Joiner v. Diamond M Drilling Co., 80-3896

• Decision Date: 16 September 1982
• Docket Number: No. 80-3896,80-3896
• Citation: 688 F.2d 256
• Parties: Kathy L. JOINER, Etc., et al., Plaintiffs, v. DIAMOND M DRILLING CO. and Halliburton Company, Defendants and Third-Party Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Dr. C. Babson FRESH, Third-Party Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 256

688 F.2d 256

Kathy L. JOINER, Etc., et al., Plaintiffs, v. DIAMOND M DRILLING CO. and Halliburton Company, Defendants and Third-Party Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Dr. C. Babson FRESH, Third-Party Defendant-Appellee.

No. 80-3896.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

Sept. 16, 1982.

Rehearing Denied Oct. 14, 1982.

Joseph J. Weigand, Jr., Houma, La., for Diamond.

Allen L. Smith, Jr., Jeff M. Cole, Lake Charles, La., for Halliburton.

Provosty, Sadler & De Launay, LeDoux R. Provosty, Jr., F. Rae Swent, Alexandria, La., for Dr. C. Burton Fresh.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.

Before CLARK, Chief Judge, GOLDBERG and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.

GOLDBERG, Circuit Judge:

This truncated appeal began with a jurisdictional faux pas and finds its denouement in our conclusion that there has been a French Revolution in Louisiana's law of solidary obligations.

This case arises from the offshore injury and subsequent onshore death of a seaman. The seaman's widow brought damage actions against her late husband's maritime employer and against the manufacturer of allegedly defective shipboard equipment. In turn, each of these maritime defendants brought third-party claims for contribution and indemnity against a Louisiana physician whose alleged onshore medical malpractice was said to have ultimately caused the seaman's death. The trial court held as a matter of Louisiana state law that the physician could not be liable to the third-party plaintiffs. Accordingly, the third-party claims for contribution and indemnity were dismissed. The shipowner and manufacturer then brought this appeal, arguing that the trial court had erred in its application of Louisiana contribution and indemnity law.

Having carefully reviewed this complex and unsettled quadrant of Louisiana jurisprudence, we conclude that the trial court acted properly in dismissing the third-party claims for indemnity. However, in light of several recent Louisiana state court decisions which have substantially reworked that state's doctrine of "solidary" liability, we find that we must reverse the dismissal of the contribution claims.

I. FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

A. In the "Real World"

Ronald S. Joiner was injured while working aboard the New Era, a semi-submersible offshore drilling vessel owned and operated by the Diamond M Drilling Company ("Diamond M"). He was hurt while attempting to clean a shipboard mud tank manufactured by the Halliburton Company ("Halliburton"). After the accident, the injured seaman was hospitalized and placed under the care and treatment of a private physician of his own choosing, Dr. C. Babson Fresh. Unfortunately, the seaman's

condition steadily deteriorated. On August 31, 1977, six days after the accident, Ronald Joiner died.

B. In the District Court

On November 15, 1977, Joiner's widow ¹ brought suit against the Diamond M Drilling Company, alleging that her husband's injury and subsequent death had been caused by the shipowner's negligence. Mrs. Joiner later amended her complaint, adding Halliburton, the mud tank manufacturer, as a codefendant. In turn, Diamond M and Halliburton filed third-party complaints against Dr. C. Babson Fresh, alleging that it had been the doctor's onshore medical malpractice that ultimately caused Joiner's death. Specifically, the third-party plaintiffs claimed that the doctor's failure to diagnose and treat Joiner's basalar skull fracture and spinal meningitis resulted in the seaman's tragic death. Accordingly, each third-party plaintiff sought to recover contribution or indemnity "over and against" the physician.

On August 24, 1979, Mrs. Joiner settled her claims against both Diamond M and Halliburton for $300,000. ² Unfortunately, the pretrial settlement failed to bring this litigation to a close. Although the original plaintiff was out of the case, Diamond M and Halliburton's third-party actions against Dr. Fresh remained before the court. Dr. Fresh responded to these contribution and indemnity claims with a motion to dismiss. The District Court took up this motion and granted summary judgment on the merits. Joiner v. Diamond M Co., 500 F.Supp. 619 (W.D.La.1980). The third-party plaintiffs then brought this appeal.

C. In the Court of Appeals

Although Diamond M and Halliburton's third-party claims had been adjudicated "on their merits," the trial court failed to indicate the basis upon which it presumed to exercise subject matter jurisdiction. Thus, when this case first came to us on appeal, our attention was focused solely upon the question of federal subject matter jurisdiction. After carefully reviewing the record on appeal, we found that the District Court had acted beyond the proper scope of its limited subject matter jurisdiction in adjudicating these third-party claims. Joiner v. Diamond M Drilling Co., 677 F.2d 1035 (5th Cir. 1982) (Joiner I). Specifically, we held: (1) that the third-party actions against Dr. Fresh were state-law claims, not independently cognizable under the federal courts' admiralty jurisdiction, id. at 1038-1039; (2) that the record failed to establish that the third-party claims could be heard under the District Court's diversity jurisdiction, id. at 1039; and (3) that even if these claims were ancillary to the original admiralty action, the District Court erred in retaining and adjudicating the ancillary state-law actions following the pretrial settlement of the main federal action. Id. at 1041-44. We therefore declined to reach the merits and held that the case ought to have been dismissed for want of federal subject matter jurisdiction. Id. at 1044.

Following the publication of our opinion, Diamond M and Halliburton filed an eleventh-hour petition seeking to amend their pleadings so as to allege the facts necessary to establish diversity jurisdiction. The record on appeal could not support a finding of subject matter jurisdiction, however the appellants averred that if given the opportunity to amend their pleadings, they could indeed establish diversity. We therefore withheld the mandate, granted the appellants' motion to amend their pleadings, and remanded this case for the limited purpose of allowing the requested amendments. ³ Upon remand, the District Court found that the newly alleged facts did indeed warrant

                the exercise of diversity jurisdiction.  4  Thus, the case now returns to us for adjudication "on the merits."  5
                

II. ISSUES ON APPEAL; AT LAST WE REACH "THE MERITS"

In granting summary judgment against the third-party plaintiffs, the District Court held as a matter of Louisiana state law that neither Diamond M nor Halliburton were entitled to contribution or indemnity from Dr. Fresh, and that their third-party claims were barred by Louisiana's one-year medical malpractice statute of limitations. Joiner v. Diamond M Co., 500 F.Supp. 619 (W.D.La.1980). On appeal, Diamond M and Halliburton argue that it is federal admiralty law, and not Louisiana state law, that controls the question of whether they can recover contribution or indemnity from Dr. Fresh. In the alternative, the appellants contend that even if Louisiana state law is applied, contribution or indemnity is available and their claims against the doctor are not barred by Louisiana's medical malpractice statute of limitations.

III. THE CLAIMS FOR CONTRIBUTION OR INDEMNITY: A QUESTION OF STATE LAW

The District Court held that Diamond M and Halliburton's claims for contribution or indemnity arise, if at all, under Louisiana state law. Diamond M and Halliburton cite this as error, arguing that their claims for contribution or indemnity against Dr. Fresh arise under federal law. Specifically, the appellants contend that their third-party actions against Dr. Fresh concern an alleged breach of a maritime contract. We cannot agree.

Diamond M and Halliburton suggest that a physician's treatment of an injured seaman creates an implied maritime contract between doctor and shipowner and that the physician's alleged malpractice constitutes a breach of that implied contract. The appellants maintain that their claims against Dr. Fresh can be seen as actions for breach of an "implied warranty of workmanlike performance" and therefore contend that their third-party complaints set forth "general maritime law" claims under the doctrine of maritime indemnity described in Ryan Stevedoring Company Inc. v. Pan Atlantic Steamship Corporation, 350 U.S. 124, 132, 76 S.Ct. 232, 236, 100 L.Ed. 133 (1956).

We find that the appellants' Ryan indemnity argument is foreclosed by our decision in Penn Tanker v. United States, 409 F.2d 514, 517-518 (5th Cir. 1969). In Penn Tanker, as in this case, a shipowner sought to recover Ryan indemnity from a hospital which had negligently treated an injured seaman. This Court unequivocally rejected the shipowner's Ryan indemnity argument, stating:

(T)here can be no implied warranty running from the (hospital) to the shipowner.... We are unwilling to accept (the) tenuous argument that the relationship of ... hospitals and shipowners, concerning treatment of seaman, is comparable to those relationships which have been held to justify the application of Ryan.

409 F.2d at 517-518.

We adhere to our decision in Penn Tanker. A private land-locked physician who treats a patient who happens to have been injured at sea, does not thereby enter into an implied maritime contract. We can find absolutely no support for the proposition that an ordinary, private, onshore physician who treats an injured sailor has thereby submitted himself to the rules of maritime commerce. Rather, it has been We conclude that these third-party claims against Dr. Fresh cannot be characterized as being actions for breach of a maritime contract, independently cognizable under the federal courts' admiralty jurisdiction. As the District Court recognized, these are state law claims that must be adjudicated under Louisiana's law of contribution...