Miles v. M/V Hansa Caledonia

• Decision Date: 20 August 2002
• Docket Number: No. 402CV078.,402CV078.
• Citation: 245 F.Supp.2d 1261
• Parties: Shawn MILES, Plaintiff, v. M/V HANSA CALEDONIA, her engines, boilers, tackle, etc., in rem, and Schiffahrts-Gesellschaft "Hansa Caledonia" MBH & Co. KG., owner of the M/V Hansa Caledonia, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Georgia

245 F.Supp.2d 1261

Shawn MILES, Plaintiff, v. M/V HANSA CALEDONIA, her engines, boilers, tackle, etc., in rem, and Schiffahrts-Gesellschaft "Hansa Caledonia" MBH & Co. KG., owner of the M/V Hansa Caledonia, Defendants.

No. 402CV078.

United States District Court, S.D. Georgia, Savannah Division.

August 20, 2002.

Edwin D. Robb, Jr., Bouhan, Williams & Levy, LLP, Savannah, GA, for Plaintiff.

David F. Sipple, Mare Gordon Marling, Hunter, Maclean, Exley & Dunn, Savannah, GA, for Defendants.

ORDER

EDENFIELD, District Judge.

I. BACKGROUND

in this in rem admiralty, in personam diversity case, defendant M/V Hansa Caledonia and its owner, Schiffahrts-Gesellschaft "Hansa Caledonia" MBH and Co. KG (Schiffahrts),¹ move to strike plaintiff Shawn Miles's jury trial demand. Doc. ## 11, 17. Miles, a stevedore foreman injured aboard the vessel, brings one common-law negligence claim against both vessel and owner on a joint and several liability theory. Doc. # 4¶16.

However, plaintiff wants to simultaneously try his in rem claim (against the vessel) to the bench and his at-law (in personam) claim to a jury. Doc. # 4¶16; # 13 at 6, 10. Alternatively, he reasons, the Court "could empanel an advisory jury in both components of the action." Doc. # 13 at 6.

Defendants say Miles waived his jury trial right by invoking admiralty jurisdiction and designating his claim under F.R.Civ.P. 9(h), notwithstanding concurrent diversity jurisdiction. Doc. # 12 at 4. "[B]ecause the [C]ourt must in any event make findings of fact and conclusions of law," they further contend, "the use of an advisory jury will not result in any savings of judicial resources." Doc. # 16 at 5-6. Both sides cite diverging case law.

II. ANALYSIS

In federal district courts plaintiffs can bring actions that sound in equity, in law, or both. Their choice affects their Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. Claims sounding under common law often fetch a jury trial; equity and admiralty claims typically go to the bench. See 9 WRIGHT & MILLER: FED. PRAC. & PROC. § 2315, Admiralty And Maritime Cases (1995).

Sometimes plaintiffs are vague about whether they advance claims within the equity (admiralty) or "at-law" side of the court. Miles is not. Against Schiffahrts he seeks a jury trial from the "law" side of this Court. Against the vessel he seeks a bench trial under the admiralty/equity side. Doc. # 4 ¶16 (citing F.R.Civ.P 9(h)).

That "hybrid" selection thrusts him into murky legal waters because most plaintiffs elect one or the other, and courts disagree about whether a plaintiff can "have his cake and eat it too." As is more fully discussed below, some courts have permitted both but only because a specific, juryright preserving statutory (e.g., Jones Act) claim is involved. Others aren't so particular. Because the Eleventh Circuit has not addressed the issue, the Court will pause to cite some general background:

While, broadly speaking, there is no constitutional right to a jury trial in an admiralty action, the "savings to suitors" clause, 28 U.S.C. § 1333(1), reserves common law remedies to a plaintiff "in all cases where the common law is competent to give it." Leon v. Galceran, 78 U.S. (11 Wall) 185, 191, 20 L.Ed. 74 (1870). Ordinarily, a plaintiff signals its election of remedies by its choice of fora or by designating its jurisdictional choice pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 9(h).

Reliance Nat. Ins. Co. (Europe) Ltd. v. Hanover, 222 F.Supp.2d 110, 114 (D.Mass. 2002); see also Troutman v. Daybrook Fisheries, Inc., 2002 WL 318326 at * 1 (E.D.La.2002) (unpublished).

Most plaintiffs elect either a bench or jury trial. But Rule 9(h) does not state whether a plaintiff can elect both,² since it "serves only as a device by which the pleader may claim the special benefits of admiralty procedures and remedies, including a nonjury trial, when the pleadings show that both admiralty and some other basis of federal jurisdiction exist." Romero v. Bethlehem Steel Corp., 515 F.2d 1249, 1252 (5th Cir.1975).

It thus does not speak to defendants' argument that, by electing to have his negligence claim against the vessel heard in admiralty, Miles neutralized the jury trial right that would otherwise accompany his corresponding election to have the same claim heard at law, against the vessel's owner, even though both arise out of the same set of facts.

And F.R.Civ.P. 38 addresses jury-trial rights/procedure, see Rule 38(a) ("Right Preserved"); 38(b) ("Demand"), but it does not definitively speak to this issue. Rule 38(e) simply notes that "[t]he unification of admiralty and civil rules in 1966 was intended to work no change in the general rule that admiralty claims are to be tried without a jury." Romero, 515 F.2d at 1252.

Nor does jurisdiction alone determine the issue. Ordinarily,

[t]he plaintiffs designation of jurisdiction in the complaint is the key factor in the availability of a jury trial. A maritime plaintiff may proceed with a jury on the "law side" of the court by citing the court's federal question jurisdiction or diversity jurisdiction. A party who elects not to file its action at law, but instead invokes admiralty jurisdiction under Rule 9(h) to proceed on the "admiralty side" of the federal court, is not entitled to a jury trial. [However, t]he Circuits differ with respect to whether a jury trial is permitted when the plaintiff asserts both admiralty jurisdiction pursuant to Rule 9(h) and diversity jurisdiction.

29 MOORE'S FED. PRAC. § 704.08[2] (emphasis added); see also Hamilton v. Unicoolship, Ltd., 2002 WL 44139 at *2-3 (S.D.N.Y.2002) (unpublished) (collecting circuit-split cases).

Against this background, some courts have held that

[u]nder ... [Rule] 9(h), a plaintiff with an admiralty case that also falls within a federal court's diversity jurisdiction may elect to proceed either in admiralty or at law. Continental Cas. Co. v. Anderson Excavating & Wrecking Co., 189 F.3d 512, 517 (7th Cir.1999); Wingerter v. Chester Quarry Co., 185 F.3d 657, 664-65 (7th Cir.1998). "Numerous and important consequences flow" from such an election. Wingerter, 185 F.3d at 664 (quotation omitted). As relevant here, "a plaintiff that invokes admiralty jurisdiction is not entitled to a jury trial." Id. at 667; see also Concordia Co. v. Panek, 115 F.3d 67, 70-71 (1st Cir.1997); Ghotra v. Bandila Shipping, Inc., 113 F.3d 1050, 1054 (9th Cir.1997).

Pacific Tall Ships v. Kuehne & Nagel, 2000 WL 283918 at * 1 (N.D.IU.2000) (unpublished) (emphasis added); see also Hamilton, 2002 WL 44139 at * 3. Yet,

[t]he Ninth Circuit "find[s] nothing inherently incongruous about bringing an in rem and an in personam claim together before the jury when the claims arise out of a single occurrence." Ghotra, 113 F.3d at 1057. The plaintiff in Ghotra brought negligence claims against the ship's owner and charter, which were in personam maritime claims, under diversity jurisdiction, as well as an in rem claim against the ship. Id. at 1055. The Ninth Circuit held that "the non-jury component of admiralty jurisdiction must give way to the seventh amendment." Id. at 1057 (quoting Wilmington Trust v. United States Dist. Ct, 934 F.2d 1026, 1031 (9th Cir.1991)). The Ninth Circuit saw no reason to penalize the plaintiffs for bringing a single action, thus conserving judicial resources rather than two separate actions which could have been combined under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 42(a). Id. at 1057. Hamilton, 2002 WL 44139 at * 3.

Complicating this area of law further are variables not in play here. For example, because the Jones Act independently (hence, statutorily) provides seamen with jury trial rights, a claim based on that statute alone has led courts to conclude that a jury trial right exists in hybrid, law/admiralty cases. See Fitzgerald v. United States Lines Co., 374 U.S. 16, 21, 83 S.Ct. 1646, 10 L.Ed.2d 720 (1963); see also The Great Lakes Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1873 (jury trial granted for claims which had previously been tried to the court in admiralty). Neither statute is involved in this case, but many of the cases the parties cite turn on the Jones Act. This "statutory difference" sometimes gets lost in lawyers' briefs, and even in some court opinions. Attempting to inject some clarity in the matter, one source explains that

[i]f the only basis for jurisdiction of a case is in admiralty, it will be tried by the court—except as the Great Lakes Act otherwise provides—regardless of how it is labeled. If jurisdiction alternatively can be based on a federal question, or on diversity and the necessary jurisdictional amount, either party may demand a jury trial, unless the plaintiff has chosen to identify the claim as an admiralty or a maritime claim, as permitted by Rule 9(h). If the plaintiff exercises that option ordinarily, there will be no jury trial. However, nothing in Rule 38(e) or the other rules prohibits a trial by jury on joined civil and admiralty claims, and the Fitzgerald principle³ may be applied to provide for jury trial of all claims in the case.

9 FED. PRAC. & PROC. CIV.2D § 2315 at 121-22 (footnotes omitted; footnote and emphasis added); see also Haskins v. Point Towing Co., 395 F.2d 737, 739-40 (3d Cir. 1968). Miles cannot be said to have "joined" separate and distinct civil and admiralty claims in the sense employed in the above passage; rather, he's brought one tort (common law, not statutory) claim against two legally distinct parties (the vessel and its owner). Under the above rationale, his Rule 9(h) election extinguishes his jury-trial right against the vessel's owner.

But that rationale comes from a legal resource, not the Eleventh Circuit. Yet, that court has not directly ruled on this issue. In Romero, the old Fifth Circuit foreshadowed a possible future ruling here. There the plaintiff likewise alleged both admiralty and diversity jurisdiction, id. at 1251, then claimed to have withdrawn his Rule 9(h) invocation. 515 F.2d at 1252.

Romero's withdrawal,...