188 P. 803 | Cal. | 1920
Certiorari to review the action of the Industrial Accident Commission in awarding death benefits to respondents Maria and Carmina Soarez. The deceased, Joe Soarez, died as the result of an accidental injury sustained by him while employed as a stevedore on the deck of petitioner's vessel, which was at the time discharging a cargo of lumber at a San Francisco dock.
The rights and liabilities of the parties in connection with the injury and death of Soarez were matters clearly within admiralty jurisdiction, and, prior to the amendment of the Judicial Code in 1917, the application of the California Workmen's Compensation Act (Stats. 1917, p. 831) would have been an unwarranted invasion of the admiralty jurisdiction of the federal courts. (Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen,
At the time the decision in the Jensen cage was rendered, sections 24 and 256 of the Judicial Code gave to the district courts of the United States "exclusive original cognizance of all civil causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction . . . saving to suitors in all cases, the right of a common-law remedy, where the common law is competent to give it." (36 Stat. 1091, 1160, c. 231; U.S. Comp. Stats., secs. 991, [3], 1233.) By act of October 6, 1917, hereinafter referred to as "the amendment," Congress amended the Judicial Code to extend the saving clause to secure "to claimants the rights and remedies under the Workmen's Compensation Law of any state." (Act Oct. 6, 1917, c. 97, 40 Stat. 395, sec. 2; Fed. Stats. Ann. Supp. 1918, pp. 401, 414; U.S. Comp. Stats. Supp. 1919, secs. 991 [3], 1233.)
Petitioner resists the application of the amendment in support of the award in the instant case upon the ground that the said amendment is in conflict with article III, section *439 2, of the United States constitution and therefore wholly void.
[1] Article III, section 2, of the constitution provides that the judicial power of the federal courts shall extend to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction. It is the theory of petitioner that the existing law of the sea was impliedly designated by this provision to furnish the rules by which the rights of litigants in maritime cases were to be determined. The correctness of this theory is not open to question. (Benedict's Admiralty, 4th ed., sec. 139; Willoughby on the Constitution, c. 55; The Genessee Chief, 12 How. 443, [13 L.Ed. 1058]; The Lottawanna, 21 Wall. 558, [22 L. Ed. 654]; Workman
v. New York,
[2] On behalf of respondents, the suggestion is made that the numerous decisions upholding the constitutionality of the old "saving to suitors" clause of the Judicial Code foreclose all discussion in the instant case, for the reason that the present amendment is merely an expansion of that clause. The difficulty with this reasoning lies in the fact that the original "saving clause" saved remedies only, whereas the amended clause saves not only remedies but rights as well. Under the original clause, the substantive law, wherever administered, was for maritime cases the law of the sea. (Chelentis v. Luckenbach S.S. Co., *440
The constitutionality of the amendment to the Judicial Code has been upheld in Stewart v. Knickerbocker Ice Co.,
This reasoning appears to us to be based upon a misconception of the Jensen case. It is true that in that case four justices dissented, but it is in the prevailing opinion that we must seek for a statement of the law as established by the decision of the court. It is also true that that opinion concedes the difficulty of determining the exact extent to which state legislation may limit or affect maritime rights and states that, considering the former opinions of the court, "it must now be accepted as settled doctrine that . . . Congress has paramount power to fix and determine the maritime law which shall prevail throughout the country." The court did not mean to imply, however, that Congress in the exercise of this "paramount power" or that the state legislatures in the exercise of their somewhat indeterminate authority could destroy the uniformity of the maritime law which it was the aim of the constitution to secure. That the uniformity of the maritime law is guaranteed by the constitution itself is unequivocally stated and restated in the opinion of the court. That such, indeed, was the fundamental basis of the prevailing opinion is clearly recognized in the opinions of the dissenting justices. Since, therefore, it has been determined that, whatever may be the power of Congress or of the state legislatures in maritime matters, the constitution itself guarantees the uniformity of the maritime law, we can see no escape from the necessity of considering whether or not the amendment to the Judicial Code destroys the uniformity so guaranteed. *442
Respondents contend that by granting to Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states and with the Indian tribes, the framers of the constitution evinced a purpose to secure consistency and uniformity of regulation identical with that evinced by extending the judicial power of the federal courts to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction. With this contention as a basis, respondents argue that the case of James ClarkDistilling Co. v. Western Maryland R. Co.,
In James Clark Distilling Co. v. Western Maryland R. Co.,supra, the United States supreme court held that Congress had power to forbid "the interstate shipment or transportation of intoxicating liquor which was intended by any person interested therein to be received, possessed, sold, or in any manner used either in the original package or otherwise, in violation of any law of the state into which the liquor is transported." It was claimed "that the act was not within the power given to Congress to regulate because it submitted liquors to the control of the states by subjecing interstate commerce in such liquors to present and future state prohibitions, and hence, in the nature of things was wanting in uniformity." It is not, we think, open to serious question but that this claim would be sound as applied to any ordinary article of commerce or but that it would have prevailed with the court had liquor been regarded, as it once was, as an ordinary article of commerce. *443
(Bowman v. Chicago N.W. R. Co.,
The difference between the character of the Webb-Kenyon Act and the amendment to the Judicial Code now under consideration, as well as the difference between the subjects *444 of which these two laws treat, is manifest. The one deals with certain property the abuse of which is a menace to society. The other deals with ships (of whose vital importance to the welfare and even to the life of the nation the recent war furnishes a vivid reminder) and subjects them at one and the same time to the varying, and even conflicting, laws of the many states at whose ports they must call in the course of their necessary wanderings. As stated in The Lottawanna, 21 Wall. 558, [22 L.Ed. 654]: "The general system of maritime law which was familiar to the lawyers and statesmen of the country when the constitution was adopted was most certainly intended and referred to when it was declared in that instrument that the judicial power of the United States shall extend 'to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction.' . . . One thing, however, is unquestionable; the constitution must have referred to a system of law coextensive with, and operating uniformly in, the whole country." There was no general system of liquor laws designed to be preserved by the constitution. Indeed, the subject matters of the two enactments which respondents seek to link together are so vitally and patently different in nature, purpose, history, and circumstance that we find it impossible to conceive that the question of the constitutionality of one is conclusively determined by the ruling on the constitutionality of the other. We therefore consider ourselves not only free, but also under a manifest and unescapable duty, to consider on its own merits the question as to whether or not the Judicial Code as amended in effect destroys the uniformity of the admiralty and maritime law, which, like the law-merchant, is always national, even international, in character, and necessarily so to fulfill its mission.
It is only in case the state Workmen's Compensation Acts merely assume to regulate matters of a local nature admitting of diversity of treatment according to local necessities that their adoption by Congress as part of the maritime law would not be destructive of that uniformity which it was the aim of the constitution to secure. (Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, [6 L.Ed. 23]; Port Richmond Ferry v. Hudson County,
It is true that this language was used of the Workmen's Compensation Act of New York as applied to maritime accidentsex proprio vigore. But by no possible process of reasoning can it be asserted that that act, or any of the other varying and conflicting Workmen's Compensation Acts of the several maritime states, can have the effect of destroying the uniformity of the general maritime law when their force is derived from the respective state legislatures, but that these identical acts have precisely' the opposite effect when their force is derived from the act of Congress. If the Workmen's Compensation Act of New York, or of California, operating in the field of maritime accidents by the act of the state legislature would have the effect of inflicting upon commerce a far more serious injury than that which would have resulted from the Washington statute authorizing a materialman's lien which was condemned in TheRoanoke, supra, its effect in the same field can be no less injurious and no more consonant with the uniformity of regulation which it was the aim of the constitution to secure if its operation is extended to that field by the act of Congress. If the effect of the statute as enacted by the state legislature was to make its application to maritime accidents a violation of the constitution of the United States by reason of the fact that it destroyed the uniformity of the law of the sea, such must of necessity be its effect when enacted by Congress, for the identical conflicts and inconsistencies are adopted and perpetuated.
[3] We therefore conclude that the amendment to the Judicial Code is unconstitutional in that it violates article III, section 2, of the constitution of the United States.
The award is annulled.
Shaw, J., Wilbur, J., Lawlor, J., and Angellotti, C. J., concurred.
Rehearing denied.
All the Justices concurred. *447