La Casse v. Great Lakes Eng'g Works

• Decision Date: 04 June 1928
• Docket Number: No. 23.,23.
• Citation: 242 Mich. 454,219 N.W. 730
• Parties: LA CASSE v. GREAT LAKES ENGINEERING WORKS et al.
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court

242 Mich. 454

219 N.W. 730

LA CASSE

v.GREAT LAKES ENGINEERING WORKS et al.

No. 23.

Supreme Court of Michigan.

June 4, 1928.

Certiorari to the Department of Labor and Industry.

Proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Mary La Casse for compensation for the death of Moses La Casse, employee, opposed by the Great Lakes Engineering Works, employer, and the Standard Accident Insurance Company, insurance carrier. To review an award of compensation to claimant by the Department of Labor and Industry, the employer and insurance carrier bring certiorari. Award vacated.

Argued before the Entire Bench. Lightner, Oxtoby, Hanley & Crawford, of Detroit, for appellants.

Woodruff & Woodruff, of Wyandotte, and Frank W. Atkinson, of Detroit, for appellee.

FEAD, C. J.

On October 28, 1926, Moses La Casse, an employee of defendant Great Lakes Engineering Works, was injured while pursuing his work as ship carpenter. He later died from the injury. An award of compensation to plaintiff, his widow, was made by the department of labor and industry and is here for review on certiorari.

The Great Lakes Engineering Works is engaged, among other things, in building and repairing ships. On its own property, a slip had been dredged, running back from the Detroit river a distance of 600 feet or more. The slip was used for floating dry docks and for all sorts of ship repairing.

Decedent had been a ship carpenter in defendant's yard for some 20 years. About two weeks before his death he commenced work on the steamer Roumania lying in defendant's slip. At the time of the accident, he stood on a contrivance floating on the water alongside the ship. He was attempting to nail a plank to the side of the vessel when he was injured.

The Roumania was 35 to 38 years old, probably of Michigan registry, and had been carrying automobiles between Detroit and Toledo or Cleveland. The record does not show what future plans for her the owners had nor who the owners were nor how long the ship had been disabled. She was being ‘rebuilt,’ had come into the slip about a month previously for ‘general repairs,’ been moved to the dry dock, and then put back into the slip again; her spar was off; the smokestack had been taken down and not yet replaced; the after cabin had been torn down to permit work on the engine; the engine had been removed, and another one put aboard ship, but not yet installed, although a foundation for it had been constructed; some planking was being done; and the ship was floating on her own keel.

The sole question is whether the Workmen's Compensation Law of this state (Comp. Laws, §§ 5423-5495) is applicable to such an injury or whether jurisdiction is exclusively in the federal courts under the maritime law of the United States, by virtue of article 3, § 2, of the Constitution of the United States.

The Detroit river, being a connecting stream of the Great Lakes, is navigable water within the jurisdiction of the admiralty courts. Foppen v. Peter J. Fase Co., 219 Mich. 136, 188 N. W. 541, and cases cited. The defendant's slip as far as it is used in maritime work, partakes of the nature of the main river, and maritime transactions therein are subject to maritime law. The Robert W. Parsons, 191 U. S. 17, 24 S. Ct. 8, 48 L. Ed. 73;North Pacific Steamship Co. v. Hall Bros. Marine Railway & Shipbuilding Co., 249 U. S. 119, 39 S. Ct. 221, 63 L. Ed. 510;O'Hara's Case, 248 Mass. 31, 142 N. E. 844;Danielsen v. Morse Dry Dock & Repair Co., 235 N. Y. 439, 139 N. E. 567.

The authorities upon the application of state Workmen's Compensation Acts to injuries sustained on navigable waters are numerous, but they all revolve around a few outstanding federal cases.

The basic case is Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen, 244 U. S. 207, 37 S. Ct. 529, 61 L. Ed. 1086, L. R. A. 1918C, 451, Ann Cas. 1917E, 900, in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that maritime jurisdiction was exclusive in a situation where a workman, operating a truck in the unloading of a steamship moored to a pier but some feet away, was injured while on the gangway extending from the ship to the dock, because:

‘The work of a stevedore in which the deceased was engaging is maritime in its nature; his employment was a maritime contract; the injuries which he received were likewise maritime; and the rights and liabilities of the parties in connection therewith were matters clearly within the admiralty jurisdiction.’

The constitutional admiralty jurisdiction over such transactions is so far exclusive as not only to prohibit the application of state Workmen's Compensation Laws to them, but also to restrain Congress from extending such state laws to jurisdiction therein. Knickerbocker Ice Co. v. Stewart, 253 U. S. 149, 40 S. Ct. 438, 64 L. Ed. 834, 11 A. L. R. 1145, in which the court said:

‘As the plain result of these recent opinions and the earlier cases upon which they are based, we accept the following doctrine: The Constitution itself adopted and established, as part of the laws of the United States, approved rules of the general maritime law and empowered Congress to legislate in respect of them and other matters within the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction. Moreover, it took from the states all power, by legislation or judicial decision, to contravene the essential purposes of, or to work material injury to, characteristic features of such law or to interfere with its proper harmony and uniformity in its international and interstate relations. To preserve adequate harmony and appropriate uniform rules relating to maritime matters and bring them within control of the federal government was the fundamental purpose; and to such definite and Congress was empowered to legislate within that sphere.’

It is urged that these rulings have been modified by subsequent decisions; but the court, in State of Washington v. W. C. Dawson & Co., 264 U. S. 219, 44 S. Ct. 302, 68 L. Ed. 646, denied the modification and distinguished the later cases. Therefore the point from which further inquiry must proceed is that state Compensation Laws do not apply to injuries occurring on navigable waters during employment of a maritime nature under a maritime contract.

An exception to the doctrine of the Jensen Case is noted in Grant Smith-Porter Ship Co. v. Rohde, 257 U. S. 469, 42 S. Ct. 157, 66 L. Ed. 321, 25 A. L. R. 1008, where it was held that the Workmen's Compensation Law of Oregon (Or. L. § 6605 et seq.) was applicable to an injury sustained by Rohde while on the ship, building a builkhead in a partially completed vessel then under construction, the vessel lying at a dock in navigable waters. The conclusions of the court may be best expressed in its own words:

‘The contract for constructing The Ahala was nonmaritime, and although the incompleted structure upon which the accident occurred was lying in navigable waters, neither Rohde's general employment, nor his activities at the time had any direct relation to navigation, or commerce. * * * The injury was suffered within a state whose positive enactment prescribed an exclusive remedy therefor. And as both parties had accepted and proceeded under the statute by making payments to the indestrial accident fund, it cannot properly be said that they consciously contracted with each other in contemplation of the general system of maritime law. Union Fish Co. v. Erickson, 248 U. S. 308 [39 S. Ct. 112, 63 L. Ed. 261]. Under such circumstances regulation of the rights, obligations, and consequent liabilities of the parties, as between themselves, by a local rule, would not necessarily work material prejudice to any characteristic feature of the general maritime law, or interfere with the proper harmony or uniformity of that law in its international or interstate relations. * * *

‘The general doctrine that in contract matters admiralty jurisdiction depends upon the nature of the transaction, and in tort matters upon the locality, has been so frequently asserted by this court that it must now be treated as settled. * * *

‘In Western Fuel Co. v. Garcia, supra [257 U. S. 233, 42 S. Ct. 89, 66 L. Ed. 210], we recently pointed out that, as to certain local matters regulation of which would work no material prejudice to the general maritime law, the rules of the latter might be modified or supplemented by state statutes. The present case is controlled by that principle.’

The court distinguishes the Jensen and other like cases:

‘In each of them the employment or contract was maritime in nature and the rights and liabilities of the parties were prescribed by general rules of maritime law essential to its proper harmony and uniformity. Here the parties contracted with reference to the state statute; their rights and liabilities had no direct relation to navigation, and the application of the local law cannot materially affect any rules of the sea whose uniformity is essential.’

And held that, while ‘the general...