Deakle v. John E. Graham & Sons

• Decision Date: 29 March 1985
• Docket Number: No. 84-7244,84-7244
• Citation: 756 F.2d 821
• Parties: Evan Lee DEAKLE, Jr., Plaintiff-Appellee, v. JOHN E. GRAHAM & SONS, a corp.; M/V Clara G., her engines, hull, tackle, cargo and appurtenances thereof, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 821

756 F.2d 821

1985 A.M.C. 2979

Evan Lee DEAKLE, Jr., Plaintiff-Appellee, v. JOHN E. GRAHAM & SONS, a corp.; M/V Clara G., her engines,

hull, tackle, cargo and appurtenances thereof,

Defendants-Appellants.

No. 84-7244.

United States Court of Appeals,

Eleventh Circuit.

March 29, 1985.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied May 20, 1985.

Robert H. Smith, Mobile, Ala., for defendants-appellants.

James E. Atchison, William B. Jackson II, Mobile, Ala., for plaintiff-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama.

Before JOHNSON and HATCHETT, Circuit Judges, and LYNNE ^*, District Judge.

JOHNSON, Circuit Judge:

Appellee Evan Lee Deakle, Jr., brought this action against his former employer, appellant John E. Graham & Sons ("Graham"), seeking to recover for the personal injuries he sustained while captaining one of Graham's vessels. Deakle alleged that the vessel was unseaworthy due to the presence on the crew of a dangerous seaman who unexpectedly and without provocation assaulted him. Deakle also alleged that Graham was negligent in hiring the assailant. The district court granted Deakle a directed verdict on the issue of unseaworthiness, and the jury found Graham negligent. Damages were assessed at $450,000, of which $400,000 represented lost future wages. In this appeal, Graham challenges the directed verdict and the finding of negligence. Graham also seeks a remittitur of the award for lost future wages. We affirm the district court's ruling as to Graham's liability but remand with directions for conditional remittitur of the damage award.

I. FACTS

In the two years preceding his injury, Deakle worked short and sporadic stints for several companies, including Graham. Licensed to captain 100-ton vessels, he had experience aboard shrimp boats and vessels that served the offshore oil industry. Deakle had been with Graham only a few months when, on August 19, 1980, a berserk deckhand stabbed him in the back while he was piloting one of Graham's vessels. The attack was sudden and unprovoked.

Despite the seriousness of Deakle's injuries, he was hospitalized for only twelve days. His physicians testified that he was ready to return to work six weeks after being injured and that he had not been permanently disabled. Near the end of October 1980, Deakle resumed his captain's duties. One week later, however, he requested to be relieved. Deakle testified that as a result of the attack he no longer had the mental stability and confidence needed to assume the responsibilities of captain.

Graham gave Deakle a temporary job in its warehouse for the remainder of 1980, though it paid him as if he were on a full captain's salary of $21,560 per year. At the end of December, Graham offered to make the warehouse job a permanent position for Deakle if he would accept an annual salary of $13,780. This was slightly more than other workers in the warehouse were being paid but substantially less than what Deakle would have earned as a full-time captain. Under the terms of the offer, Deakle could return to his captain's duties at full salary whenever he felt ready. Deakle rejected the offer and brought this lawsuit.

The jury initially returned an unapportioned verdict assessing Deakle's damages at $450,000. The district court had the jury resume deliberations in order to assign a specific value to Deakle's lost future wages, i.e. earnings lost in years subsequent to the date of trial. The remainder of the verdict would comprise damages for pain and suffering, mental anguish, maintenance and cure, and lost past wages, the latter representing earnings lost during the period between the stabbing incident and the date of trial. After the jury denoted $400,000 of the verdict as lost future wages, the clerk of the court discounted this amount to present value at the date of trial, utilizing a two-percent below market discount rate as stipulated by the parties. The clerk then added back in the remaining $50,000 of the verdict, and the court awarded prejudgment interest on the entire sum at a rate of nine percent for the period between Deakle's injury and the date of trial. The final judgment totalled $439,197 and included over $105,000 in prejudgment interest.

In 1979, the year before he was injured, Deakle had earned $12,150. His income for 1980, including his earnings as captain and warehouse employee at Graham, totalled $11,468. In 1981, Deakle earned only $5,044, but in 1982 and 1983 his income was $15,142 and $19,141 respectively. Thus, with the exception of the year immediately following his injuries, 1981, Deakle has earned more money in each year since his injuries than he earned in either 1979 or 1980.

II. DISCUSSION

A. Liability: The Unseaworthiness Doctrine.

Graham first contends that the district court erred in granting Deakle's motion for a directed verdict on the unseaworthiness claim. In reviewing the lower court's decision to grant this motion, we must view the evidence as a whole in a light most favorable to Graham. From this perspective, the directed verdict can be affirmed only if the facts and inferences point so strongly in Deakle's favor that reasonable persons could only arrive at one conclusion, the conclusion that Graham's vessel was not seaworthy. E.g., Bickford v. International Speedway Corp., 654 F.2d 1028, 1031 (5th Cir.1981) (Unit B).

Under well-established maritime law, Graham has an absolute, nondelegable duty to ensure that its vessels are seaworthy. This duty encompasses the obligation to provide a competent crew for each vessel, a crew composed of seamen of equal temperament, disposition, and seamanship to ordinary men in the calling. E.g., Clevenger v. Star Fish & Oyster Co., 325 F.2d 397, 399-402 (5th Cir.1963). Precedent in this Circuit holds that an unprovoked, sudden, and unusually savage assault by one seaman against another constitutes, as a matter of law, a breach of the owner's duty to provide a seaworthy vessel. Claborn v Star Fish Oyster Co., 578 F.2d 983, 985-87 (5th Cir.1978). Whether the owner knew or should have known of the assailant's dangerous propensities does not affect the determination of liability under the unseaworthiness standard, for the owner's duties are not conditioned on notice or fault. Id. at 985; Clevenger, supra, 325 F.2d at 400.

In this case, the jury could only have found that Deakle received his injuries as a result of a sudden, savage, and unprovoked assault by a member of the crew. Indeed, Graham did not attempt to controvert the facts surrounding the attack on Deakle. Graham argued instead that liability should not be imposed under the unseaworthiness doctrine precisely because the attack resulted from the assailant's sudden and unexpected onset of mental illness. Graham based this argument on a passage found in an old Fifth Circuit decision, Holmes v. Mississippi Shipping Co., 301 F.2d 474, 477-78 (5th Cir.1962).

The passage from Holmes does not control the disposition of this case. The Court in Holmes refused to permit the plaintiff to recover for self -inflicted injuries, reasoning that no precedent supported such a recovery and persuasive policy arguments militated against the plaintiff's claim. Before reaching this holding, however, the panel majority expressed in dicta a doubt as to whether the plaintiff's sudden and unexpected onset of mental illness would have rendered the ship unseaworthy had he disfigured a fellow crewman instead of himself. This is the passage Graham cites in support of limiting the unseaworthiness doctrine to foreseeable assaults. By contrast, Judge Rives specially concurred in Holmes in order to make clear that he did not share the majority's doubt: "It is no barrier to recovery ... that Holmes' mental illness came on suddenly and without warning to the shipowner or to himself." Id. at 480. Moreover, apart from the status of the Holmes passage as dicta, that decision preceded Clevenger and Claborn, both of which involved assaults characterized as "sudden" and "without word or warning." Clevenger, supra, 325 F.2d at 398; Claborn, supra, 578 F.2d at 987. The most recent precedent is preferred.

Limiting the unseaworthiness doctrine as Graham suggests would, in effect, reintroduce principles of notice and fault into this area of admiralty law. It would contravene binding precedent in this Circuit. Such a ruling is beyond the power and predilections of the present panel. We therefore affirm the district court's holding as a matter of law that the assailant's temperament and disposition fell below the standards of ordinary seamanship. Having affirmed Graham's liability under the unseaworthiness doctrine, we need not address Graham's challenge to the jury's finding of negligence. Claborn, supra, 578 F.2d at 987.

B. Damages: Lost Future Wages.

Graham also challenges the valuation of Deakle's damages. Initially, Graham questions the sufficiency of the evidence supporting both the jury's finding that Deakle's future earning capacity has been permanently diminished and the jury's assessment of this loss at $400,000. Graham further alleges that the clerk of the district court erred in discounting the award to present value. Finally, Graham challenges the district court's decision to add prejudgment interest to the entire verdict at the rate of nine percent. We shall discuss each of these issues in sequence.

1. Sufficiency of the Evidence: Deakle's Permanently Diminished Earning Capacity. The extent of Deakle's injuries and their debilitating effect on his future earning capacity were hotly disputed issues at trial. Both physicians who examined and treated Deakle testified that his physical injuries were not so serious as to prevent him from returning to his captain's position within six weeks of the stabbing incident, even though he might suffer some pain and discomfort indefinitely. Similarly, one psychiatrist stated that Deakle's suffering from anxiety did not render him...