Bartholomew v Universe Tankships Inc.
| Date | 05 January 1959 |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit |
Jurisdiction Territorial limits of Right of action of seaman suffering personal injury Action by foreign seaman resident in State of forum Injury sustained in territorial waters of State of forum Substantial contacts with State of forum Foreign shipowner Indirect ownership of foreign flag vessel by nationals of State of forum The law of the United States of America.
State territory Territorial waters Jurisdiction in Injury to alien seaman Action by resident of State of forum for injury suffered in State of forum Substantial contacts with State of forum Foreign shipowner Indirect ownership of foreign flag vessel by nationals of State of forum The law of the United States of America.
The Facts.This was an action by an alien seaman under the Jones Act, 41 Stat. 1007, 46 U.S.C. 688, which provides that any seaman who shall suffer personal injury in the course of his employment shall have an action against his employer for damages. Bartholomew, a citizen of the British West Indies residing in the United States, was injured in United States territorial waters by the assault of a fellow seaman on board a Liberian flag vessel on a voyage between United States ports. The articles for the voyage had been signed in the United States. The defendant, a Liberian corporation wholly owned by a Panamanian corporation, which was in turn wholly owned by citizens of the United States, maintained its principal place of business in the United States.
The defendant contended that the Jones Act, although it contained no express limitation, should not be applied in an action by an alien seaman against a foreign corporation for an injury sustained aboard a foreign flag vessel. The jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff, and the District Court entered judgment for the plaintiff.
On appeal,
Held: that the judgment of the District Court must be affirmed. In the municipal law of the United States the Jones Act, a statutory remedy distinct from the general maritime law, was applicable to personal injury claims of alien seamen whenever there were substantial (rather than minimal) contacts between the occurrence and the United States. Usually no single factor, including the flag of the vessel, was determinative. In the present case there were substantial contacts with the United States because the locus of the injury, the residence of the plaintiff, and the ultimate ownership and principal place of business of the defendant were all within the territory of the United States.
The Court said: Did the District Court err in holding that Bartholomew had a right to invoke the Jones Act against his employer, a Liberian corporation? In Lauritzen v. LarsenUNKUNK, 1953,345 U.S. 571, at page 582, 73 S.Ct. 921, at page 928, 97 L.Ed. 1254,[1] the Supreme Court tells us that the answer is to be found by ascertaining and valuing points of contact between the transaction and the states or governments whose competing laws are involved, and by weighing the significance of one or more connecting factors between the shipping transaction regulated and the national interest served by the assertion of authority, such as the place of the wrongful act, the law of the flag, the allegiance or domicile of the claimant, the allegiance of the shipowner, the place of contract between the parties, the inaccessibility of the foreign forum and the law of the forum.
A study of the numerous adjudicated Jones Act cases reveals not only the vagueness inherent in the general and undefined direction in Lauritzen for the valuing and weighing of the various facts or groups of facts that are said to be points of contact between the transaction and the states whose competing laws are involved, but also a lack of any common principle of decision or method of approach to the problem. Sometimes the courts seem to be employing choice of law techniques, and not infrequently the result arrived at seems to be based on mere dialectic manipulation or guesswork. All this, however, is to be expected as new law develops in a new field. This substantial background of judicial consideration of a great variety of combinations of relevant factors in cases where application of the Jones Act is asserted on the one hand and denied on the other makes it impossible for us to undertake a restatement of the method of approach and the principles to be applied.
To begin with, as pointed out in LauritzenUNKUNK, 345 U.S. at page 578, 73 S.Ct. at page 926, we are simply dealing with a problem of statutory construction. For this reason traditional choice of law techniques may be more misleading than helpful.
In the second place, certain possible interpretations of the Jones Act have already been rejected, and their elimination simplifies the problem. For example, when the question was first presented it
might have been held that in the enactment of the Jones Act the Congress intended to exercise the full measure of its power over the subject of the legislation, in which event any contact between the transaction and the United States would have been sufficient to warrant its application. But a contrary view prevailed. See The PaulaECAS, 2 Cir., 1937, 91 F.2d 1001, certiorari denied sub nom.Peters v. LauritzenUNKUNK, 302 U.S. 750, 58 S.Ct. 270, 82 L.Ed. 580;[1]O'Neill v. Cunard White Star, 2 Cir., 1947, 160 F.2d 446, certiorari denied 332 U.S. 773, 68 S.Ct. 56, 92 L.Ed. 358. Such inclusiveness was not read into the statute, since it was assumed that the Congress intended the Jones Act to be given a construction in consonance with international maritime law. This meant that not every contact, no matter how ephemeral or fortuitous it might be, would be deemed a basis for applying American law, that is to say the Jones Act...To continue reading
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