Michalic v. Cleveland Tankers, Inc

• Decision Date: 07 November 1960
• Docket Number: No. 31,31
• Citation: 81 S.Ct. 6,5 L.Ed.2d 20,364 U.S. 325
• Parties: Thomas MICHALIC, Petitioner, v. CLEVELAND TANKERS, INC
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

364 U.S. 325

81 S.Ct. 6

5 L.Ed.2d 20

Thomas MICHALIC, Petitioner,

v CLEVELAND TANKERS, INC.

No. 31.

Argued Oct. 20, 1960.

Decided Nov. 7, 1960.

Mr. Harvey Goldstein, Las Vegas, Nev., Mr. S. Eldridge Sampliner, Cleveland, Ohio, for petitioner.

Mr. Lucian Y. Ray, Cleveland, Ohio, for respondent.

Mr. Justice BRENNAN delivered the opinion of the Court.

The petitioner asks damages for personal injuries he allegedly sustained in a shipboard accident while a crew member aboard the respondent's Great Lakes vessel, the tanker Orion. His complaint alleges respondent's liability both for negligence under the Jones Act, 46 U.S.C. § 688, 46 U.S.C.A. § 688, and for unseaworthiness under the general maritime law;¹ a claim for maintenance and cure is also alleged. The parties settled the claim for maintenance and cure at the trial, which was before a jury in the District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. Judgment was entered for the respondent on the unseaworthiness and Jones Act claims upon a verdict directed by the trial judge on the ground of insufficiency of the evidence. The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed. 271 F.2d 194. We granted certiorari, 362 U.S. 909, 80 S.Ct. 661, 4 L.Ed.2d 618.

Michalic claims that in a shipboard accident on December 28, 1955, a two-and-one-half-pound wrench dropped on his left great toe. Michalic was afflicted with Buerger's disease when he joined the Orion three months earlier as a fireman in the engine room. We are informed by the testimony of one of the medical witnesses that Buerger's disease 'is a disease of unknown origin * * * it produces a narrowing of the blood supply going to the foot through the arteries, and it runs a very foreseeable course; it is slowly progressive in most cases and leads to progressive loss of blood supply to the extremities involving usually the legs'; for one afflicted with the disease to drop 'a hammer on his toe * * * is a very serious thing and frequently leads to amputation. * * * Because the circulation is already impaired and the wound will not heal properly, and any appreciable trauma will frequently lead to gangrene.'

Michalic did not report the accident at the time but continued working until January 6, 1956, a week later, when the vessel was laid up for the winter. Meanwhile he treated the toe every night after work in hot water and Epsom salts. He was at his home from January 6 to March 15 and used hot boric acid soaks 'practically every day.' He was called back to the Orion on March 15. On April 1, 1956, he reported to the Orion's captain that '(m)y leg was so bad, so painful, I couldn't take it no more * * *. I want a hospital ticket.' The captain gave him the ticket after filling out a report in which he stated that Michalic told him that on December 28, 1955, 'While working with pumpman in pumproom man said he dropped a wrench on his foot and his toe has been sore ever since.' This was the first notice respondent had of any accident.

At the hospital in April, a diagnosis was made of 'an infected left great toe nail and gangrene of the left great toe secondary to the Buerger's Disease.' During the spring three amputations were performed on the left leg. first the great left toe, next the left leg below the knee and then part of the leg above the knee. Medical experts, three on behalf of the petitioner and one for the respondent, differed whether, assuming that the wrench dropped on Michalic's left great toe on December 28, there was a causal connection between that trauma and the amputations. This plainly presented a question for the jury's determination. Sentilles v. Inter-Caribbean Corp., 361 U.S. 107, 80 S.Ct. 173, 4 A.L.R.2d 142, and we do not understand that the respondent contends otherwise.

The basic dispute between the parties is as to the sufficiency of the proofs to justify the jury's finding with reason that respondent furnished Michalic with a wrench which was not reasonably fit for its intended use. Here a distinction should be noticed between the unseaworthiness and Jones Act claims in this regard. The vessel's duty to furnish seamen with tools reasonably fit for their intended use is absolute, Mahnich v. Southern S.S. Co., 321 U.S. 96, 64 S.Ct. 455, 88 L.Ed. 561; Seas Shipping Co. v. Sieracki, 328 U.S. 85, 66 S.Ct. 872, 90 L.Ed. 1099; The Osceola, 189 U.S. 158, 23 S.Ct. 483, 47 L.Ed. 760; Cox v. Esso Shipping Co., 5 Cir., 247 F.2d 629; and this duty is completely independent of the owner's duty under the Jones Act to exercise reasonable care. Mitchell v. Trawler Racer, Inc., 362 U.S. 539, 80 S.Ct. 926, 4 L.Ed.2d 941. The differences are stated in Cox v. Esso Shipping Co., supra:

'One is an absolute duty, the other is due care. Where * * * the ultimate issue (is) seaworthiness of the gear * * *. The owner has an absolute duty to furnish reasonably suitable appliances. If he does not, then no amount of due care or prudence excuses him, whether he knew, or could have known, of its deficiency at the outset or after use. In contrast, under the negligence concept, there is only a duty to use due care, i.e., reasonable prudence, to select and keep in order reasonably suitable appliances. Defects which would not have been known to a reasonably prudent person at the outset, or arose after use and which a reasonably prudent person ought not to have discovered would impose no liability.' 247 F.2d, at page 637.

Thus the question under Michalic's unseaworthiness claim is the single one as to the sufficiency of the proofs to raise a jury question whether the wrench furnished Michalic was a reasonably suitable appliance for the task he was assigned. To support the Jones Act claim, however, the evidence must also be sufficient to raise a jury question whether the respondent failed to exercise due care in furnishing a wrench which was not a reasonably suitable appliance.

The wrench dropped on Michalic's foot while he was using it to unscrew nuts from bolts on the casing of a centrifugal pump in the pumproom. He had been assigned this task by the pumpman after the first assistant engineer sent him from the engine room to the pumproom to help ready the pumps for the vessel's winter lay-up. There were about twenty-five 1 5/8 nuts tightly secured to the bolts on the casing. The pumpman gave him a 1 5/8 straight-end wrench weighing two and one-half pounds and ten to eleven inches long, and also a mallet. The pump was located alongside and some inches below a catwalk, and Michalic had to step down from the catwalk to reach the casing. His task required the gripping of each nut in the claw of the wrench and the hammering of the side of the wrench with the mallet to apply pressure to loosen it. Michalic had removed all but a few of the nuts when he 'had hold of a nut' with the wrench and 'I hit it (the wrench) with the mallet and it slipped off the nut and came down the side of the pump and hit my big toe. * * * Yes, she slipped off the nut on the pump and came down the side of the pump and smashed my big toe.'

Michalic contends that the proofs were sufficient to justify the jury in finding with reason that there was play in the claw of the wrench which prevented a tight grip on the nut, thus entitling him to the jury's determination of his unseaworthiness claim, and were also sufficient to justify the jury in finding with reason that the respondent negligently furnished him with a defective wrench, thus entitling him also to the jury's determination of his Jones Act claim. The evidence viewed in a light favorable to him was as follows: The wrench and other pumproom tools were kept in the pumproom toolbox and were used only when the vessel was being prepared for lay-up. The tools were four or five years old. Because of the danger of fire, the tools, including the wrench and mallet which Michalic used, were made of a special spark-proof alloy. The second mate, who had left the Orion on December 19, ² testified that the tools were bronze because 'Bronze tools are for non-striking.' It was the practice to inspect the pumproom tools and replace worn ones before their use at lay-up time, but the first assistant engineer who testified to the practice did not say this inspection was made in 1955; and the pumpman testified that 'It could be' that no one looked at the toolbox for nine months before December 28. The second mate testified that the tools 'had been very beaten and battered, perhaps there for some time.' Michalic testified that he noticed when the pumpman gave him the wrench that it was an 'old beat-up wrench * * * all chewed up on the end.' Michalic said that when he started work 'the wrench was slipping off the nuts; it slipped off every one of them.' He 'had a hard time loosening them off.' He protested to the pumpman that 'This wrench keeps slipping off,' and the pumpman answered 'Never mind about that, do the job as best you can.'

The trial judge found the evidence to be insufficient to present a jury question whether the wrench was a reasonably suitable appliance, because 'on the theory the grip is worn * * * there is never any mention of the grip in the case * * *.' The Court of Appeals took the same view, saying 'There was no evidence that the open or jaw end of the wrench was in any way deficient * * * (t)he fact that the wrench slipped is not evidence that its slipping was the consequence of some condition in the jaw or handle of the wrench.' 271 F.2d at page 199. We think that both lower courts erred. True, there was no direct evidence of play in the jaw of the wrench, as in Jacob v. New York City, 315 U.S. 752, 754, 62 S.Ct. 854, 855, 86 L.Ed. 1166. But direct evidence of a fact is not required. Circumstantial evidence is not only sufficient, but may also be more certain, satisfying and persuasive than direct evidence. Rogers v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 352 U.S. 500, 508, 77 S.Ct. 443, 449, 1 L.Ed.2d 493, note 17.³ The jury, on this record with the inferences permissible from the respondent's own...