Court Opinion

ID: 9421378
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:58:01.916067+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:29.878047
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Harlan,
whom Mr. Justice Frankfurter and Mr. Justice Burton join,
dissenting.
In my opinion the court below properly dismissed the complaint because the evidence shows affirmatively that *375petitioner was not a member of a “crew of a vessel,” 1 as that term has heretofore been used by the courts, or indeed according to any commonly understood meaning of the expression. Since the passage of the Longshoremen’s Act in 1927,2 such membership has been a prerequisite to the right to sue under the Jones Act.3 Swanson v. Marra Bros., 328 U. S. 1.
According to past decisions, to be a “member of a crew” an individual must have some connection, more or less permanent, with a ship and a ship’s company.4 More particularly, this Court has said that he must be “naturally and primarily on board to aid in . . . navigation,” as distinguished from those “serving on vessels, to be sure, but [whose] service was that of laborers, of the sort performed by longshoremen and harbor workers.” Congress intended to remove from the coverage of the Jones Act “all those various sorts of longshoremen and harbor workers who were performing labor on a vessel.” South Chicago Coal & Dock Co. v. Bassett, 309 U. S. 251, 260, 257.
Petitioner’s relationship to this dredge met none of these requirements. He was simply an ordinary laborer, *376a member of the Common Laborers’ Union. Temporarily unemployed, he applied to his union, which sent him to respondent as a laborer. Respondent was a contractor on the canal-digging project, and employed a construction gang on shore under the supervision of a foreman. This foreman assigned Senko to take the job of “deckhand” or “laborer” on respondent's dredge, the James Wilkinson, a craft which, though afloat, served as a stationary earth-removing machine. His duties there were miscellaneous, consisting of serving as assistant and handy-man to the team of men operating the earth-removing pumps. He carried supplies from shore to dredge and back, cleaned up the dredge, filled the water cooler, and did errands on shore. He worked an eight-hour shift, was paid by the hour, and received premium pay for overtime. He lived at home, drove to work every day, and brought his own meals. He did not belong to the National Maritime Union or any other seamen’s organization. He was subject to the discipline and supervision not of officers of a vessel but of the labor foreman in charge of the construction project, who worked on shore. At any time Senko could have been shifted to a job on shore by the foreman and replaced with one of the shore laborers; in other words, his connection was not with the vessel but with the construction gang. He had no duties connected with navigation; in fact he had never been on the dredge when it was pushed from one location to another, and never even saw it moved.
There is nothing in the record to indicate that petitioner was responsible for the seaworthiness of the dredge, or that he ever performed or was qualified to perform any duties of that type. True, he cleaned lights, but these were not “navigation” lights, as the dredge did not carry the latter except when under tow. In effect he cleaned lanterns and placed them when the construction work continued at night. Again, he took “soundings,” but in *377spite of the maritime flavor of the phrase, the facts permit no salty inference, since the soundings were taken not in aid of navigation (the dredge being completely stationary at such times), but only to measure the amount of silt pumped from the canal. All this means is that Senko occasionally measured the work-progress on an earth-removal project, a task about as nautical as measuring the depth of a natural swimming pool under construction in marshy ground.
I do not think that these facts permit a finding that petitioner was a “member of a crew,” more or less permanently connected with a ship’s company and on board “naturally and primarily” in aid of navigation. His nexus was not with a ship’s company but with a construction crew on shore. He signed no papers to join the vessel and his employment was governed by no “articles”; he was merely assigned by the Laborers’ Union “pusher” to this particular task on an earth-removing project. His boss was not a ship’s officer but a construction superintendent whose office was on land. In fact the record is bare of any of the things which common sense demands of a “ship’s company.” There was no captain, no master, no mate, no ship’s papers or ship’s discipline, no log, no galley, no watches .to stand. And to say that Senko’s job was naturally and primarily in aid of navigation can be done, it seems to me, only at the cost of removing from those words all semblance of content. Not only did Senko have nothing to do with navigation, but he did not “aid” navigation in the sense of helping to maintain the vessel or its crew in a condition to navigate.5 He was *378simply a handy-man and assistant for a crew of men operating an earth-removing machine which happened to be afloat and which, occasionally and always in Senko’s absence, was pushed from place to place.
The fact that it was a jury that found Senko to be “a member of a crew” does not relieve us of the responsibility for seeing to it that what is in effect a jurisdictional requirement of the Jones Act is obeyed. This Court has more than once reviewed similar determinations of other fact-finding bodies, and set them aside when satisfied that they did not meet the requirements of the Jones Act or Longshoremen’s Act. Cantey v. McLain Line, Inc., 312 U. S. 667; Norton v. Warner Co., 321 U. S. 565; Desper v. Starved Rock Ferry Co., 342 U. S. 187. The reason is, of course, as the Court said in the Norton case, supra, that “where Congress has provided that those basic rights [conferred by the Jones Act] shall not be withheld from a class or classes of maritime employees it is our duty on judicial review to respect the command and not permit the exemption [arising from the Longshoremen’s Act] to be narrowed whether by administrative construction or otherwise.” 321 U. S., at 571.6 I cannot see why this same sound reasoning should not apply in reverse, that is, where Congress has provided that a right shall be withheld from a certain class, and where that class has been narrowed by the “construction” of some fact-finding body. Nor, I submit, should it make any difference that such a body is a jury.7 A jury's verdict *379casts no such spell as should lead the Court to permit it to rob this restriction of the Jones Act of meaningful significance. This, in my opinion, is what today’s decision permits.8
I would affirm the decision of the court below. This would not leave petitioner without a remedy. He has already applied for and secured workmen’s compensation under the Illinois Workmen’s Compensation Act. This is the relief which Congress intended him to have, and I would not add to it another remedy denied by Congress.

 It is assumed that this dredge may properly be regarded as a “vessel.” And, with the Court, I do not reach the question of whether the swampy land in which the dredge was operating could be deemed “navigable water,” an additional factor conditioning the applicability of the Jones Act.

 33 U. S. C. § 901 et seq.

 46 U. S. C. § 688.

 See Warner v. Goltra, 293 U. S. 155; South Chicago Coal & Dock Co. v. Bassett, 309 U. S. 251; Norton v. Warner Co., 321 U. S. 565; Desper v. Starved Rock Ferry Co., 342 U. S. 187; The Bound Brook, 146 F. 160, 164; The Buena Ventura, 243 F. 797; Seneca Washed Gravel Corp. v. McManigal, 65 F. 2d 779; De Wald v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 71 F. 2d 810; Diomede v. Lowe, 87 F. 2d 296; Moore Dry Dock Co. v. Pillsbury, 100 F. 2d 245; Wilkes v. Mississippi River Sand & Gravel Co., 202 F. 2d 383, 388.

 I do not, of course, contend that men such as ship’s cooks cannot be members of a crew merely because their actual jobs have nothing to do with making the vessel move. The vital distinction is that such men do contribute to the functioning of the vessel as a vessel — as a means of transport on water. Not so Senko, whose duties had absolutely nothing to do with the dredge in its aspects as a vessel.

 It is worth noting that in Norton, where the Court reversed a determination by a Commissioner that a bargeman in general charge of a barge was not a member of a crew, all of the factors on which the Court relied are conspicuously absent here.

 Certainly South Chicago Coal & Dock Co. v. Bassett, supra, upon which the Court relies, does not suggest that a jury’s verdict on this issue is to be accorded some special sanctity. That case simply held that a District Court could not grant a trial de novo on an issue *379within the primary jurisdiction of the Administrator, under the Longshoremen’s Act. There is no comparable fact-finding procedure under the Jones Act. Moreover, despite the fact that the Longshoremen’s Act gave the Administrator “full power and authority to hear and determine all questions in respect of” claims under the Act, this Court did in fact examine the Administrator’s determination that the plaintiff there was not a member of a crew, and sustained it only after concluding that it was supported by the evidence. Further, the Court’s citation of Bassett in Cantey v. McLain Line, Inc., supra, would seem in context to imply that the Court regarded the result in Bassett as reflecting its own independent determination as to the status of the petitioner there, rather than as a decision passing merely on the scope of judicial review to be accorded to the determination of the Administrator. And, if that be so, Bassett should surely control the result here, since if the Bassett petitioner was as a matter of law not a “member of a crew,” a fortiori, Senko was not.

 Gianfala v. Texas Co., 350 U. S. 879, should not be regarded as an obstacle to reaching what, in my view, is plainly the right result here. The petitioner in Gianfala at least played a part in the operation of moving the barge, and thus arguably was performing a function “in aid of” navigation. Moreover, the per curiam order in Gianfala, entered solely on the basis of the petition for certiorari, without the benefit of an opposing brief or oral argument, can scarcely be regarded as a precedent of much significance.