Mistretta v. SS Ocean Evelyn
| Decision Date | 24 August 1964 |
| Docket Number | No. 63-A-1224.,63-A-1224. |
| Parties | Salvatore MISTRETTA, Libelant, v. S. S. OCEAN EVELYN, her engines, hull, tackle, cargo and her appurtenances thereof, Ocean Transportation Co., Inc., and Maritime Overseas Corp., Respondents, v. The UNITED STATES of America, American Stevedores, Inc., Respondents-Impleaded. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of New York |
Solomon J. Cohen, New York City, for libelant; Ernest Rassner, New York City, of counsel.
Pyne, Smith & Wilson, New York City, for respondent Ocean Transportation Co., Inc.; Walter L. Hopkins, New York City, of counsel.
Joseph P. Hoey, U. S. Atty., Brooklyn, N. Y., for United States of America; Louis E. Greco, David B. Brooks, New York City, of counsel.
Alexander, Ash & Schwartz, New York City, for American Stevedores; Alan H. Buchsbaum, New York City, of counsel.
Motion of respondent Ocean Transportation Co. (Ocean) for summary judgment in its favor and against libelant (Mistretta) dismissing the libel pursuant to Rule 58(b) of the Rules of Practice in Admiralty and Maritime Cases (Admiralty Rules) is denied. Cross-motion of libelant for summary judgment in favor of libelant and against Ocean on the issue of liability, and setting the action for trial for assessment of damages is likewise denied.
Motion of Ocean as respondent-third-party claimant pursuant to Admiralty Rule 58(b) insofar as it seeks summary judgment in the form of an interlocutory decree under Ocean's impleading petitions against American Stevedores, Inc. (Stevedore) and United States of America as respondents-impleaded in the event that summary judgment dismissing the libel were to be awarded said respondent is not passed upon as moot; and insofar as such motion seeks summary judgment declaring, in the event that the motion for judgment dismissing the libel is denied, that the impleaded respondents are and shall be liable to Ocean in the amount of any recovery which may be had by libelant against Ocean as well as in the full amount of said respondent's reasonable attorney's fees and costs and expenses in defending the libel is denied without prejudice. Such issue is reserved for disposition at the trial of the action.
Libelant and respondent declare in their opposing papers a specious1 agreement as to the facts, but are dissident in their view as to what inference of liability should be drawn from what is thus undisputed. For the purposes of the libelant-respondent motion and cross-motion what follows may accordingly be taken as evidentially established:
On the morning of November 26, 1962 Mistretta, a carpenter with about seven or eight other carpenters reported to the No. 4 lower hold (hold) of the S.S. Ocean Evelyn for the purpose of installing shoring or braces between Army conex boxes. These were to be loaded in the hold by longshoremen in the employ of Stevedore, under its stevedoring contract with Ocean, owner-operator of the vessel.2 A conex box is a rectangular metal container about seven feet high, by six feet wide and eight feet long used for the shipment of Army3 cargo. During the morning hours conex boxes had been lowered into the hold by the ship's cargo gear. They were then detached from the ship's cargo falls and moved into the sides of the hold by a hi-lo machine owned by Stevedore and operated by one Scadding, a Stevedore employee. The port, starboard and aft sections or wings of the hold had been stowed by the long-shoremen. The forward wing was almost completely stowed with boxes, but a space remained underneath the forward coaming of the 'tween deck hatch opening for the stowage of another conex box.
Mistretta's job had been to carry shoring lumber from a pile in the hold to the carpenters there. Shortly after 1:00 P.M. a conex box was lowered into the hold. Scadding, intending to push the container against another as part of the stowing procedure, backed his hi-lo against a corner of the box which had just been lowered. Mistretta at the moment had been positioned at the far side of the box and was thus invisible to the operator. Crushed against the adjacent box through such maneuver, libelant received the injuries for which this suit is brought.
Scadding testified upon his deposition that he had no one to guide or direct his movements nor to warn him of danger to other persons in the area incident to his operation of the hi-lo, although he could not see over the box into the space where Mistretta was. A second witness, Salzano, testified, however, in a somewhat conflicting version that there was another longshoreman guiding Scadding in certain of his procedures.
No ship's officers or crew members were in the hold at any "relevant" time and none issued any directions or instructions to any of the longshoremen or carpenters working in the hold.
Summary judgment is a useful tool when the factual basis for its functioning is clear and incontrovertible.5 It does not lend itself effectively to the resolution of a claim of negligence when negligence is to be deduced as an inference from an agglomeration of evidence, not even, when, as here the opposing parties announce agreement as to what is established by the evidence and disagree only as to the legal conclusion they would have the court draw as to whether negligence is demonstrated vel non.6
Where the suit is brought in admiralty the caveat of that court lest a too brisk efficiency in adjudication frustrate justice is even stronger than that which the appellate courts issue. Admiralty Rule 58 authorizing summary judgment first came into effect in 1961, long after Fed. R.Civ.P. 56 with which it is in pari materia was enacted. The admiralty summary judgment provision, moreover, impinges upon a trial procedure wherein the traditional rule requires the Judge presiding to hear the evidence through to completion of the trial before essaying to decide the issues. Admiralty favors thorough inquiry and exposition in the ascertainment of facts. At 3 Benedict on Admiralty (6th Edition) § 406, p. 112 the author notes that "A motion to dismiss at the close of libelant's case is ordinarily not entertained unless the claimant also rests." Supporting this view are Bull et al. v. New York & Porto Rico S. S. Co., 167 F. 792 (2d Cir. 1909), cert. denied 214 U.S. 526, 29 Sup.Ct. 704, 53 L.Ed. 1068; The Persiana, 158 F. 912 (S.D.N. Y. 1907); and Martin Marine Transp. v. United States, 66 F.Supp. 673 (D.C.E.D. Pa.1946).
The libelant's claim of unseaworthiness of the vessel, as well as of general want of care in carrying forward the lading operations present questions of liability as affected by less than complete transfer of control from the shipowner to the stevedore. As pertinent precedents are investigated by the court, it encounters warnings of shoal waters ahead. In Robillard v. A. L. Burbank, & Co.,7 Circuit Judge Friendly, sitting by designation as a District Court Judge, dealt with the subject of unseaworthiness as it touched a longshoreman's cause of action against a shipowner. The latter had contracted with a stevedore employer for his services. In the excerpt quoted from the opinion in the footnote below the opening sentences remark that 8
Further on in the course of the judge's progress report concerning the metamorphoses of judicial attitude in the period he mentions, one comes upon the observation, intimidating to the unduly venture-some, that Alaska Steamship Co. v. Petterson, 347 U.S. 396, 74 S.Ct. 601, affirming per curiam the Ninth Circuit's decision, 205 F.2d 478, had the effect of "invalidat(ing) many of the Second and Third Circuit decisions on `relinquishment of control' as applied to unseaworthiness on which defendant here relies."9 The shipowner's obligations, whatever the ever-expanding dimension current decisional law may assign to them, are generally non-delegable, regardless of the owner's surrender of control of his vessel to another.10 In Grillea v. United States,11 Judge Hand, writing for the Court of Appeals remarked that "it is at times hard to say whether a defect in hull or gear that arises as a momentary step or phase in the progress of work on board should be considered as an incident in a continuous course of operation, which will fasten liability upon the owner only in case it is negligent, or as an unfitness of the ship that makes her pro tanto unseaworthy."
Citing, as illutrative, Mollica v. Compania Sud-Americana de Vapores12 wherein the shipowner was held liable to a longshoreman for the vessel's unseaworthiness — (the hold in which the longshoreman, employee of an independently contracted stevedore, was injured was unsafe as insufficiently lighted) — Judge Hand continues with a comment that "it would be futile to try to draw any line between situations in which the defect is only an incident in a continuous operation, and those in which some intermediate step is to be taken as making the ship unseaworthy." The distinguished jurist, nevertheless, proceeds to make the delineation which he finds necessary for the purposes of the appellate review. What was reviewed, however, was a judgment entered after a trial below where evidence with the full panoply of trial procedure present and operative had been adduced and sifted by the court before it made its determination. The award of a judgment on affidavits alone is contraindicated when so...
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