Ritch v. Puget Sound Bridge & Dredging Co.

• Decision Date: 14 May 1945
• Docket Number: No. 970.,970.
• Citation: 60 F. Supp. 670
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Washington
• Parties: RITCH et al. v. PUGET SOUND BRIDGE & DREDGING CO., Inc., et al.

60 F. Supp. 670

RITCH et al. v. PUGET SOUND BRIDGE & DREDGING CO., Inc., et al.

No. 970.

District Court, W. D. Washington, N. D.

May 14, 1945.

Florence Mayne, of Seattle, Wash., for plaintiffs.

W. E. Evenson, Skeel, McKelvy, Henke, Evenson & Uhlman, and Robert F. Sandall, all of Seattle, Wash., and J. Charles Dennis, U. S. Atty., and Herbert O'Hare, Asst. U. S. Atty., both of Seattle, Wash., for defendants.

BOWEN, District Judge.

Both sides have most exhaustively presented this matter to the Court, both on the facts and the law.

Doubtless the fact is well appreciated by all that the Congress has power to deal with this subject only in so far as it relates to interstate commerce. In enacting the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 201 et seq., under which this action was brought, Congress was exercising that power given to it under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution to regulate interstate commerce; and unless plaintiffs' work and that of their assignors affected interstate commerce, their claims for overtime work against defendant are not protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act.

So the right of these plaintiffs and their assignors involves the inquiry whether the new Navy dock structures they were constructing were to be instruments of commerce and whether or not any materials they were handling were handled by them as a part of the movement of those materials in interstate commerce.

Judge Goddard's decision in the case of Joseph A. Brue et al. v. J. Rich Steers, Inc., et al., 60 F.Supp. 668, decided recently in the Southern District of New York, is in its facts almost on all fours with the facts in the case at bar. Judge Goddard in that case has very carefully reasoned the matter out and stated the principles and law applicable to the situation, and I am unable to find any fault with anything he has said.

It is, of course, possible that the law as we now know it might later be changed. Congress might possibly declare more certainly an intention to make the Fair Labor Standards Act apply to such work as these employees were doing. Or conceivably the United States Supreme Court might change its view of the nature of the instrumentality being here built so as to include it in interstate commerce instrumentalities or so as to include as interstate commerce the services which these plaintiffs were performing in connection with the materials in question; but so far the Congress and the Supreme Court have taken no such action, and this Court at this time has to act in the light of the congressional and judicial authority now known to us.

I am convinced that the dock and dock structures which were being built by these plaintiffs as employees of the defendant were not instrumentalities of commerce, that they were intended only to be a Navy dock for the exclusive use of the United States Navy, and that such dock was not intended to be used by all commercial vessels which might wish to...