Edmonds v. Compagnie Generale Transatlantique

• Decision Date: 03 June 1977
• Docket Number: Nos. 76-1545,s. 76-1545
• Citation: 1977 A.M.C. 553,558 F.2d 186
• Parties: Stanley EDMONDS, Appellee, v. COMPAGNIE GENERALE TRANSATLANTIQUE, Appellant (two cases). Stanley EDMONDS, Appellant, v. COMPAGNIE GENERALE TRANSATLANTIQUE, Appellee. to 76-1547.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 186

558 F.2d 186

Stanley EDMONDS, Appellee, v. COMPAGNIE GENERALE TRANSATLANTIQUE, Appellant (two cases).

Stanley EDMONDS, Appellant, v. COMPAGNIE GENERALE TRANSATLANTIQUE, Appellee.

Nos. 76-1545 to 76-1547.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued Dec. 10, 1976.

Decided May 6, 1977.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Granted June 3, 1977.

C. Arthur Rutter, Jr., Norfolk, Va. (Breit, Rutter & Montaga, Norfolk, Va., on brief), for appellant in No. 76-1545 and No. 76-1547 and for appellee in No. 76-1545.

Charles F. Tucker, Norfolk, Va. (John B. King, Jr., Vandeventer, Black, Meredith & Martin, Norfolk, Va., on brief) for appellant in No. 76-1545 and for appellee in No. 76-1546 and No. 76-1547.

Randall C. Coleman, Baltimore, Md. (Warren B. Daly, Jr., Baltimore, Md., on brief), for amici curiae.

Before BUTZNER, WIDENER, and HALL, Circuit Judges.

WIDENER, Circuit Judge:

This action arises under the 1972 amendments to the Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act of 1927, ¹ a remedial statute governing suits by longshoremen injured upon navigable waters in the course of their employment. Plaintiff Stanley Edmonds, a longshoreman employed by Nacirema Operating Company, which was not a party to this case, was injured while unloading rolling cargo containers from the S. S. Atlantic Cognac, a vessel owned by defendant Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, at Portsmouth Virginia, on March 3, 1974. Edmonds received statutory compensation benefits in excess of $20,000 from his employer under the statute and, as authorized by 33 U.S.C. § 905(b), ² instituted an action for damages against the vessel as a third party based upon its alleged negligence. A jury trial was held in March 1975, resulting in a verdict for Edmonds in the amount of $97,500. Subsequently, however, the district judge granted defendant's motion for a new trial, based upon errors committed by the court in charging the jury.

A second trial was held in December 1975, again resulting in a verdict in Edmonds' favor, this time for $100,000. In response to a special verdict submitted to the jury at the conclusion of the second trial, it was found that Edmonds was 10% contributorily negligent; that the defendant vessel's negligence contributed 20% to the injuries sustained, and that the stevedore employer's negligence contributed 70%. Despite this finding of comparative fault on the part of the stevedore as well as the plaintiff, however, the district court entered judgment against the vessel owner for $90,000, reducing the award only to the extent of the plaintiff's comparative negligence. ³

The issues presented for our consideration are these: (1) Did the district court abuse its discretion in ordering a new trial on the basis of instructions propounded to the jury that, in the court's opinion, lacked evidentiary support and imposed a greater duty on the defendant than authorized by the Longshoremen's Act? We think not, and affirm the district court's grant of a new trial. (2) Should the district court have reduced Edmonds' recovery against the vessel owner to an extent commensurate with the vessel's degree of comparative fault in causing the injuries sued upon? This is an issue not previously addressed in this circuit. The district court was at first inclined to order such a reduction, but declined to do so when the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held to the contrary, reversing a district court judgment in Shellman v. United States Lines, Inc., 528 F.2d 675 (9th Cir. 1975). We respectfully do not agree with the Ninth Circuit, and now hold that a more equitable distribution of liability, and one more consistent with the amended act, is achieved by limiting the vessel owner's liability to the extent of its fault, in this case $20,000, plus the amount of the stevedore's lien as set forth below. ^3a

I

Edmonds' duties aboard the Atlantic Cognac on the day of his injury consisted of removing chains and jacks used to secure large, movable cargo containers in the hold of the vessel. At the direction of a member of the vessel's crew, Edmonds went behind one of the containers to remove a jack. The rear of the container was about two feet from the side of the ship. As Edmonds was performing this task, a vehicle called a hustler, used to tow the rolling containers off the ship, attempted to engage the container that Edmonds was working behind, causing it to roll backward. Edmonds was pinned between the container and the side of the ship. His allegations of negligence on the part of the vessel consisted of permitting the rolling containers to be loaded on the Atlantic Cognac by stevedores at Rotterdam without applying the containers' air brakes, and ordering Edmonds to remove the jack from behind a container while a hustler was ready to engage it.

Defendant's motion for a new trial centered around two instructions given the jury by the district court, one of which is copied below. ⁴ It is necessary to discuss only the first of these, Charge A, which instructed that, "defendant has the duty of seeing that the cargo is properly stowed."

The district court was not in error in concluding that this charge could be understood as imposing upon the vessel a duty that is no longer permissible under the 1972 amendments to the Longshoremen's Act. As we held in Bess v. Agromar Lines, 518 F.2d 738 (4th Cir. 1975), a non-delegable duty to provide a safe place to work is an "outgrowth of the doctrine of seaworthiness and differs significantly from the concept of negligence." 518 F.2d at 740 (citations omitted). The 1972 amendments expressly abolished the seaworthiness concept as a basis for imposing liability upon a vessel for injuries to a longshoreman. ⁵ Only negligence remains under the statute as a basis for such liability, the same duty to exercise ordinary care as in land-based injury cases. ⁶

The stowage of the cargo at Rotterdam was under the exclusive control of the Dutch stevedore. There was no evidence of knowledge on the part of the defendant of any dangerous condition, nor that, in the exercise of ordinary care, such knowledge should have been acquired. The instruction that "defendant has the duty of seeing that the cargo is properly stowed" could easily have had the effect of subjecting the vessel to an outmoded theory of liability, that of a non-delegable duty of providing a safe place to work. See Bess, supra. In these circumstances, the grant of a new trial was entirely proper. The district judge was in a better position than are we to judge the meaning and connotation of the words of his own instruction when read in context with the balance of the charge, and we cannot say setting aside the verdict was an abuse of discretion.

II

In the 1972 amendments, Congress sought to strike a balance between the relative rights and liabilities of the three parties generally involved in litigation under the Longshoremen's Act, the injured longshoreman, his stevedore employer, and the owner of the vessel. While statutory compensation payments (increased considerably in 1972) constitute the stevedore's exclusive liability to its injured employee, irrespective of fault, ⁷ a vessel whose negligence was a proximate cause of the injury may be held liable to the longshoreman for damages. ⁸

In contrast to pre-1972 practice, ⁹ the vessel is no longer subject to suit by a longshoreman for breach of a warranty of seaworthiness, an absolute, non-delegable duty to provide a safe place to work. ¹⁰ See Bess, supra. It is liable only for its own negligence. And, in return, the negligent vessel may no longer bring suit against the stevedore whose joint negligence contributed to the injury based on breach of a warranty to perform duties in a workmanlike manner. Such suits had been held not to be precluded by the exclusivity provision of 33 U.S.C. § 905(a), as the statute was then written, in Ryan Stevedoring Co. v. Pan-Atlantic S.S. Co., 350 U.S. 124, 76 S.Ct. 232, 100 L.Ed. 133 (1956). It was the intent of the 1972 amendments to eliminate this circuitous system of litigation and to restore to the stevedore the exclusivity of liability for compensation payments under the statute only. See H.R.Rep. No. 92-1441, 92d Cong., 2d Sess. (1972), 1972 U.S.Code Cong. and Admin.News, p. 4698.

It is this remedial exclusivity, however, that gives rise to the present problem of whether and how to apportion liability in cases in which the stevedore and the vessel are jointly negligent in causing the injuries sued upon. While admiralty law has, over the years, demonstrated considerable flexibility in adapting to rules of divided damages when more than one party has been at fault in causing injury, Cooper Stevedoring Co., Inc. v. Fritz Kopke, Inc., 417 U.S. 106, 110, 94 S.Ct. 2174, 40 L.Ed.2d 694 (1974), such a rule may not obtain when one wrongdoer enjoys statutory immunity. The Longshoremen's Act does not provide for contribution against a jointly negligent stevedore, and the Supreme Court has held that to engraft such a remedy judicially could disrupt the balance of rights and liabilities Congress sought to achieve in the statutory scheme. Halcyon Lines v. Haenn Ship Ceiling and Refitting Corp., 342 U.S. 282, 72 S.Ct. 277, 96 L.Ed. 318 (1952); see Cooper Stevedoring, supra. ¹¹ Therefore, under the statute, if the 20% negligent vessel in the present case were held liable for the full $90,000 judgment, it would have no recourse against the 70% negligent stevedore.

In eliminating the vessel's cause of action in contract against the stevedore approved in Ryan, Congress intended as a quid pro quo that vessels sued under the Act would no longer be liable for the negligence of stevedores, as they often had been pursuant to the seaworthiness doctrine. It was accordingly perceived that the Ryan action would no longer be necessary. ¹² The House Report discussing elimination of unseaworthiness as a basis of liability reflects this Congressional determination that the...