Court Opinion

ID: 9417962
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 20:45:24.381255+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:53.351816
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brown,
concurring.
I do not dissent from the conclusion of the court, although for forty years the broad language of Mr. Justice Nelson in the case of The Plymouth, 3 Wall. 20, has been accepted by the profession and the admiralty courts as establishing the principle that the jurisdiction of the admiralty does not extend to injuries received by any structure affixed to the land, though such injuries were caused by a ship or other floating body. It received the approval of this court in the case of the Phœnix Insurance Company, 118 U. S. 610, and in that of the Chicago & Pacific Elevator Company, 119 U. S. 388, and has been followed by the courts of at least a dozen different districts, and applied to bridges, piers, derricks and every other class of structure permanently affixed to the soil.
I do not think this case can be distinguished from the prior ones, as, in my opinion, it makes no difference, in principle whether a beacon be affixed to piles driven into the bottom of the river or to a stone projecting from the bottom, or whether it be surrounded by twelve feet or one foot of water, or whether the injury be done to a wharf projecting into a navigable water, or to a beacon standing there, or whether the damage ■ be caused by a negligent fire or by bad steering.
I accept this case as practically overruling the former ones, and as recognizing the principle adopted.by the English Admiralty Court Jurisdiction Act of 1861 (sec. 7), extending the jurisdiction of the admiralty court to “any claim for damages by any ship.” This has been held in many cases to include damage done to a structure affixed to the land. The dis- • ' tinction between damage done to fixed and to floating structures, is a somewhat artificial one, and, in my view, founded *369upon no sound principle; and the fact that Congress, under the Constitution, cannot extend our admiralty jurisdiction, affords an argument for a broad interpretation commensurate with the needs of modern commerce. To attempt to draw , the line of jurisdiction between different kinds of fixed structures, as, for instance, between beacons and wharves, would lead to great confusion and much further litigation.