Reed v. the Yaka

373 U.S. 410, 83 S. Ct. 1349, 10 L. Ed. 2d 448, 1963 U.S. LEXIS 2419

Opinions

Mr. Justice Black

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Petitioner, a longshoreman, filed a libel in rem in a United States District Court against the steamship Yaka to recover for injuries he sustained while engaged in loading the vessel. The Yaka’s owner, Waterman Steamship Corporation, appeared as claimant of the ship but brought in as an additional defendant petitioner’s employer, Pan- Atlantic Steamship Corporation, which at the time of’ the accident was operating Waterman’s ship under a bareboat charter and whose negligence Waterman alleged caused petitioner’s injury. The district judge found that at the time of the injury petitioner was in the ship standing on a stack of rectangular, wooden, pallets used in loading the vessel and that the sole cause of the injury was a latent defect in one of the planks of a pallet,' which caused it to break. The judge held that the defective pallet supplied by- Pan-Atlantic rendered Waterman’s Yaka unseaworthy and that therefore petitioner could recover against the ship. But since the defective pallet was furnished by Pan-Atlantic, the trial judge went on to hold that it must make Waterman whole because of an indémnity clause in the bareboat charter agreement. 183 F. Supp. 69. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed the judgment, holding that neither Waterman nor Pan-Atlantic could be held personally liable for the unseaworthiness and that a libel in rem against a ship could not be sustained unless there was an underlying personal liability to support the in rem action. 307 F. 2d 203. Having previously reserved in Guzman v. Pichirilo, 369 U. S. 698, 700 n. 3 (1962), the question of whether personal liability is essential to the liability of a ship, we granted certiorari. 371 U. S. 938.

In determining that there was no underlying personal liability for the unseaworthiness of the vessel, the Court of Appeals held that (1) Waterman, the actual owner, could not be made to respond in damages because the unseaworthiness of its ship arose after it had been demised under bareboat charter to Pan-Atlantic,¹ and (2) Pan- Atlantic could not. have been held personally liable in damages to petitioner for the unseaworthiriess because Pan-Atlantic was petitioner’s employer under the Longshoremen’s and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act,² and, while that Act permits actions for damages against third persons,³ it provides that compensation liability of an employer under the Act is exclusive and in place of all other liability on his part.⁴

We find it unnecessary to decide whether a ship may ever be held liable for its unseaworthiness where no personal liability could be asserted because, in our view, , the Court of Appeals erred in holding that Pan-Atlantic could not be held personally liable' for the unseaworthiness of the ship which caused petitioner’s injury.

Pan-Atlantic was operating the Yaka as demisee or bareboat charterer from Waterman. Under such arrangements full possession and control .of the vessel are delivered up to the charterer for a period of time.⁵ The ship is then directed by its Master and manned by his crew; it makes his voyages and carries the cargo he chooses. Services performed on board the ship are primarily for his benefit. It has long been recognized in the law of admiralty that for many, if not most, purposes the bareboat charterer is to be treated as the owner,⁶ generally called owner pro hac vice. We have no doubt, and indeed Pan-Atlantic admits,⁷ that, barring explicit statutory exemption, the. bareboat charterer is personally liable for the unseaworthiness of a chartered vessel,⁸ and that this liability will support a libel in rem against the vessél.⁹ Since the unseaworthiness of the Yaka is no longer in dispute, the only question is whether the Longshoremen’s Act prevents recovery by petitioner for Pan-Atlantic’s breach of its warranty of seaworthiness.

In Seas Shipping Co. v. Sieracki, 328 U. S. 85 (1946), we held that a shipowner’s warranty of seaworthiness extended to a longshoreman injured while loading the ship, even though the longshoreman was employed by an independent contractor. In doing so, we noted particularly the hazards of marine service, the helplessness of the men to ward off the perils of unseaworthiness, the harshness of forcing them' to shoulder their losses alone, and the broad range of the “humanitarian policy” of the doctrine of seaworthiness, which we held not to depend upon any kind of contract. 328 U. S., at 93-95. We further held that the Longshoremen’s' and Harbor Workers’ Act was not intended to take away from longshoremen' the traditional remedies- of the sea, so that recovery for unseaworthiness could be had notwithstanding the availability of compensation. • Ten years later, in Ryan Stevedoring Co. v. Pan-Atlantic S. S. Corp., 350 U. S. 124 (1956), we were faced with the question of whether a shipowner’who was forced to pay damages to a longshoreman injured by the unsafe storage of cargo could "recover indemnity from the stevedoring company for whom the longshoreman worked. Even in the absence of an indemnity provision, the Court held that the stevedoring company was liable over to the shipowner because it had promised to store the.cargo safely. The Court was not convinced by. arguments that its result made the eco nomic burden of the longshoreman’s recovery fall on the stevedoring employer contrary to the purpose of the Act. Thus, there can be no doubt that, if the petitioner here had been employed to do this particular work by an independent stevedoring company rather than directly by the owner, he could have recovered damages for his injury from the owner who could have then under Ryan shifted the burden of the recovery to petitioner’s steve-doring employer. Yet the Court of Appeals held, and Pan-Atlantic would have us hold, that petitioner must be completely denied the traditional and basic protection of the warranty of seaworthiness simply because Pan-Atlantic was not only the owner pro hac vice of the ship but was also petitioner’s employer. In making this argument, Pan-Atlantic has not pointed and could not point to any economic difference between giving relief in this case, where the owner acted as his own stevedore, and in one in which the owner' hires an independent company. In either case, under Ryan, the burden ultimately falls on the company whose default caused the injury. Pan-Atlantic relies simply on the literal wording of the statute, and it must be admitted that the statute on its face lends support to Pari-Atlantic’s construction. But we cannot now consider the wording of the statute alone. We must view it in the light of our prior cases in this area, like Sieracki, Ryan, and others, the holdings of which have been 'left unchanged by Congress. In particular, we pointed out several times in the Sieracki case, which has been consistently followed since,¹⁰ that a shipowner’s obligation of seaworthiness cannot be shifted about, limited, or escaped by contracts or by the absence of contracts and that the shipowner’s obligation is rooted, not in contracts, but in the hazards of the work. And Ryan’s holding that a negligent stevedoring company must indemnify a shipowner has in later cases been followed and to some degree extended.¹¹ In the light of this whole body of law, statutory and decisional, only.blind' adherence to the superficial meaning of a statute could prompt us to ignore the fact that Pan-Atlantic was not only an employer of longshoremen but was also a bareboat charterer and operator of a ship and, as such, was charged with the traditional, absolute, and nondelegable obligation of seaworthiness which it should not be permitted to avoid. We have previously said that the Longshoremen’s Act “must be liberally construed in conformance with its purpose, and in a way which avoids harsh and incongruous results.” ¹² We think it would produce a harsh and incongruous result, one out of keeping with the dominant intent of Congress to help longshoremen,¹³ to distinguish between liability to longshoremen injured under precisely the same circumstances béeause some draw their pay directly from a shipowner and others from a stevedoring company doing the ship’s service. Petitioner’s need for protection from unseaworthiness was neither more nor less than that of a longshoreman working for a stevedoring company. As we said in a slightly different factual context, “All were subjected to the same danger. All were entitled to like treatment under law.” ¹⁴ We conclude that petitioner was not barred by the Long shoremen’s Act from relying on Pan-Atlantic’s liability as a shipowner for the Yaka’s unseaworthiness in order to support his libel in rem against the vessel.

Reversed.

Footnotes

1

Whether a bareboat charter’absolves the owner from liability on its warranty of seaworthiness is a question we also reserved in Guzman v. Pichirilo, 369 U. S. 698, 700 (1962). We do not reach that question here.

Counsel state that an in personam complaint against Waterman was dismissed and no appeal was taken by petitioner. But this has no relevancy here.

2

44 Stat. 1424 (1927), 33 U. S. C. §§901-950.

3

33 U. S. C. § 933.

4

33 U. S. C. § 90S.

5

See Guzman v. Pichirilo, 369 U. S. 698, 699-700 (1962), and cases there cited; Gilmore and Black, The Law of Admiralty (1957), 215.

6

See, e.g., Leary v. United, States, 14 Wall. 607, 610 (1872); United States v. Shea, 152 U. S. 178 (1894).

7

Pan-Atlantic states in its brief, “Whether we call him bareboat charterer, owner pro hac vice, or demisee, it is he who ‘is the war-rantor of seaworthiness.’ ”

8

Cf. Cannella v. Lykes Bros. S. S. Co., 174 F. 2d 794 (C. A. 2d Cir. 1949); Cannella v. United States, 179 F. 2d 491 (C. A. 2d Cir. 1950).

9

See, e. g., Crumady v. The Joachim Hendrik Fisser, 358 U. S. 423 (1959).

10

See, e. g., Pope & Talbot, Inc., v. Hawn, 346 U. S. 406 (1953) ; Alaska S. S. Co. v. Petterson, 347 U. S. 396 (1954); Rogers v. United States Lines, 347 U. S. 984 (1954); Crumady v. The Joachim Hendrik Fisser, 358 U. S. 423 (1959).

11

See, e. g., Weyerhaeuser S. S. Co. v. Nacirema Operating Co., 355 U. S. 563 (1958); Crumady v. The Joachim Hendrik Fisser, 358 U. S. 423 (1959); Waterman S. S. Corp. v. Dugan & McNamara, Inc., 364 U. S. 421 (1960).

12

Voris v. Eikel, 346 U. S. 328, 333 (1953).

13

See S. Rep. No. 973, 69th Cong., 1st Sess. (1926); H. R. Rep. No. 1190, 69th Cong., Ist Sess. (1926).

14

Pope & Talbot, Inc., v. Hawn, 346 U. S. 406, 413 (1953).