Phillips v. Sea Tow/Sea Spill of Savannah
Decision Date | 24 March 2003 |
Docket Number | No. S02G0973.,S02G0973. |
Citation | 276 Ga. 352,578 S.E.2d 846,2003 AMC 750 |
Parties | PHILLIPS v. SEA TOW/SEA SPILL OF SAVANNAH. |
Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Hunter, MaClean, Exley & Dunn, P.C., Robert S. Glenn, Jr., Colin A.B. McRae, Semmes, Bowen & Semmes, James W. Bartlett III, Savannah, for appellant.
Barnard M. Portman, for appellee.
After voluntarily rescuing a vessel that was in peril on the high seas, Sea Tow/Sea Spill of Savannah, a marine towing service, filed an action in state court against the boat's owner seeking a marine salvage award. The trial court dismissed the complaint, finding that Sea Tow's claim could only be brought in federal admiralty court. The Court of Appeals of Georgia reversed,1 and we granted certiorari to consider whether Sea Tow could pursue a claim for marine salvage in state court. Because we find marine salvage is a remedy that is within the federal admiralty courts' exclusive subject matter jurisdiction, we reverse the court of appeals's contrary holding. However, we affirm the judgment because we conclude that Sea Tow's complaint states a claim for quantum meruit, which is cognizable in state court.
According to the allegations in the complaint, in late May 1998, Robert Phillips abandoned his twenty-five foot sport fisherman boat, the Oosi Marine, after it capsized in the Atlantic Ocean, several miles off of the coast of Georgia. A few days later, Sea Tow located and rescued the vessel. Phillips knew that Sea Tow was searching for his vessel. Sea Tow subsequently sued Phillips for $15,000 based on its salvage services. The trial court dismissed the action, holding that Sea Tow's claim was for "pure salvage which may only be prosecuted by an in rem action before a federal court sitting in admiralty." In reversing, the court of appeals held that Sea Tow's claim was "essentially a common law claim for quantum meruit for services rendered" and could be brought in state court.2
"The law of marine salvage is of ancient vintage[,]" whose origins "can be traced to the sea laws of Byzantium and the Mediterranean seaport cities."3 It has three elements: (1) a marine peril that places the vessel in danger; (2) the salvor must provide service voluntarily and not because of an existing duty or special contract; and (3) the salvage effort must be successful or the service rendered must contribute to the success.4 An award for salvage does more than compensate the salvor for the cost of its services; it includes a bounty that rewards "for perilous services voluntarily rendered, and [serves] as an inducement to mariners to embark in such dangerous enterprises to save life and property."5
The United States Constitution vests the "judicial Power of the United States" in the federal courts and extends that power "to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction."6 Federal admiralty jurisdiction, however, has never been exclusive. The Judiciary Act of 1789 provided that the federal district courts had exclusive jurisdiction "of all civil causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction ... saving to suitors, in all cases, the right of a common law remedy, where the common law is competent to give it."7 The emphasized language is referred to as the "savings to suitors" clause and appears today in modified form at 28 U.S.C. § 1333(1): "saving to suitors in all cases all other remedies to which they are otherwise entitled."8
Although Congress has revised the text of the clause over the years, the United States Supreme Court has said that the clause's "substance has remained largely unchanged."9 The clause likely was inserted to ensure that the state courts' "concurrent power [remained] where it stood at common law."10
Both parties agree that the federal courts have exclusive admiralty jurisdiction of in rem salvage claims (i.e. claims against the salvaged vessel as the defendant). Sea Tow contends, however, that state courts have concurrent jurisdiction to hear all in personam claims related to maritime matters, including salvage claims (i.e. claims against the vessel's owner as the defendant).11 In contrast, Phillips argues that, because marine salvage is a remedy unique to admiralty law, it cannot be a common law remedy that was saved to the state courts, regardless of whether it is sought in an in rem or in personam action. Although federal courts have admiralty jurisdiction over in personam salvage claims,12 there is case law and commentary to support each party's view regarding whether that jurisdiction is exclusive.
As early as 1840, the Supreme Court held that marine salvage was within the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal courts: "The admiralty is the only court where such a question can be tried; for what other court, but a court of admiralty, has jurisdiction to try a question of salvage?"13 This Court likewise has held that salvage remedies are within the federal courts' exclusive admiralty jurisdiction:
The laws of Georgia furnish to suitors no remedy or process which operates purely as a proceeding in rem; consequently, that principle in the law of salvage which allows bounties and rewards for perilous service in addition to the actual value of the service cannot be recognized and applied by the courts of the State, but should be treated as matter belonging exclusively to the admiralty jurisdiction of the United States.14
Other courts also have held that marine salvage is a remedy that only the federal admiralty courts can grant.15 Yet, most of these cases have been in rem actions, and even the analysis in Anthanissen appears premised on salvage as an in rem remedy.
Other Supreme Court cases support Sea Tow's theory that state courts have concurrent jurisdiction over all in personam maritime claims unless a federal statute says otherwise. In Madruga v. Superior Court of California,16 a case not involving a salvage remedy, the Supreme Court stated that federal courts have exclusive maritime jurisdiction only over in rem actions. "Admiralty's jurisdiction is `exclusive' only as to those maritime causes of action begun and carried on as proceedings in rem, that is, where a vessel or thing is itself treated as the offender and made the defendant by name or description in order to enforce a lien."17 However, the savings to suitors clause "does leave state courts `competent' to adjudicate maritime causes of action in proceedings `in personam,' that is, where the defendant is a person, not a ship or some other instrument of navigation."18 A "state having concurrent jurisdiction is free to adopt such remedies, and to attach to them such incidents, as it sees fit so long as it does not attempt to make changes in the substantive maritime law."19
Although we could read the Supreme Court's declaration in Madruga as dispositive of the issue before us, it was made in a case involving the partition of proceeds from the sale of a boat under a state statute, not in the context of a salvage award. Furthermore, language in another Supreme Court case casts doubt on whether in rem actions are the only remedies exclusive to admiralty jurisdiction.
In Southern Pacific Company v. Jensen,20 the Court was faced with a state workers' compensation statute that applied to an in personam action involving a longshoreman killed while unloading a vessel docked in New York City. Finding that the state's statutory remedy conflicted with federal admiralty and maritime law, the Court stated, "[t]he remedy which the attempts to give is of a character wholly unknown to the common law, incapable of enforcement by the ordinary processes of any court and is not saved to suitors from the grant of exclusive jurisdiction."21 Although Justice Stevens has criticized Jensen as discredited precedent,22 a majority of the Supreme Court declined to overrule it in 1994.23 Thus, under Jensen, if marine salvage "is of a character wholly unknown to the common law," then it is within the federal courts' exclusive admiralty jurisdiction.24
We have not found any lower court decision that cogently assimilates the seemingly conflicting Supreme Court precedent while addressing whether a marine salvage award can be sought in state court as part of an in personam action. While some courts have held that salvage is a remedy available only in federal admiralty court, 25 other courts, including the Georgia court of appeals, have adjudicated a party's right to a salvage award when it has been raised as a defense or counterclaim,26 or when a state statute allows compensation for salvage services.27
Legal commentators also differ in their views on this topic. In the volume of Benedict on Admiralty dedicated to salvage, the author states unequivocally, "[t]he admiralty courts have exclusive jurisdiction in cases of salvage on navigable waters for which a salvage award, based on the elements of a salvage service, is sought."28 Yet in the same edition of Benedict on Admiralty, the author of the volume covering admiralty jurisdiction reaches a different conclusion: The "view ... taken by Judge Norris in Volume 3A of this treatise [that salvage is within the federal admiralty courts' exclusive jurisdiction] ... is inconsistent with the general theory stated above that state courts have concurrent jurisdiction over all maritime causes of action provided they proceed in personam."29 The author of another leading treatise notes that "[t]here is authority that the federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction over salvage cases... because a salvage award was not a common law remedy ... [b]ut this would seem to conflict with the principle that a `common law' remedy is any in personam remedy."30
Having considered the case law and scholarly discussion, we conclude that marine salvage is not a remedy available in Georgia state...
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