128 F.2d 608 | D.C. Cir. | 1942
This is an action, brought under the provisions of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920,
At the trial it was agreed that appellee has its principal office and place of business in the District of Columbia and is engaged in dredging sand and gravel from the banks of the Potomac River on land owned or leased by it for that purpose. In its dredging operation appellee uses a stripper dredge, which at the time of the accident was engaged in removing top soil, mud, and clay from the highlands immediately abutting the river. “The dredge was actually in an artificial water basin created by its own work and on land belonging to appel-lee”. The method of work was, first, to remove the top soil down to the gravel levels, then with another dredge to scoop up the sand and gravel and dump it into scows for removal to the District. The dredges have no self-propulsion and are towed by tugs to the place of work and there held in place by anchor poles called “spuds”. Four persons were employed on board, — the captain, whose job it was to supervise the work and operate the stripper bucket, the cook, the fireman, and appellant, the deck hand. The main duty of the latter was to coal up the dredge from the scow, the coal being used to fire the engine which operated the scoop shovel or bucket. Appellant was injured when a drive chain, which had jumped off the deck sprocket and wound around the sprocket of the main engine, struck him on the head as it was released by reversal of the engine.
First. As originally used in maritime nomenclature, the term “seaman” meant a mariner or a person trained to reef and steer and maneuver a vessel. His contract of employment was evidenced by his signing the ship’s articles. His duties and obligations were imposed and his rights and privileges protected by federal statutes. But under modern laws and latter day adjudications the term has lost its original rigidity and taken on a much wider scope. Thus, as used in the federal statutes, every person (apprentices excepted) who shall be employed or engaged in any capacity on board any vessel belonging to any citizen of the United States shall be deemed and taken to be a seaman.
“We cannot believe that Congress willingly would have allowed the protection to men engaged upon the same maritime duties to vary with the accident of their being employed by a stevedore rather than by the ship.”
But in 1927 Congress, in the passage of the Longshoremen’s and Llarbor Workers’ Act,
This brings us, then, to the question whether appellant was, when injured, a “member of a crew” of the dredge boat. This, question, we think, is definitely answered by the Supreme Court in South Chicago C. & D. Co. v. Bassett, 309 U.S. 251, 60 S.Ct. 544, 546, 84 L.Ed. 732. In that case the decedent was employed on a vessel of 312 net tons used for harbor fueling of steamboats and other marine equipment. The vessel was licensed to operate in the Calumet River and harbor and in the Indiana River and harbor. It supplied coal to other vessels on their order, an operation consuming only a couple of hours. Its certificate of inspection required it to have on board a crew consisting of a licensed master and pilot, a licensed chief engineer, three seamen and one fireman. At the time in question the vessel had her full complement aboard, namely, a captain, an engineer, a fireman, and three deck hands, the decedent being one of the latter. His work on the vessel consisted of “facilitating the flow of coal from his boat to the vessel being fueled”, throwing the ship’s lines in making fast, and releasing them at the conclusion of a fueling opera
Answering the question, the Supreme Court first said that there was no doubt of the power of Congress to provide for the payment by employers of compensation to employees injured on a vessel in the navigable waters, and that for such employees Congress had provided compensation under the Longshoremen’s Act and made it exclusive. “This,” the Court said,, “made inapplicable to such employees the provision, of Section 33 of the Merchant Marine Act”. Passing then to the question whether or not the particular employee involved was at the time of his death a member of the crew of the vessel, the Court said the question should be answered in relation to his actual duties and that, since in that case these did not pertain to navigation aside from the incidental task of helping make the boat fast when mooring alongside another boat or at the dock, services which the Court thought could be performed by a harbor worker as well as by a seaman, and that since his primary duty was to facilitate the flow of coal to the vessel being fueled, he was appropriately within the class of longshoremen or other casual workers on the water and hence within the provisions of the Longshoremen’s Act. In that case, as in the instant case, the man was carried on the pay roll as a deck hand, but the actual duties — the test applied by the Supreme Court — of the decedent there and of the injured here were so nearly alike as to make the rule in that case definitely applicable here. In addition, much of a maritime nature which pertained to the vessel, her master, her crew, and the work being done in that case, is lacking here. Therefore, if it be correct to say, as the Supreme Court has said, that the decedent in that case was not a member of the crew and accordingly was within the class of persons covered by the Longshoremen’s Act, it inevitably follows that the same conclusion must be reached here.
Cases in the lower federal courts, both before and since the Bassett case, are generally to the same effect. In Dewald v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 4 Cir., 71 F.2d 810, a bargeman engaged in checking and supervising the loading and unloading of cargo was held not to be a seaman within the terms of the Merchant Marine Act, nor a member of the crew within the meaning of the Longshoremen’s Act, and hence to be covered by the provisions of the latter act.
Likewise, in Harper v. Parker, D.C., 9 F.Supp. 744, Judge Chesnut, an admiralty judge of recognized authority, held that a scowman, whose duties were to look after the scow and its loading and to assist with the mooring lines, was not a master or member of a crew but was an employee under the terms of the Longshoremen’s Act.
In Diomede v. Lowe, 2 Cir., 87 F.2d 296, certiorari denied Moran Bros. C. Co. v. Diomede, 301 U.S. 682, 57 S.Ct. 783, 81 L.Ed. 1340, an employee in charge of a dump scow with no means of self-propulsion, whose duties were to supervise the loading and unloading and to remain on board at all times, and who was accidentally drowned in the navigable waters of the United States, was held not to be either the master or a member of the crew of a vessel within the meaning of the exclusion provision of the Longshoremen’s Act. See, also, Hawn v. American S. S. Co., 2 Cir., 107 F.2d 999; Cantey v. McLain Line, Inc., D.C., 32 F.Supp. 1023, affirmed, 2 Cir., 114 F.2d 1017; Moore Drydock Co. v. Pillsbury, 9 Cir., 100 F.2d 245; Union Oil Co. v. Pillsbury, 9 Cir., 63 F.2d 925.
Second. It is at least very doubtful whether, in the light of the agreed facts, the character of the work being done by the dredge at the time of the injury was itself maritime, so as to bring appellant, while doing the work, within the admiralty jurisdiction. Cf. The Montezuma, 2 Cir., 19 F.2d 355. The facts stipulated show that at the time of injury the dredge was removing the top soil from the Oxon Hill farm immediately adjacent to the river front. As a result of this, “the dredge was actually in an artificial water basin created by its own work and on land belonging to the defendant [appellee]”. If this statement be accepted literally, it is apparent that the work was not then being done upon a navigable waterway of the United States, but was a dredging operation in all respects as if the dredge were actually located on the land. For a full discussion of this aspect of the subject in cases parallel or nearly parallel in their facts to those confronting us here, see Kibadeaux v. Standard Dredging Co., 5 Cir., 81 F.2d 670, 672; Fuentes v. Gulf Coast Dredging Co., 5 Cir.,
Affirmed.
Act of June 5, 1920, Tit. 46 U.S.C.A. § 688.
45 Stat. 600, D.C.Code 1941, §§ 36— 501, 36 — 502, 33 U.S.C.A. § 901 note.
Tit. 46 U.S.C.A. § 713.
272 U.S. 50, 47 S.Ct. 19, 71 L.Ed. 157.
Tit. 33 U.S.C.A. § 901 et seq.
See the statement of Judge Coleman in Obrecht-Lynch Corp. v. Clark, D.C. Md., 30 F.2d 144, 146.