Agnew v. American President Lines, 11943.
| Decision Date | 09 May 1949 |
| Docket Number | No. 11943.,11943. |
| Parties | AGNEW et al. v. AMERICAN PRESIDENT LINES, LIMITED, et al. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
Albert Michelson, San Francisco, Cal., for appellants.
Lillick, Geary, Olson, Adams & Charles, Ira S. Lillick, and James L. Adams, San Francisco, Cal., for appellees.
Before DENMAN, Chief Judge, and STEPHENS and ORR, Circuit Judges.
This is an appeal from a decree denying to appellants, unlicensed sailors on the Steamer President Harrison, an emergency wage increase and maintenance while interned by the Japanese for some three years and nine months, until August 15, 1945, after the Japanese capture, on December 8, 1941, of the steamer in the waters off the coast of China, they having traveled on her from San Francisco to Manila and from there to the Chinese waters.1 The court awarded the emergency wage increase only for the period the sailors were carried on a different vessel as repatriates from their place of internment, east bound on the Pacific Ocean to the 180th Meridian.
The district court in denying the emergency wage increase during internment held that under the shipping articles the sailors were entitled to the war bonus only when on some ship navigating on the voyages easterly and westerly in the Pacific west of the 180th Meridian. The appellants contend here that the district court erred (A) in refusing to hold the war bonus is due for the period of their internment in Japan and (B) in refusing them maintenance during internment.
In construing the shipping articles, it is not questioned that the following are controlling: First, that Sec. 676, 46 U.S.C., 46 U.S.C.A. § 676, provides that the shipping articles "shall be deemed to contain all the conditions of contract with the crew as to their services, pay, voyage and all other things." Second, because the riders were prepared by, they must be construed most strongly against appellees, and third, that the riders' provisions must be interpreted liberally in favor of the seamen in line with the traditional solicitude of the courts of admiralty for their physical and economic well being. Garrett v. Moore-McCormack Co., 317 U.S. 239, 63 S.Ct. 246, 87 L.Ed. 239.
The shipping articles' agreement is contained in a rider thereto of which the parties stipulate that the words "emergency wage increase" are synonymous with "war bonus." The rider reads:
The first disputed question here is whether, the vessel having been interned within paragraph 6, the sailors there detained were within "the war zones defined herein" of its last sentence, at the time of the capture and thereafter during their internment.
The district court reached its conclusion denying the war bonus during internment by holding that no war zone of the last sentence in paragraph 6 was "defined" in the rider, and a supplemental war zone rules agreement, and hence it could determine the sailors' contract with the owner by evidence dehors the rider and agreement.
We do not agree. We think that the sailor employees on a voyage from Manila to the China Coast (west of the 180th Meridian) were, when interned in Shanghai within the war zone defined in the rider. It is a reasonable interpretation of paragraph 6 that it provides that the basic wage and emergency wage, (but not the war bonus or emergency wage increase,) are to be paid while the employees are both west and east of the 180th Meridian, while the additional war bonus is to be paid only while west of that Meridian. We think that paragraph 5 should be construed, in connection with paragraphs 3, 4 and 6, as reading:
It is a rational interpretation, in favor of the sailors, of paragraph 5 of the rider, drawn by the shipowner, to say that the area in which a war bonus is to be paid is a war zone. Such an interpretation gives effect to the rider's provisions instead of making nugatory the last sentence of paragraph 6 by holding that no war zone is described in the rider.
That the sailors were captured and held in a war zone is further shown in the supplemental agreement with the sailors clarifying paragraph 5 of the rider, as follows:
* * * * * *
It is a rational interpretation to regard the men, the vessel and the voyage as not the war zone. Rather each of the three is in the war zone. The men remained employees in the zone during the internment, expressly a contemplated incident of the employment contract.
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