Court Opinion

ID: 9644214
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:50:21.208582+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:09.901501
License: Public Domain

*806SIBLEY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I think the compensation order should be enjoined because the deputy commissioner is •without jurisdiction over the aeeident. The small vessel under repair was not on a marine railway in a fair sense, but on a shipyard. She was off the inclined track which leads to the water and on a leyel side track 8 feet to one side of the marine track and 12.0 feet from the water at high tide. Water had never been and was never expected to be where she was. The place was not within the ebb and flow of the tide, but was true land and cannot be included in navigable waters. Had the vessel been upon the marine railway proper the same thing would have been true. While the railway is used ¿s a substitute- for a dry dock, and a ship thereon is sometimes said to be in dry doek, and while in North Pacific S. S. Co. v. Hall Brothers, 249 U. S. 119, 39 S. Ct. 221, 222, 63 L. Ed. 510, Justice Pitney called it a dry dock, first on page 123 with conscious inaccuracy indicated by quotation marks, nevertheless it is not a dock of any sort. According to the dictionaries and careful literature, a dock is water for the reception of a ship, usually adjacent to wharves which by an extension of the term are also spoken of as docks. Webster’s International Dictionary; City of Boston v. Lecraw, 17 How. at page 434, 15 L. Ed. 118. The ship docks when she enters this water, and ties up to the wharf. The wet dock is fitted with gates to keep the water in and the vessel afloat when the tide goes out. A dry dock is fitted with gates to keep the water out after the tide has receded or the water has been pumped away so that the ship may be worked on within it. A floating dry dock is a submerged vessel for the reception of the ship which by pumping is raised and the ship in it lifted. In all of these the ship floats in and floats out. They are in a fair sense navigable waters. The marine railway is as old as Greek civilization. There was an ancient one across the Isthmus of Corinth. A modem one is described in The Professor Morse (D. C.) 23 F. 803, where an injury to its submerged end was held nonmaritime. No one until recently contended that its land end was navigable waters. Injuries to persons on vessels in a dry dock whether graven or floating are held to be in admiralty jurisdiction because on navigable waters. Gonsalves v. Morse Dry Dock Co., 266 U. S. 171, 45 S. Ct. 39, 69 L. Ed. 228; Butler v. Robins Dry Dock Co., 240 N. Y. 23, 147 N. E. 235; O’Hara’s and Brandeis’ Cases, 248 Mass. 31, 142 N. E. 844, 847. In the last citation Chief Justice Rugg said: “Whether the dry dock is floating or resting upon and attached to land is an immaterial factor in view of these decisions. The essential factor is that the vessel floats into it.” Emphasis is laid on the entry of the vessel by floating in The Jefferson, 215 U. S. at page 142, 30 S. Ct. 54, 54 L. Ed. 125, 17 Ann. Cas. 907. Injuries on the wharf, even to a seaman or a stevedore, though they are under maritime employment, are not on navigable waters but on the land and are under land law. State Industrial Commission of State of New York v. Nordenholt Corp., 259 U. S. 263., 42 S. Ct. 473, 66 L. Ed. 933, 25 A. L. R. 1013; Smith v. Taylor, 276 U. S. 180, 48 S. Ct. 228, 72 L. Ed. 520; The Montezuma (C. C. A.) 19 F.(2d) 355. An injury occurring upon the land end of a marine railway occurs on land and is not a maritime tort. Colonna’s Shipyard v. Lowe (D. C.) 22 F.(2d) 843; Giske v. Austrem (Wash. Super. Ct.) 1931 A. M. C. 1200. These cases seem to mark the first contention that a marine railway is navigable waters. The decisions in The Robert W. Parsons, 191 U. S. 17, 24 S. Ct. 8, 48 L. Ed. 73, and North Pacific S. S. Co. v. Hall Bros., 249 U. S. 119, 39 S. Ct. 221, 63 L. Ed. 510, go only to the point that a contract to repair a launched ship is a maritime contract whether she be afloat or not. They ruled nothing touching-injuries. A carpenter working under such a contract, like a seaman or a stevedore, if injured on the wharf or on other land must have sought redress under the state laws.
Congress first tried, but unavailingly, .to bring harbor workers under state compensation laws, although injuried on navigable waters. The effort failed because injuries on navigable waters belong to admiralty. Washington v. W. C. Dawson & Co., 264 U. S. 219, 44 S. Ct. 302, 68 L. Ed. 646. But by several decisions of the court state laws had been allowed effect on navigable waters when not injurious to the harmony and uniformity of maritime law. Millers’ Underwriters v. Braud, 270 U. S. 59, 46 S. Ct. 194, 70 L. Ed. 470; Grant Smith-Porter Co. v. Rohde, 257 U. S. 469, 42 S. Ct. 157, 66 L. Ed. 321, 25 A. L. R. 1008. To resolve the resulting uncertainty was one aim of the present Longshoremen’s and Harborworkers’ Act, Its coverage section 3 (33 USCA § 903) extends only to “disability or death [which] results from an injury occurring upon the navigable waters of the United States (including any dry dock) and if recovery for the disability or death through workmen’s compensation proceedings may not validly be provided by State law.” The last clause indicates, not an effort to restrict state compensation acts, but *807to so divide jurisdiction that every injury will or may fall under either a state or federal compensation act. But the clause does not mean that the federal act will have a greater scope where state compensation laws are narrow or nonexistent. That the state of Florida has no compensation act will not bring an injury within the federal act if it would not be in New York or Massachusetts. I think a definite, uniform line of cleavage was intended to be laid down, conforming to the previously familiar admiralty jurisdiction over injuries, to wit, that injuries occurring on navigable waters should come under the federal act and those occurring on land should be dealt with under state laws. Dry docks that are dry docks were mentioned to avoid any doubt of the correctness of the decisions that though sometimes dry they are navigable waters, because the ship floats in and out of them.
It is to be noted that the federal act is not a compensation law of the elective sort, which by the consent of the contracting parties becomes a part of their contract. Under such optional acts the compensation is due because the employer agreed to pay it. Ford, Bacon & Davis, Inc., v. Volentine (C. C. A.) 64 F.(2d) 800. If the employment be a maritime contract, its obligations may therefore be enforced in admiralty irrespective of the place of the injury which ripens the contractual obligation to pay. North Pacific S. S. Co. v. Hall Bros., 249 U. S. 119, 39 S. Ct. 221, 63 L. Ed. 510. But the federal act, by section 4 (33 USCA § 901), is plainly compulsory, applying independently of the consent of either employer or employee. And the act operates not only on employer and employee but expressly displaces the rights of third parties who because of the injury or death have claims for damages, whether at law or in admiralty. Section 5 (33 USCA § 905). It is an exei tion of power in the maritime sphere like the police power on land. The Congress in its authority over the sea cannot intrude upon the aiithority of the states over the land with any greater propriety than the states can intrude upon the sea. The reasoning which avails to keep state compensation statutes from applying to maritime injuries avails to prevent the application of an admiralty compensation statute to injuries on land. The place of their occurrence, regardless of the nature of the employment in which they occurred, whether as seaman, stevedore or ship’s carpenter, has always served to mark the boundary of jurisdiction. Atlantic Transport Co. v. Imbrovek, 234 U. S. 52, 34 S. Ct. 733, 58 L. Ed. 1208, 51 L. R. A. (N. S.) 1157; Gonsalves v. Morse Dry Dock Co., 266 U. S. 172, 45 S. Ct. 39, 69 L. Ed. 228; State Industrial Commission of State of New York v. Nordenholt Corp., 259 U. S. at page 272, 42 S. Ct. 473, 66 L. Ed. 933, 25 A. L. R. 1013; Grant Smith-Porter Co. v. Rohde, 257 U. S. at page 476, 42 S. Ct. 157, 66 L. Ed. 321, 25 A. L. R. 1008. If a ship on a side track of a marine railway and 120 feet from the water is within the act, one at any point to which she may he carried is, for there is no legal distinction to be drawn. An extension of the act by construction to marine railways and shipyards would at.least raise a serious question of constitutional power which can be avoided by-giving the words used their plain meaning. By including in navigable waters “any dry dock” Congress only included places that can fairly be held and have been held to be navigable waters; places into and out of which ships float in water. Congress did not say and did not mean marine railways and shipyards. When in legislating as to the maritime services and supplies that should give rise to a lien on ships they desired to include the services of a marine railway along with those of dry docks because similar, they used both terms in their well-understood and proper meanings. 46 USCA §§ 971, 972. If Congress in this act could have covered injuries to harbor workers occurring on land, I think they intentionally did not. Injuries happening about the repair of a ship on permanently dry land are under the law of the land and are not controlled by this compulsory act of Congress.