Garris v. Norfolk Shipbuilding

• Decision Date: 02 December 1999
• Docket Number: No. 98-2368,CA-98-382-2,98-2368
• Citation: 210 F.3d 209
• Parties: (4th Cir. 2000) CELESTINE GARRIS, Administratrix of the estate of Christopher Garris, deceased, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. NORFOLK SHIPBUILDING & DRYDOCK CORPORATION; E. T. GRESHAM, INCORPORATED, Defendants-Appellees. (). . Argued:
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 209

210 F.3d 209 (4th Cir. 2000)

CELESTINE GARRIS, Administratrix of the estate of Christopher Garris, deceased, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. NORFOLK SHIPBUILDING & DRYDOCK CORPORATION; E. T. GRESHAM, INCORPORATED, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 98-2368 (CA-98-382-2).

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS, FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT.

Argued: December 2, 1999.

Decided: April 3, 2000.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, at Norfolk.

Jerome B. Friedman, District Judge.

COUNSEL ARGUED: John R. Crumpler, Jr., KAUFMAN & CANOLES, P.C., Norfolk, Virginia, for Appellant. Robert Martin Tata, HUNTON & WILLIAMS, Norfolk, Virginia, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Patrick H. O'Donnell, KAUFMAN & CANOLES, P.C., Norfolk, Virginia, for Appellant. Carl D. Gray, HUNTON & WILLIAMS, Norfolk, Virginia, for Appellee Norfolk Shipbuilding; Glen A. Huff, M. Todd Gerber, HUFF, POOLE & MAHONEY, P.C., Virginia Beach, Virginia, for Appellee Gresham.

Before MURNAGHAN and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges, and Cynthia Holcomb HALL, Senior Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, sitting by designation.

Reversed and remanded by published opinion. Judge Williams wrote the opinion, in which Judge Murnaghan joined. Senior Judge Hall wrote an opinion concurring in the judgment.

OPINION

WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge:

The sole issue on appeal is whether we should construe or extend the United States Supreme Court's decision in Moragne v. States Marine Lines, Inc., 398 U.S. 375 (1970), which recognized a general maritime law cause of action for wrongful death based upon un-seaworthiness, to include a general maritime law cause of action for wrongful death based upon negligence. We agree with the district court that the Supreme Court did not create a general maritime law cause of action for wrongful death based upon negligence in Moragne. We find it appropriate, however, to apply the principles of Moragne and its progeny to recognize one. We, therefore, reverse the district court's dismissal of Celestine Garris's claim and remand for further proceedings.

I.

Christopher Garris (Garris's son) worked as a sandblaster aboard the USNS MAJ. STEPHEN W. PLESS, a ship berthed in the navigable waters of the United States. He was actually employed by Tidewater Temps but worked on behalf of Mid-Atlantic Coastings (MidAtlantic), a subcontractor of Norfolk Shipbuilding & Drydock Corporation (Norfolk). E.T. Gresham, Inc. (Gresham), another subcontractor for Norfolk, had employees aboard the same ship. On April 8, 1997, a crane operator working for Gresham accidentally caused Garris's son to fall off a reserve hopper on the ship, which was used to load sand for sandblasting. Garris's son died as a result of the accident.

After receiving statutory death benefits under the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act (LHWCA), 33 U.S.C.A. §§ 901950 (West 1986 & Supp. 1999), Christopher Garris's mother, Celestine Garris (Garris), brought suit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia against Norfolk and Gresham, seeking recovery for wrongful death based upon negligence under general maritime law and the Virginia wrongful-death statute. According to Garris, the crane operator's negligence and Norfolk's use of an inadequate communication signaling system were the reasons for her son's death. The district court dismissed her suit on the ground that general maritime law does not recognize a negligencebased cause of action.¹

Garris argues on appeal that the Supreme Court's holding in Moragne v. States Marine Lines, Inc., 398 U.S. 375 (1970), which recognized a general maritime law cause of action for wrongful death based upon unseaworthiness, also established a general maritime law cause of action for wrongful death based upon negligence. In the alternative, Garris asks us to extend the holding of Moragne to create a general maritime law cause of action for wrongful death based upon negligence. Reviewing this legal question de novo, see Meekins v. United Transp. Union, 946 F.2d 1054, 1057 (4th Cir. 1991) ("We review the district court's determinations of law de novo."), we conclude that the principles developed in Moragne and its progeny compel us to recognize a negligence-based action. We, therefore, reverse the district court's dismissal of this claim and remand for further proceedings.

II.

In order to determine whether the district court erred in dismissing Garris's suit, we must first consider whether the Supreme Court in Moragne v. States Marine Lines, Inc., 398 U.S. 375 (1970), intended to create a general maritime law cause of action for wrongful death based upon negligence. Accordingly, we must examine the language and context of Moragne, including the events and developments leading up to the Supreme Court's decision in that case.

A. Pre-Moragne

Our discussion begins with The Harrisburg, 119 U.S. 199 (1886), overruled by Moragne v. States Marine Lines, Inc. , 398 U.S. 375 (1970), in which the Supreme Court held that general maritime law did not allow recovery for wrongful death. In The Harrisburg, the widow and child of the decedent, Rickards, sought to recover damages for Rickards's death "caused by the negligence of the steamer" that collided with Rickards's schooner. See id. at 199. The Court had to determine whether Rickards's survivors could recover for wrongful death absent a state statute or act of Congress affirmatively allowing such recovery. See id. at 204. The Court noted that at common law there was no civil action for an injury that resulted in death and that English maritime law also had no cause of action for wrongful death on the high seas. See id. The Court concluded that because it is now established that in the courts of the United States no action at law can be maintained for [wrongful death] in the absence of a statute giving the right, and it has not been shown that the maritime law, as accepted and received by maritime nations generally, has established a different rule for the government of the courts of admiralty from those which govern courts of law in matters of this kind, we are forced to the conclusion that no such action will lie in the courts of the United States under the general maritime law.

Id. at 213.

Despite the rule of The Harrisburg, which prohibited recovery for wrongful death under general maritime law, two significant developments in maritime law softened the harshness of The Harrisburg. First, in 1920, Congress enacted both the Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA), 46 U.S.C.A. §§ 761 768 (West 1975 & Supp. 1999), and the Jones Act, 46 U.S.C.A. app. § 688 (West Supp. 1999), which afforded recovery for wrongful death in certain circumstances.² Second, federal courts began to recognize the application of state wrongful-death statutes to fatal accidents that occurred in state territorial waters. See Yamaha Motor Corp. v. Calhoun , 516 U.S. 199, 20608 (1996) (describing the response of "[f]ederal admiralty courts [in] temper[ing] the harshness of The Harrisburg's rule by allowing recovery under state wrongful-death statutes"); Western Fuel Co. v. Garcia, 257 U.S. 233, 242 (1921) (finding that California's wrongfuldeath statute applied to the death of a maritime worker in state territorial waters). Consequently, in the years that followed The Harrisburg, state wrongful-death statutes -which often encompassed wrongfuldeath causes of action based upon negligence, but not unseaworthiness, see Moragne, 398 U.S. at 398-99 --"proved an adequate supplement to federal maritime law[ ] until a series of this Court's decisions transformed the maritime doctrine of unseaworthiness into a strict liability rule."³ Yamaha 516 U.S. at 207-08. Because of this new development in maritime law, unseaworthiness, which originally was an obscure and rarely used cause of action for which many state wrongful-death statutes did not account, evolved into a cause of action that "soon eclipsed ordinary negligence as the primary basis of recovery when a seafarer was injured or killed." Id. at 208. The evolution of the unseaworthiness doctrine, however, also created gaps in the law whereby recovery for wrongful death based upon unseaworthiness could depend on mere happenstance. For example, if death occurred within state territorial waters, then recovery was unlikely because many state wrongful-death statutes did not include causes of action based upon unseaworthiness. See Moragne , 398 U.S. at 395. By contrast, if the death occurred more than three miles from shore, then recovery for wrongful death based upon unseaworthiness was possible under DOHSA. See id. The emergence of unseaworthiness as a viable and powerful tool for asserting claims against shipowners, and the discrepancies that necessarily followed, set the stage for Moragne, which gave the Supreme Court the opportunity to revisit the vitality and soundness of The Harrisburg in light of the changing maritime landscape.

B. Moragne v. States Marine Lines, Inc.

Moragne was a longshoreman who was killed aboard a ship in Florida's navigable waters. See Moragne v. States Marine Lines, Inc., 398 U.S. 375, 376 (1970). His widow sued in state court for wrongful death based upon unseaworthiness and negligence. See id. After removal to federal court, the district court dismissed her unseaworthiness claim, holding that general maritime law did not permit recovery for wrongful death based upon unseaworthiness in state territorial waters, and, unlike her negligence-based claim, Florida's wrongfuldeath statute did not encompass wrongful-death based upon unseaworthiness. See id. The only issue on appeal, therefore, was whether general maritime law recognized a cause of action for wrongful death based upon unseaworthiness. See id. at 377.

The Court's analysis began with The Harrisburg , which, as noted above, based its holding upon the premise that neither American nor English common law recognized civil actions...