Grant v. Steamboat Maria Denning

• Decision Date: 31 March 1859
• Parties: GRANT, Respondent, v. STEAMBOAT MARIA DENNING, Appellant.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

28 Mo. 280

GRANT, Respondent,

v.STEAMBOAT MARIA DENNING, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Missouri.

March Term, 1859.

1. A. was employed as a fireman on a steamboat for a trip from St. Louis to New Orleans and back at certain agreed wages per month; after the steamboat had proceeded a short way on her trip to New Orleans, A. was discharged and put ashore without cause; the trip lasted twenty-seven days, during which A. obtained employment elsewhere for about eight or nine days. Held, that A.'s claim to relief might be enforced by suit against the boat to recover wages for the trip; that this claim was a lien on the boat and might be enforced as such in an action under the act concerning boats and vessels; that A. might recover wages up to the completion of the trip, deducting any wages he may in the mean time have earned on any other boat.

Appeal from St. Louis Law Commissioner's Court.

The facts sufficiently appear in the opinion of the court.

Decker, for appellant.

I. It is not in contemplation of the law to give a lien upon a boat unless the work was actually rendered on board the same. (See Blass v. The Robert Campbell, 16 Mo. 266; Jones v. Steamboat Morrisett, 21 Mo. 142.)

Killam, for respondent.

I. The court committed no error in refusing to dismiss. (2 Pick. 267, 232; 19 Pick. 349, 528; 12 Metc. 286; Sedg. on Dam. 216, 223; 8 Georg. 190; 25 Verm. 206; 11 Verm. 273; 2 Swan, 605; 9 Gill, 288.)

NAPTON, Judge, delivered the opinion of the court.

This was a suit against the boat for wages for one trip as fireman, at the rate of thirty-five dollars per month. It appeared that the master of the boat shipped the plaintiff at St. Louis for a trip to New Orleans and back at thirty-five dollars per month. About fifteen or twenty miles below St. Louis the plaintiff was put ashore for the alleged reason that the boat had too many men. The trip lasted twenty-seven days; during which time the plaintiff got employment elsewhere for about eight or nine days. A motion to dismiss the suit was made on the ground of a variance between the proof and the demand, and because the case made out did not create any lien on the boat.

We do not consider this case as involving any question as to the measure of damages in ordinary cases of a wrongful discharge of a servant before the expiration of his term of service. The subject of mariners' wages is governed by rules growing out of the peculiar nature of the service, and appropriately belongs to courts of admiralty, though undoubtedly actions at common law may be maintained for breaches of the contract between the master and his crew. The only question presented by this record is, whether the evidence submitted made out a claim which, under our statute concerning boats and vessels, was a lien on the boat; and upon this point our opinion is that the decision of the law commissioner was right. In the case of the city of London, 1 Wm. Rob. Adm'r, R. 88, Dr. Lushington permitted a suit for wages where the seaman was discharged after the articles had been signed but before the voyage commenced, treating the case of an unjustifiable discharge during the voyage as one where the jurisdiction of the admiralty was indisputable. The case of Emerson v. Howland and others, 1 Mas. 45, was a suit for wages in a court having admiralty jurisdiction, and the claim was based upon an illegal discharge in a foreign port, and full wages were claimed up to the return of the vessel to this country. Judge Story observed that the courts of common law usually sustained such claims in a special action on the case for damages for the illegal discharge, but that the admiralty did not hesitate to pronounce for compensation in a simple suit for wages. The frequent occurrence of suits of this description in the courts of admiralty jurisdiction in the United States may be seen by...