Latta Terry Construction Company v. British Steamship Raithmoor

• Decision Date: 01 May 1916
• Docket Number: No. 24,24
• Citation: 241 U.S. 166,60 L.Ed. 937,36 S.Ct. 514
• Parties: LATTA & TERRY CONSTRUCTION COMPANY, Appt., v. BRITISH STEAMSHIP 'RAITHMOOR,' William Evans, Master and Claimant
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

241 U.S. 166

36 S.Ct. 514

60 L.Ed. 937

LATTA & TERRY CONSTRUCTION COMPANY, Appt.,

v BRITISH STEAMSHIP 'RAITHMOOR,' William Evans, Master and Claimant.

No. 24.

Argued January 26, 1916.

Decided May 1, 1916.

Messrs. H. Alan Dawson, Edward J. Mingey, and J. Rodman Paul for appellant.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 167-169 intentionally omitted] Mr. Henry R. Edmunds for appellee.

[Argument of Counsel from Pages 170-172 intentionally omitted] Mr. Justice Hughes delivered the opinion of the court:

The appellant filed a libel in rem in the admiralty against the steamship 'Raithmoor' to recover damages for tort. The steamship, coming up the Delaware river on the evening of July 18, 1909, collided with a scow and pile driver belonging to the appellant, and also with a structure which the appellant was erecting for the United States to serve as a beacon, and with a temporary platform used in connection with the work of construction. For the injury to the scow and pile driver a decree was entered in favor of the libellant. But the district court held that there was no jurisdiction in the admiralty of the claim for the damage to the structure and platform, and the libellant appeals. The Raithmoor, 186 Fed. 849.

The district court thus states the character and location of the structure:

'The company' (the appellant) 'was executing an independent contract with the United States, which bound them to furnish the necessary materials, labor, plant, etc., and to erect in place a foundation pier to receive a gas beacon. The work was under the continual supervision of a government official, but had neither been finished nor accepted. The structure was to consist of three cylindrical piles of reinforced concrete to be sunk about 19 1/2 feet into the bottom of the river, and to project 12 feet above mean high water, these to be covered with a sheet steel cap. The piles were to be encased in steel and to be protected also by depositing rip-rap around them to a specified height. When completed, the pier was to be used solely as a beacon on the edge of a navigable channel that has not yet been made ready, and the government was to install upon the cap a lamp and other appliances. The site is 3/4 of a mile from the eastern or New Jersey shore, and about 2 miles from the western or Delaware shore, of the river, and is surrounded by navigable water, about 27 feet deep at low tide. The work was begun in June, and at the time of the collision was approaching completion. The piles were in place, and not much remained to be done except to put the metal cap into place and deposit the rip-rap. The necessities of the work required a temporary platform to be built close to the concrete piles. This was of wood, about 15 feet square, and rested upon wooden piling driven into the bottom of the river.' Id. p. 850.

The decisions of this court with respect to the jurisdic- tion of the admiralty in cases of tort make the question to be determined a very narrow one. In The Plymouth (Hough v. Western Transp. Co.) 3 Wall. 20, 36, 18 L. ed. 125, 128, it was broadly declared that 'the whole, or at least the substantial, cause of action, arising out of the wrong, must be complete within the locality upon which the jurisdiction depends—on the high seas or the navigable waters.' Accordingly it was held that a libel for damage to a wharf and storehouses, caused by a fire started on a vessel through negligence, was beyond the limit of admiralty cognizance, as the damage was wholly done, and the wrong was thus consummated, upon the land. Upon this ground, the jurisdiction of the district court to entertain a petition for the limitation of the liability of the shipowner in such a case was denied in Ex parte Phenix Ins. Co. 118 U. S. 610, 30 L. ed. 274, 7 Sup. Ct. Rep. 25. The principle was restated in Johnson v. Chicago & P. Elevator Co. 119 U. S. 388, 397, 30 L. ed. 447, 7 Sup. Ct. Rep. 254. And see Knapp S. & Co. Co. v. McCaffrey, 177 U. S. 638, 643, 44 L. ed. 921, 924, 20 Sup. Ct. Rep. 824; Homer Ramsdell Transp. Co. v. La Compagnie G enerale Transatlantique, 182 U. S. 406, 411, 45 L. ed. 1155, 1159, 21 Sup. Ct. Rep. 831. But in The Blackheath (United States v. Evans) 195 U. S. 361, 49 L. ed. 236, 25 Sup. Ct. Rep. 46, a distinction was drawn, and the jurisdiction of the admiralty was upheld in the case of an injury caused by a vessel in negligently running into a beacon which stood 15 or 20 feet from the channel of Mobile river, or bay, in water 12 or 15 feet deep, and was built on piles driven firmly into the bottom. The court pointed out the essential basis of the decision, in saying: 'It is enough to say that we now are dealing with an injury to a government aid to navigation from ancient times subject to the admiralty,—a beacon emerging from the water, injured by the motion of the vessel, by a continuous act beginning and consummated upon navigable water, and giving character to the effects upon a point which is only technically land, through a connection at the bottom of the sea.' (...