Adamowski v. Bard

193 F.2d 578, 1952 A.M.C. 259
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Third Circuit
DecidedJanuary 9, 1952
DocketNos. 10499, 10500, and 10587
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 193 F.2d 578 (Adamowski v. Bard) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Adamowski v. Bard, 193 F.2d 578, 1952 A.M.C. 259 (3d Cir. 1952).

Opinion

BIGGS, Chief Judge.

The answer to a single question presented by the three suits at bar, two original proceedings in mandamus and an appeal from the court below denying relief in the nature of mandamus,1 disposes of all three cases. The allegations of the Adamowski petition, No. 10,499 are typical.

Adamowski, a seaman employed in the United States Merchant Marine, sued Gulf Oil Corporation in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (C.A. No. 9,386) to recover damages, wages, and maintenance and cure because of injuries and disability allegedly sustained by him as a seaman in Gulfs services. The suit resulted in two verdicts in favor of Adamowski. As to the Jones Act verdict, 46 U.S.C. § 688, Gulf moved for judgment n.o.v. The court below granted the motion and entered judgment for Gulf. D.C., 93 F.Supp. 115. Adamowski thereupon appealed to this court at our No. 10,332.

Thereafter Adamowski wrote Blumberg, one of the official court reporters of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania,2 requesting Blumberg to furnish him with a transcript of the stenographic record made at the trial of this case without prepayment of fees or costs or furnishing security therefor.3 Blumberg refused to furnish the transcript. On November 7, 1950 we had dismissed an appeal taken by Watlack against North Atlantic and Gulf Steamship Co., Inc.,- on the ground that the order was not an appealable one. 28 U.S.C. §§ 1291 and 1292.4 Watlack Chad appealed from an order of the court below denying his motion which asked that an official reporter furnish him with the stenographic transcript of the record in his case. The circumstances were substantially similar to those presented by Adamowski’s petition. Properly deeming the dismissal of Watlack’s appeal to rule the case at bar, Adamowski then petitioned this court for a writ of mandamus directed to Judge Bard to require him to enter an order in Adamowski’s case to compel the reporter to furnish the stenographic transcript. Adamowski also seeks a writ directed to the court reporter to require him to furnish the transcript. Answers were filed and the case has been fully briefed and argued.

Title 28 U.S.C. § 1916 provides: “In all courts of the United States, seamen may institute and prosecute suits and appeals in their own names and for their own benefit for wages or salvage or the enforcement of laws enacted for their health or safety without prepaying fees or costs or furnishing security therefor.” It is conceded by the respondents that Adamowski is a seaman and that his suit in the court below falls within the purview of Section 1916 as to' the prepayment of all fees or ■ court costs save only transcript fees. The question for our determination is not whether the seaman must prepay all other fees and costs but whether an official reporter must furnish him with a transcript of the proceedings at the trial of his cause without prepayment of costs or furnishing security.

[580]*580Adamowski relies on the principle enunciated in Baihbridge v. Merchants & Miners Transp. Co., 287 U.S. 278, 282, 53 S.Ct. 159, 77 L.Ed. 302, that since seamen are wards of the admiralty and Congress has dealt with them as a favored class, all statutes enacted for their benefit must be liberally construed, and that since a seaman is entitled to “institute” and “prosecute” his suit and his appeal without prepayment of costs, Congress intended the services and facilities of every court officer to be afforded 'him for the prosecution of litigation of the sort with which we are here concerned without prepayment or giving security. Adamowski urges that since Congress in 1944 by the Court Reporter Act, 58 Stat. 5, now incorporated in part in § 753, Title 28, U.S.C., made court reporters officers of the district courts, it was the congressional intention that court reporters should be in the same position and status as the clerk of court who must render to seamen the services of his office without prepayment of costs. He points out that reporters’ fees for transcripts are listed as “costs” which may be taxed pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1920, that the word “costs” cannot have different meanings in the same statute and that since seamen are exempted from the prepayment of “costs” or giving security therefor by 28 U.S.C. § 1916, the conclusion is inevitable that reporters’ fees for transcripts are costs within the meaning not only of Section 1920 but also of Section 1916.5 6>6 Adamowski says that as a ward of the admiralty he is entitled to a generous interpretation of the statutes favoring seamen and that these require him to be furnished transcripts by the official reporter without prepayment of costs or giving security.

But that portion of the Court Reporter Act now embodied in Section 753(f) of Title 28, U.S.C. provides that each reporter may charge and collect fees for transcripts requested by the parties, including the United States, at rates prescribed by the court subject to the approval of the Judicial Conference of the United States;7 that fees for transcripts to persons allowed to sue or appeal in forma pauperis should be paid by the United States out of money appropriated for that purpose,8 and that “the reporter may require any party requesting a transcript to prepay the estimated fee in advance except as to transcripts that are to be paid for by the United States9>10

The respondents point out that Section 753(f) .describes the duties imposed on official court reporters. The reporter is authorized to make charges for transcripts and these charges he lawfully pockets as his own. Specifically the statute provides that he is under no duty to furnish transcript without prepayment of costs or the furnishing of security to any party litigant save the United States.

[581]*581It appears therefore that we are surrounded on the face of the Act by a wall of logic and that the drafters of the Judicial Code, probably inadvertently, have incorporated into one Act provisions which are almost, if not entirely, irreconcilable. We must break through the wall of logic at its weakest point and we therefore fall back on the rule of statutory construction that a specific statutory provision may not be negatived by imposing upon it inferences or even statements from more general legislative declarations even if found in the same act. See N.L.R.B. v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation, 301 U.S. 1, 30, 57 S.Ct. 615, 81 L.Ed. 893, and the authorities there cited.

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193 F.2d 578, 1952 A.M.C. 259, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/adamowski-v-bard-ca3-1952.