Court Opinion

ID: 9674004
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:21:43.602663+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:25.126215
License: Public Domain

Justices Calvert, Griffin and Smith,
concurring.
We concur in the judgment of the court overruling petitioner’s motion for rehearing. We do not concur in that portion of the opinion on motion for rehearing which deals with the manner of crediting respondent’s shore earnings on the amount allowed for maintenance.
In our opinion on original submission we laid down the rule that the shipowner was entitled to have the entire amount of the seaman’s shore earnings credited against and deducted from the *306amount found by the jury (or the court) to be necessary for the seaman’s maintenance during the period of his disability. Neither party has challenged either the justness or the soundness of that rule by motion for rehearing. The opinion on motion for rehearing nevertheless abandons the rule of crediting there announced and adopts a new theory involving two rules of exclusion or crediting, viz: (1) When the per diem earnings of the seaman are more than the per diem allowance for maintenance and cure, the number of days should be excluded from the period of reckoning and the total excess earnings on those days should be ignored, and (2) when the per diem earnings are less than the per diem allowance for maintenance and cure, the earnings should be credited on the allowance and the seaman awarded the difference on the theory of partial disability.
We believe we should adhere to the rule announced in the original opinion. The theory of allowing maintenance seems to be that the shipowner is under a contractual obligation to support a seaman who, because of injury or illness arising during a voyage, is unable to support himself out of his own earnings from other employment. On this theory it seems to us that the seaman’s full earnings should be used for his maintenance and credited against the amount allowed, whether the earnings be a large amount for a few days services or smaller amounts for several days services. Some of the Federal courts have gone so far as to indicate that the seaman is under an obligation to minimize his damages and that the shipowner is entitled to credit for such amounts as the seaman by the use of diligence could have earned as well as for the amounts actually earned. Warren v. United States, 75 Fed. Supp. 836; Halvorsen v. United States, 284 Fed. 285.
We take it that as a necessary consequence of the theory of crediting of earnings now adopted we have abandoned that portion of our original opinion which suggests that the jury should make fact findings on (d) the total amount of money earned at the time of trial and (e) the total amount of expected future earnings.
Opinion delivered June 20, 1951.