to pay half of what it would have had to pay had it been the lone tortfeasor. That logic would mean that the injured party in this ease only gets $29,300 instead of the $50,000, i. e., $25,000 from Newport (half what it would have paid) and $4,300 from the government (half what it would have paid).