Ryan v. United States Lines Company

• Decision Date: 16 May 1962
• Docket Number: Docket 26854.,No. 161,161
• Parties: Austin Joseph RYAN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES LINES COMPANY, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

303 F.2d 430 (1962)

Austin Joseph RYAN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES LINES COMPANY, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 161, Docket 26854.

United States Court of Appeals Second Circuit.

Argued December 14, 1961.

Decided May 16, 1962.

Jacob Rassner, New York City (Theodore H. Friedman, New York City, on the brief), for plaintiff-appellant.

Thomas Coyne, New York City (Kirlin, Campbell & Keating, New York City, on the brief), for defendant-appellee.

Before LUMBARD, Chief Judge, MOORE and HAYS, Circuit Judges.

LUMBARD, Chief Judge.

The plaintiff seaman, having been awarded a total of $9,764 as maintenance and cure and damages for an injury sustained on board the defendant's vessel, appeals on the ground that his award was inadequate.

On the morning of January 15, 1958, the S. S. Pioneer Ming, owned by the defendant United States Lines, was in Manila Harbor, preparing to unload cargo. While Austin Ryan, an able-bodied seaman, was assisting in the rigging and securing of the ship's gear, he was struck in the head and injured by either a shackle or shackle pin which a winch had torn loose from the pad eye to which they were attached. This resulting civil action included claims under the Jones Act, for maintenance and cure and for recovery on a theory of unseaworthiness. The Jones Act claim was dismissed by stipulation before trial, and the other counts were tried by the court without a jury. The court found unseaworthiness, which is not here questioned, and granted damages of $6,500 for lost wages and $1,000 for pain and suffering. In addition, it allowed maintenance and cure at the rate of $8 a day from the end of the Pioneer Ming's voyage on March 8, 1958 until February 24, 1959, with the exception of 50 days during which Ryan was hospitalized at the United States Public Health Service Hospital at Staten Island and another 21 days for which he had already been compensated.

Ryan claims that his recovery was inadequate in several respects — that the cutoff date for maintenance was too early, that the award for pain and suffering was insufficient, that he should have been granted damages for his alleged permanent disability, and that the court erred in making a deduction from the award for lost wages on account of income taxes that would have been due. He also claims error in the denial of his two motions for a new trial on grounds of newly discovered evidence. We reject all these arguments and affirm the judgment.

We do not find clear error, see McAllister v. United States, 348 U.S. 19, 75 S.Ct. 6, 99 L.Ed. 20 (1954), in the trial court's termination of maintenance as of the date when Ryan first returned to work, even though on several occasions thereafter he received outpatient care at various Public Health Service hospitals. We find ample support for Judge Powell's conclusion that Ryan "had received maximum medical benefit at the time." There is no inconsistency in the fact that on the unseaworthiness claim damages were awarded for lost wages beyond that date, inasmuch as the theories of recovery for maintenance and for injuries caused by unseaworthiness are totally different. On the unseaworthiness claim Ryan was entitled to full consequential damages, while his payments for maintenance and cure were properly limited to the period during which he was actually undergoing "cure" — that is, while he was undergoing medical treatment tending to improve his physical condition, rather than merely to prevent further deterioration. See Farrell v. United States, 336 U.S. 511, 69 S. Ct. 707, 93 L.Ed. 850 (1949); Gilmore & Black, Admiralty 264-68 (1957).

Although the award of $1,000 for the pain and suffering incident to Ryan's injury could not be attacked as over-generous, we do not regard it as so inadequate as to require us to increase it, as we did in Porello v. United States, 153 F. 2d 605 (2 Cir. 1946), aff'd in part and rev'd in part on other grounds, American Stevedores, Inc. v. Porello, 330 U.S. 446, 67 S.Ct. 847, 91 L.Ed. 1011 (1947); see Koehler v. United States, 187 F.2d 933 (7 Cir. 1951). Judge Powell felt, with adequate reason, that a good deal of Ryan's trouble stemmed from psychological sources and not directly from any physical injury. Moreover, Judge Powell found that on occasions prior to the January 1958 accident Ryan had made complaints of headaches and back pain similar to those for which he was hospitalized in 1958. From this we may infer that Judge Powell concluded, as he could in reliance on certain of the medical testimony before him, that the effect of this accident in causing or aggravating Ryan's complaints, be they psychogenic or genuinely physiological, was relatively small. This factor alone would keep the small award for pain and suffering from being clearly erroneous. Cf. Alexander v. Nash-Kelvinator Corp., 271 F.2d 524 (2 Cir. 1959). For the same reasons, it was appropriate to limit Ryan's recovery for lost wages, which he also attacks on this appeal.

Ryan contests specifically Judge Powell's statement in the oral opinion which preceded his formal finding that he did not consider Ryan to be totally disabled at the time of trial. It is enough to point out that, assuming that Judge Powell did rely upon this view in assessing damages — though it was not embodied in a formal finding — there is sufficient support for it in the conflicting medical testimony at the trial.

After Judge Powell's oral opinion at the trial's conclusion on May 18, 1960, but before the entry of judgment on August 22, 1960, Ryan's seaman's papers were on May 23 revoked by the Coast Guard on the ground of his physical unfitness for duty since September 1, 1959. On May 26, Ryan moved, presumably under Rule 59 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, to reopen the trial on the ground that the certificate of revocation was new evidence bearing upon the extent of his disability. After a hearing, Judge Powell denied the motion. It was proper to do so. The revocation was based upon examinations performed at the Public Health Service Hospital at Staten Island in 1959, the results of which were in evidence and discussed by the expert witnesses at the trial. The only new matter added by the issuance of the certificate was the opinion of the Coast Guard's Merchant Marine Investigating Section that one marked "permanently not fit for duty" by doctors of the Public Health Service should have his seaman's license revoked. The certificate stated that Ryan could be reinstated by being declared fit by the Public Health Service, and Ryan's own affidavits stated that he had made an appointment for a new examination on June 15, 1960. Considering all the circumstances, the fact of the revocation by itself had virtually no probative value to show Ryan's disability. Thus it was well within the judge's discretion to decline to reopen the trial. See Alison v. United States, 251 F.2d 74, 77 (2 Cir. 1958).

On September 13, 1960, Ryan filed his notice of appeal to this court, and on March 13, 1961, the record on appeal was certified to us. Thereafter, on June 6, 1961, Ryan moved in the district court to reopen the judgment and grant a new trial on damages under Rule 60(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. He claimed that new evidence had been discovered and that it was "no longer equitable that the judgment should have prospective application." The motion was supported by Ryan's affidavit to the effect that he had again been hospitalized on his complaints of head and back pain between February 13 and April 14, 1961, and by a doctor's affidavit to the effect that he had examined Ryan on January 16,...