Robillard v. AL Burbank & Co., Ltd.

• Decision Date: 21 July 1960
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 137-16.
• Citation: 186 F. Supp. 193
• Parties: Edward C. ROBILLARD, Plaintiff, v. A. L. BURBANK & CO., LTD., and Terminal Steamship Company, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York

186 F. Supp. 193

Edward C. ROBILLARD, Plaintiff, v. A. L. BURBANK & CO., LTD., and Terminal Steamship Company, Defendants.

Civ. No. 137-16.

United States District Court S. D. New York.

July 21, 1960.

Jacob Rassner, New York City, for plaintiff.

Dougherty, Ryan & Mahoney, New York City (Robert M. Pellegrino, New York City, of counsel), for defendants.

FRIENDLY, Circuit Judge (sitting by designation).

I. Jurisdiction.

This action was brought by plaintiff Robillard, a longshoreman, against A. L. Burbank & Co., Ltd., and Terminal Steamship Company, owner of the S.S. Lumber Carrier. By stipulation the action was discontinued as to defendant Burbank. Plaintiff sought damages for injuries sustained while working on a dock at Bridgeport, Connecticut, as a result of being struck by a piece or pieces of lumber during the unloading of the Lumber Carrier by plaintiff's employer, Cilco Terminal Company.

The complaint invoked the jurisdiction of this court on the basis of diverse citizenship, 28 U.S.C. § 1332. It alleged "that the plaintiff is a resident of the State of Connecticut" and the plaintiff testified to that effect. Technically this method of alleging citizenship is not sufficient, see Realty Holding Co. v. Donaldson, 1925, 268 U.S. 398, 45 S.Ct. 521, 69 L.Ed. 1014; however, this need not be considered in view of what follows. The complaint also alleged that Terminal Steamship Company "was a foreign corporation and having a principal place of business within the jurisdiction of this Court". It was stipulated that Terminal is a Delaware corporation; hence, subject to the technical and curable defect in the allegation of Robillard's Connecticut citizenship, diversity would have been made out as 28 U.S.C. § 1332 stood before its amendment by the Act of July 25, 1958, 72 Stat. 415, providing that "a corporation shall be deemed a citizen of any State by which it has been incorporated and of the State where it has its principal place of business." However, the allegation that defendant has "a principal place of business within the jurisdiction of this Court" did not negative that defendant's principal place of business may have been Connecticut; therefore the allegation of diversity jurisdiction was insufficient, quite apart from any question as to the effect of defendant's denial of the allegation as to place of business.

On the other hand, the complaint does set forth a claim of admiralty or maritime jurisdiction, 28 U.S.C. § 1333, even though the injury occurred on shore, 46 U.S.C.A. § 740. At the conclusion of the case plaintiff's counsel made a "motion to transfer this case from the civil side of the court to the admiralty side"; while he later withdrew this motion, this was done under what the Court now considers an excusable misapprehension as to the effect on diversity jurisdiction of a lack of proper allegation as to defendant's principal place of business. Judge Learned Hand said, in Prince Line, Ltd. v. American Paper Exports, Inc., 2 Cir., 1932, 55 F.2d 1053, 1056, "When a cause of action is within the substantive jurisdiction of the District Court for any reason, it does not mar that jurisdiction that the suitor proceeds as libelant in the admiralty rather than as plaintiff at law." There appears to be no reason why the converse should not be equally true when, as here, plaintiff waived his demand for jury trial, the case was tried and briefed on claims of unseaworthiness and negligence, and the only admiralty elements lacking were the labels on the pleadings and the silver oar. See United States ex rel. Pressprich & Son Co. v. James W. Elwell & Co., 2 Cir., 250 F. 939, certiorari denied, 1918, 248 U.S. 564, 39 S.Ct. 8, 63 L.Ed. 423; United States v. The John R. Williams, 2 Cir., 144 F.2d 451, 454, certiorari denied Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. v. United States, 1944, 323 U.S. 782, 65 S.Ct. 271, 89 L.Ed. 625; Troupe v. Chicago, Duluth & Georgian Bay Transit Co., 2 Cir., 1956, 234 F.2d 253, 257, fn. 5; Currie, The Silver Oar and All That: A Study of the Romero Case, 27 U.Chi. L.Rev. 1, 6-7, 23-40 (1959).

II. The Accident.

There is no real dispute as to the cause of the accident. A deposition by Crenshaw, second mate of the Lumber Carrier, stated substantially as follows: The vessel had been loaded with lumber at various ports in Washington and Oregon. Some of the lumber was loaded on the deck to a height of approximately 10 feet. The deck cargo was handstowed fore and aft with chain lashings and with lath running athwartships. In the mate's opinion the stowage was proper. The vessel encountered no heavy weather on its voyage through the Panama Canal to Bridgeport, the cargo rode well during the voyage and the deck load was under daily inspection. The Lumber Carrier arrived at Bridgeport during the night of August 25-26, 1957. Her port side was moored next to the Cilco Terminal Co. dock. Discharge operations by Cilco, Robillard's employer, began on August 26 shortly after 8 A.M. In discharging the deck cargo at No. 2 hatch, the stevedores started building the loads from the center of the vessel. Crenshaw did not consider this a proper method of discharging the deck cargo "because when those loads are passing over the cargo that's left standing there, it is apt to knock it off, knock it off the dock." The ship's winches, which were manned by the stevedores, were operating properly. The drafts of lumber being made up by the stevedores were very large. Crenshaw remonstrated about this, fearing that the heavy loads might damage the gear; the stevedores answered him "Ya ya". He reported his dissatisfaction with the stevedores' procedures to the first officer who was also on deck watching the unloading; the first officer talked to the stevedores but Crenshaw did not know what was said. In any event the stevedores' methods were not changed. Shortly after 1 o'clock a draft of lumber going over the side of the vessel knocked several pieces of deck cargo loose. The stevedores looked at this and discussed the situation but did not straighten up the deck load. The next load hit the loose pieces and knocked them off. Most of them fell into the water, but some hit the dock. Crenshaw saw a man on the dock who appeared to have been hit; Cilco's walking boss went from the Lumber Carrier down to the dock and took the man away. Thereafter unloading continued during the afternoon, apparently using the same method as before. Crenshaw further testified that stevedores insist upon doing the entire unloading operation; that the deck officers watch "and when we see it's not going right, we try to get them to do it right" and "if it gets too bad we turn the steam off on them" but that hadn't been done here "because it wasn't that bad."

The testimony of Robillard and his "partner", Reynolds, made it evident that Robillard was the man on the dock whom Crenshaw saw. Neither was able to add anything as to the cause of the accident. Reynolds saw lumber falling from the ship and tried to get out of the way, with partial success; when he looked around, he "saw Robillard laying on his stomach with 10 or 12 boards covering him." Robillard saw even less; he had been working with his back to the ship. The evidence as to the nature and extent of Robillard's injuries will be discussed in section IV below.

III. Liability.

A. Unseaworthiness. It would have been a bold man who would have asserted fifteen years ago that a longshoreman, working on land, might recover from a shipowner on a warranty of seaworthiness for an injury caused by a dangerous condition created on the ship by the active negligence of his own employer. However, binding authority seems to have forged each link in a chain leading to this, to me, still surprising conclusion.

The first link, of course, is Seas Shipping Co. v. Sieracki, 1946, 328 U.S. 85, 66 S.Ct. 872, 90 L.Ed. 1099, deciding that a longshoreman injured aboard ship can recover damages for unseaworthiness from a nonnegligent shipowner. Strika v. Netherlands Ministry of Traffic, 2 Cir., 1950, 185 F.2d 555, certiorari denied, 1951, 341 U.S. 904, 71 S.Ct. 614, 95 L.Ed. 1343, held the reasoning of Sieracki and other cases compelled the conclusion that a longshoreman injured ashore could likewise recover for unseaworthiness, in an accident that occurred before enactment of 46 U.S.C.A. § 740, see 64 Harv. L.Rev. 996, 997 (1951), and the Ninth Circuit embraced this view even in a case that did not require it to do so, Pope & Talbot, Inc. v. Cordray, 1958, 258 F.2d 214, 218. Cf. Fredericks v. American Export Lines, Inc., 2 Cir., 1955, 227 F.2d 450, certiorari denied, 1956, 350 U.S. 989, 76 S.Ct. 475, 100 L.Ed. 855, where the injury was caused by the breaking of a skid on the pier. The third link is forged by Alaska SS Co. v. Petterson, 1954, 347 U.S. 396, 74 S.Ct. 601, 98 L.Ed. 798, affirming per curiam the Ninth Circuit's decision, 1953, 205 F.2d 478, holding a shipowner liable for unseaworthiness to an employee of a stevedoring company for injury caused by the breaking of a block assumed to have been brought on the vessel by the plaintiff's employer—a decision which, as Judge Clark immediately pointed out in Berti v. Compagnie de Navigation Cyprien Fabre, 2 Cir., 1954, 213 F.2d 397, 400, invalidated many of the Second and Third Circuit decisions on "relinquishment of control" as applied to unseaworthiness on which defendant here relies. See Tetreault, Seamen, Seaworthiness, and the Rights of Harbor Workers, 39 Corn.L.Q. 381, 411-412 (1954); Gilmore & Black, The Law of Admiralty, pp. 324-328. Alaska SS Co. v. Petterson did involve defective gear although why that should make a difference when the gear was not the ship's and the defect was not known to the owner, would be hard to see. In any event the final link seems to have been supplied by Mitchell v. Trawler Racer, Inc., 1960, 362 U.S. 539, 80 S.Ct. 926, 4 L.Ed.2d 941, reversing the First Circuit's decision that with respect to "an unseaworthy...