Court Opinion

ID: 9418665
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:34:43.712195+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:07.547723
License: Public Domain

Stone, J.,
concurring:
I concur in the result. As the majority have placed their conclusion, in part at least, on the grounds that a stevedore, while working on a' ship in navigable waters, is a “ seaman ” within the meaning of the Jones Act, International Stevedoring Co. v. Haverty, 272 U. S. 50, and that by the Jones Act Congress has occupied the field and excluded all state legislation having application within it, I am content to rest the case there. Similar effect has *148been, given to the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, N. Y. Central R. R. Co. v. Winfield, 244 U. S. 147.
But I should have found it difficult to say that the present case is controlled by the maritime law and so to suggest that workmen otherwise in the situation of the respondent, but who are not seamen and therefore are not given a remedy by the Jones Act, are excluded from the benefits of a compensation act like that of Wisconsin.
The state act here is contractual, as we have held in Booth Fisheries Co. v. Industrial Comm’n, 271 U. S. 208, and the employer is bound to pay compensation in accordance with the schedules of the act because the parties have agreed that they shall apply rather than the common or any other applicable law. The employer, a wholesale coal dealer, owned or controlled no ships and, except that jit owned a dock at which coal was delivered to it from ships, had no connection with maritime affairs. The employee’s regular work was non-maritime and he spent but two per cent, of his time unloading his employer’s coal from ships. To me it would seem that the rights of parties who have thus stipulated for the benefits of a state statute in an essentially non-maritime employment are not on any theory controlled by the maritime law or within the purview of Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen, 244 U. S. 205, Knickerbocker Ice Co. v. Stewart, 253 U. S. 149, Washington v. Dawson & Co., 264 U. S. 219.
Nor would it seem that resort by an employee only casually working on a ship, through such a non-maritime stipulation, to a state remedy not against the ship or its owner, but against the employer engaged in a non-maritime pursuit, is anything more than a local matter or would impair the uniformity of maritime law in its international or interstate relation. Grant Smith-Porter Ship Co. v. Rohde, 257 U. S. 469; Millers’ Underwriters v. Brand, 270 U. S. 59. And see Western Fuel Co. v. Garcia, 257 U. S. 233, 242. Recovery in a state court upon an *149insurance policy upon the life of a seaman for death occurring on a ship on the high seas while in the performance of his duties would not, I suppose, be deemed to have that effect or be precluded by the admiralty law, even though some of the provisions of the policy were imposed by state statute.
Mr. Justice Holmes and Mr. Justice Brandéis concur in this opinion.