Court Opinion

ID: 9419826
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:51:40.055081+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:20.800147
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Stone,
dissenting.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter, Mr. Justice Burton and I think the judgment should be reversed.
Respondent, the employee of a stevedoring company, which had contracted with petitioner to load its vessel lying in navigable waters, was injured while so employed, in consequence of the failure of a shackle, a part of the ship’s tackle, due to its hidden defects. The courts below have found that two other defendants were liable for negligence in furnishing the defective shackle. The courts were unable to find that the injury was attributable to any negligent act or omission of the vessel or its owner. But the Court of Appeals below and this Court have sustained a recovery against petitioner on the novel ground that the owner is an insurer against injury caused by the unseaworthiness of the vessel or its appliances to a maritime worker on board, although not a member of the crew or the ship’s company, and not employed by the vessel.
The Court has thus created a new right in maritime workers, not members of the crew of a vessel, which has not hitherto been recognized by the maritime law or by any statute. For this I can find no warrant in history or precedent, nor any support in policy or in practical needs. *104The liability of a vessel or its owner to members of the crew, as an insurer of seaworthiness of the vessel and its tackle, was not recognized by the maritime law of England until established by statute. Merchant Shipping Act, 39 & 40 Viet. c. 80, § 5; 57 & 58 Viet. c. 60, § 458. In this country the right of the seaman to demand, in addition to maintenance and cure, indemnity for injuries resulting from unseaworthiness, was first recognized by this Court in The Osceola, 189 U. S. 158. In later cases it has been established that due diligence of the owner does not relieve him from this obligation. See The Arizona v. Anelich, 298 U. S. 110, 121; Socony-Vacuum Co. v. Smith, 305 U. S. 424, 429, 432; Mahnich v. Southern S. S. Co., 321 U. S. 96, 100, and cases cited; The Neptuno, 30 F. 925; The Frank & Willie, 45 F. 494; The Julia Fowler, 49 F. 277; cf. The Edwin I. Morrison, 153 U. S. 199, 210.
The liability of the vessel or owner for maintenance and cure, regardless of their negligence, was established long before our modern conception of contract. But it, like the liability to indemnify the seaman for injuries resulting from unseaworthiness, has been universally recognized as an obligation growing out of the status of the seaman and his peculiar relationship to the vessel, and as a feature of the maritime law compensating or offsetting the special hazards and disadvantages to which they who go down to sea in ships are subjected. They are exposed to the perils of the sea and all the risks of unseaworthiness, with little opportunity to avoid those dangers or to discover and protect themselves from them or to prove who is responsible for the unseaworthiness causing the injury.
For these reasons the seaman has been given a special status in the maritime law as the ward of the admiralty, entitled to special protection of the law not extended to land employees. Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 U. S. 275, 282-3; The Arizona v. Anelich, supra, 122, 123; Calmar *105S. S. Corp. v. Taylor, 303 U. S. 525; Socony-Vacuum Co. v. Smith, supra, 430; Aguilar v. Standard Oil Co., 318 U. S. 724. See also Judge Addison Brown in The City of Alexandria, 17 F. 390, 394, et seq. Justice Story said in Reed v. Canfield, Fed. Cas. No. 11,641, 1 Sumn. 195, 199: “Seamen are in some sort co-adventurers upon the voyage; and lose their wages upon casualties, which do not affect artisans at home. They share the fate of the ship in cases of shipwreck and capture. They are liable to different rules of discipline and sufferings from landsmen. The policy of the maritime law, for great, and wise, and benevolent purposes, has built up peculiar rights, privileges, duties, and liabilities in the sea-service, which do not belong to home pursuits.”
It is for these reasons that throughout the long history of the maritime law the right to maintenance and cure, and later the right to indemnity for injuries attributable to unseaworthiness, have been confined to seamen. Longshoremen and harbor workers are in a class very different from seamen, and one not calling for the creation of extraordinary obligations of the vessel or its owner in their favor, more than other classes of essentially land workers. Unlike members of the crew of a vessel they do not go to sea; they are not subject to the rigid discipline of the sea; they are not prevented by law or ship’s discipline from leaving the vessel on which they may be employed; they have the same recourse as land workers to avoid the hazards to which they are exposed, to ascertain the cause of their injury and to prove it in court.
Congress has recognized this difference in their status from that of seamen. Although it has given extensive consideration to it in enacting the Longshoremen’s and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, 33 U. S. C. § 901 ff., in 1927, and again, upon its revision in 1934 and 1938, in no instance did Congress extend to longshoremen and *106harbor workers any of the special rights or privileges conferred on seamen by the maritime law. In fact Congress, by the Longshoremen’s Act, cut off from longshoremen and harbor workers the right extended to them by judicial construction of the Jones Act, 46 U. S. C. § 688, International Stevedoring Co. v. Haverty, 272 U. S. 50; Uravic v. Jarka Co., 282 U. S. 234, to enjoy the same right of recovery from the vessel or owner as seamen for negligent injuries sustained while working on navigable waters. Swanson v. Marra Brothers, ante, p. 1. While the Act gave to longshoremen and stevedores a right to compensation against their employer, it neither conferred upon nor withheld from them any rights of recovery for such injuries against third persons. It can hardly be said that the failure of Congress thus to enlarge the rights of longshoremen, so as to make them comparable to those of seamen, is a recognition of existing rights against third persons arising from the warranty of seaworthiness which no court has ever recognized* and which grows out of a status which longshoremen have never occupied.
There are no considerations of policy or practical need which should lead us, by judicial fiat, to do that which Congress, after a full study of the subject, has failed to do. Wherever the injury occurs on navigable waters, Congress has given to longshoremen and harbor workers substantial rights to compensation against their employer for in*107juries inflicted without his fault. South Chicago Co. v. Bassett, 309 U. S. 251. It has left them free to pursue their remedy for injuries resulting from negligence of third parties, including in this case the vessel and the furnishers of the defective shackle. Where the injury occurs on land they are free to pursue the remedy afforded by local law. State Industrial Commission v. Nordenholt Corp., 259 U. S. 263; Smith & Son v. Taylor, 276 U. S. 179; Swanson v. Marra Brothers, ante, p. 1. There would seem to be no occasion for us to be more generous than Congress has been by presenting to them paid-up accident insurance policies at the expense of a vessel by which they have not been employed, and which has not failed in any duty of due care toward them. Apparently under the decision now rendered the maritime worker employed by a vessel on navigable waters, but not a member of the crew, would enjoy rights of recovery not accorded to members of the crew. For he would be entitled to indemnity upon the warranty of seaworthiness as are members of the crew and also to the benefits of the Longshoremen’s and Harbor Workers’ Act from which members of the crew are excluded. See South Chicago Co. v. Bassett, supra, 255-6.
Nor is the rule now announced to be justified as a modern and preferred mode of distributing losses inflicted without fault. Congress, in adopting the Longshoremen’s Act, has chosen the mode of distribution in the case of longshoremen and harbor workers. By 33 U. S. C. § 901 et seq. it has given to them compensation for their injuries, irrespective of fault. Section 933 provides that if a stevedore entitled to compensation elects to recover damages against a third person, the employer must pay as compensation a sum equal to the excess of the amount which the commission determines is payable on account of the injury over the amount recovered against the third person. *108The whole philosophy of liability without fault is that losses which are incidental to socially desirable conduct should be placed on those best able to bear them. Congress has made a determination that the employer is best able to bear the loss which, in this instance, could not be avoided by the exercise of due care. This is an implied determination which should preclude us from saying that the ship owner is in a more favorable position to absorb the loss or to pass it on to society at large, than the employer.

The two cases relied upon by the Circuit Court of Appeals do not lend support to its decision. In Cassil v. United States Emergency Fleet Corp., 289 F. 774, recovery was sought on the ground that the vessel was negligent, and the court merely said that there could be no claim against the vessel unless it was unseaworthy. The court seems to have assumed that a recovery for unseaworthiness could be had only if negligence was shown. See cases cited in Mahnich v. Southern S. S. Co., 321 U. S. 96, 100. In W. J. McCahan Co. v. Stoffel, 41 F. 2d 651, a longshoreman was allowed recovery on the ground of negligence of one of the ship’s employees.