De Bardeleben Coal Corp. v. Henderson

• Decision Date: 10 May 1944
• Docket Number: No. 10923.,10923.
• Citation: De Bardeleben Coal Corp. v. Henderson, 142 F.2d 481 (5th Cir. 1944)
• Parties: DE BARDELEBEN COAL CORPORATION et al. v. HENDERSON, Deputy Com'r of Compensation Dist., et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

142 F.2d 481 (1944)

DE BARDELEBEN COAL CORPORATION et al. v. HENDERSON, Deputy Com'r of Compensation Dist., et al.

No. 10923.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

May 10, 1944.

Richard B. Montgomery, Jr., of New Orleans, La., for appellants.

Herbert W. Christenberry, U. S. Atty., and N. E. Simoneaux, Asst. U. S. Atty., both of New Orleans, La., for Joseph H. Henderson, Deputy Commissioner, etc., appellee.

Maurice R. Woulfe, of New Orleans, La., for Sarah Jackson Brown, appellee.

Before SIBLEY, HUTCHESON, and LEE, Circuit Judges.

HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge.

Brought to set aside an award under the Federal Compensation Act,¹ the claim was that compensation was validly provided by the Statutes of Louisiana,² and the Federal Act was without application. The district judge, disagreeing with this view, dismissed the suit, and plaintiffs have appealed.

Here, relying heavily on New Amsterdam Casualty Co. v. McManigal, 2 Cir., 87 F.2d 332, appellants insist that, though the accident occurred on navigable waters,³ this is one of those cases where the accident "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, therefore, "recovery * * * through Workmen's Compensation proceedings" not only may be, but has been, "validly provided by state law". Appellees, with equal vigor and more citations, deny this, insisting that either under Parker v. Motor Boat Sales, 314 U.S. 244, 62 S.Ct. 221, 86 L.Ed. 184, or under "the first come first served" rule of Davis v. Department of Labor, 317 U.S. 249, 63 S.Ct. 225, 87 L.Ed. 246, federal jurisdiction was properly maintained.

We agree with appellees. Before the Parker case was decided, but after the Supreme Court in Employers' Liability Insurance Co. v. Cook, 281 U.S. 233, 50 S.Ct. 308, 74 L.Ed. 823, had reversed our holding in 31 F.2d 497, 498, that to apply the Texas Workmen's Compensation law, Vernon's Ann.Civ.St. art. 8306 et seq., to an injury suffered while unloading a ship by an employee, whose duties were normally on land, would not "materially affect any rules of the sea whose uniformity is essential", this court, in Continental Casualty Co. v. Lawson, 5 Cir., 64 F.2d 802, 804, announced the view that the federal compensation laws should be liberally construed to cover every case where the injury occurred on navigable waters and where within the rule of the Jensen⁴ and Cook cases, the action would have been in admiralty. In that case we said:

"The question whether jurisdiction over a maritime tort could be asserted under the compensation laws of the states, or existed exclusively in admiralty, was an important one when the decisions were rendered in the Rohde Grant Smith-Porter Ship Co. v. Rohde, 257 U.S. 469, 42 S.Ct. 157, 66 L.Ed. 321, 25 A.L.R. 1008, the Braud Millers' Indemnity Underwriters v. Braud, 270 U.S. 59, 46 S.Ct. 194, 70 L.Ed. 470, and other similar cases referred to in Colonna's Shipyard Co. v. Lowe, supra D.C., 22 F.2d 843; but since the passage of this act (the Federal Workmen's Compensation Act) the importance of that question has largely disappeared. * * * The elaborate provisions of the Act, viewed in the light of prior Congressional legislation as interpreted by the Supreme Court, leaves no room for doubt, as it appears to us, that Congress intended to exercise to the fullest extent all the power and jurisdiction it had over the subject-matter. The liability of an employer who makes provision to secure compensation to his employees is exclusive of all other liability that might be asserted by them against him. State compensation laws and this compensation law of Congress are mutually exclusive of each other."

The Parker case, supra, substantially adopts this view, and such aberrations from it as the quasi legislative decision in the Davis case appears to present is only in appearance. Another of those hard cases which make bad law, state jurisdiction was upheld there for announced reasons having more legislative than judicial force, and not because of any purpose to adopt a rule contrary to that which this court had announced in the Lawson case and the Parker case had followed. As the Parker case pointed out, it is not at all necessary now to redetermine the correctness vel non of the Jensen case or of any of the brood, hatched from it, which, teetering and wavering on the line the Jensen case had drawn between state and federal jurisdiction, drew it now on this, and now on the other, side as hard cases piled up to make bad law worse. It is sufficient to say that Congress intended the compensation act to have a coverage co-extensive with the limits of its authority and that the provision "if recovery * * * may not validly be provided by State law" was placed in the act not as a relinquishment of any part of the field which Congress could validly occupy but only to save the act from judicial condemnation, by making it clear that it did not intend to legislate beyond its constitutional powers. Having in mind the confused and confusing mass of quasi legislative decisions which, as such decisions...