Santiago v. Sea-Land Service, Inc.

• Decision Date: 08 November 1973
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 24-72.
• Parties: Carlos R. SANTIAGO, Plaintiff, v. SEA-LAND SERVICE, INC., Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Puerto Rico

366 F. Supp. 1309

Carlos R. SANTIAGO, Plaintiff, v. SEA-LAND SERVICE, INC., Defendant.

Civ. No. 24-72.

United States District Court, D. Puerto Rico.

November 8, 1973.

Carmelo Avila-Trujillo, Santurce, P. R., for plaintiff.

Jose A. Fuste, San Juan, P. R., for defendant.

MEMORANDUM ORDER

CANCIO, Chief Judge.

This case is before the court on a motion for partial judgment on the pleadings filed by defendant, Sea-Land Service, Inc., dated March 2, 1973. The motion referred to prays that partial judgment on the pleadings be entered in this case striking the allegation contained in paragraph 5 of the Complaint which claims damages of a consequential nature which according to the request made by the defendant are not recoverable pursuant to a maritime contract of transportation as the one the object of this case.

The Court, after carefully examining the defendant's contention in this respect, is of the opinion that the position assumed by the defendant in said motion for partial judgment on the pleadings is correct and that a full exposition of the applicable law is warranted in this district where maritime litigation, specially relating to maritime contracts for transportation, is considerable.

According to the Complaint filed herein, and assuming the correctness of the facts contained in said Complaint, plaintiff, Carlos R. Santiago, contracted the services of the defendant, Sea-Land Service, Inc., for the transportation of a Dodge automobile from Puerto Rico to the Dominican Republic. In accordance with the allegations, the vehicle was supposed to arrive in the Dominican Republic on September 21, 1971, on board the M/V Tropic Eve. The same was consigned to Francisco Leonardo Peralta Fernández, with address in the Dominican Republic.

An examination of the allegations further shows that the aforementioned vehicle did not arrive nor has arrived on any date thereafter in the Dominican Republic. As a consequence of said act, the Complaint prays for the loss of value of the automobile equivalent to an amount claimed not to be less than $2,000.00 and also claims in allegation number 5 that the plaintiff lost the opportunity and benefit of using the automobile in the Dominican Republic during his frequent trips to said country, suffering mental and spiritual anguish by being deprived of the benefit and use of the vehicle, which amount of damages the plaintiff has estimated in $5,000.00.

In view of the allegations contained in the Complaint the defendant understood that partial judgment on the pleadings striking and/or dismissing the Complaint as to the damages claimed in allegation number 5 should be entered on its behalf, since the only measure of damages recoverable against the carrier, in this case the defendant, was market value of the automobile at the port of destination, which allegation of damage is also contained in the Complaint. As already stated, the Court is in agreement with the position taken by the defendant, Sea-Land Service, Inc.

I.

The fact that in maritime cases the courts are to apply Federal Maritime Law is a hornbook principle. The Constitution of the United States is silent as to the source of the substantive law to be applied in the federal district courts in cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, that is, cases involving maritime contracts, maritime torts and all other causes of action traditionally embodied within the jurisdictional powers of federal courts to entertain maritime matters. During the colonial period the concept "jurisdiction" was frequently used to refer to a general authority to govern and not just to the scope of judicial authority. But it is reasonably clear, from both the wording of the Constitution and its legislative history, that the Constitutional Convention meant to refer to judicial authority only. See Article III of the Constitution of the United States, specifically Section 2 of said Article, which by its terms extends the judicial power of the United States to admiralty and maritime cases. See also Goodman, Eighteenth Century Conflict of Laws, 5 Amer.J. of Leg. Hist. 326 (1961). Nevertheless, obvious necessity buttressed by notions of the traditional independence of the laws of the sea, has led the constitutional language to be read to mean that there is a substantive maritime law in force and implicitly adopted in the United States to govern both at the federal and state levels. It is a general uniform maritime law molded and modified to meet the needs of the New World. De Lovio v. Boit, 2 Gall. 398, Fed.Cas. # 3776 (Story). It is federal law, to some extent congressionally fixed, as it happens with the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act, 46 U.S.C. § 1300 et seq., which applies ex proprio vigore to the case now before the court, but to a large extent enunciated by the federal courts and state courts dealing with admiralty matters, independent of statute or in absence of statute, whether exercising original exclusive jurisdiction within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 1333 in the case of federal courts, or exercising "saving to suitors" jurisdiction in the case of state courts or Commonwealth of Puerto Rico courts, pursuant to the aforementioned jurisdictional statute. Black, Admiralty Jurisdiction, 50 Colum.L.Rev. 259-262 (1950); Stimson, Swift v. Tyson, What Remains, What is State Law, 24 Corn. L.Q. 54 (1938).

In 1870 a change occurred in the Supreme Court of the United States and President Grant named Joseph P. Bradley to the Supreme Court to sit as Justice. Almost immediately he assumed the mantle of Justice Story as the chief admiralty authority in the United States Supreme Court. In the year 1875, and in the case of The Lottawanna, 88 U.S. (21 Wall.) 558, 22 L.Ed. 654 Justice Bradley undertook what has been termed the first complete analysis of the Admiralty Law since the days when it was reviewed as a branch of the Law of Nations. The principal question involved in the Lottawanna case was whether a maritime lien arose in favor of a home port furnisher of repairs and supplies. The same question had been answered negatively about fifty years earlier in The General Smith, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 438, 4 L.Ed. 609 (1819). Counsel in The Lottawanna urged that The General Smith decision was contrary to the General Maritime Law and should consequently be overruled. Justice Bradley, in his opinion in the Lottawanna case found little difficulty to sustain that The General Smith was no longer valid law. His opinion stated that, while it is true that there exists a great mass of maritime law which is the same in all commercial countries, at the same time the Maritime Law is only so far operative as law in any country as it is adopted by the laws and usages of that country. Therefore, the question of whether a home-port supplier was entitled to a maritime lien was a question of United States law, that is, of Federal Maritime Law, exclusively utilizing the basic principle of uniformity in so deciding.

Since the decision of Justice Bradley in the Lottawanna case, it has been taken as settled that United States courts and local courts of the states and, we add, of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, are not bound to follow any segment of maritime law that is not maritime national law. The concept of maritime national law is a concept of uniform application of legal principles to admiralty matters throughout the United States. Mr. Justice Holmes has put the issue in his sharp, drastic and precise method of opinion-writing, and said in the case of The Western Maid, 257 U.S. 419, 42 S.Ct. 159, 66 L.Ed. 299 (1922) that in deciding this question we must realize that however ancient may be the traditions of the Maritime Law, however diverse the sources from which it has been drawn, it derives its whole power from its having been accepted and adopted by the United States. To this Justice Holmes added that there is no mystic over law to which the United States must bow.

Notwithstanding all this, it is important to note that a great part of the federal state choice of laws tangled in maritime cases is intimately involved with the notion that federal maritime law is in some sense a brooding omnipresence over the sea. This idea of the brooding omnipresence, that is, the idea of the uniformity of the Federal Maritime Law under the American flag, was expressed by Chief Justice Marshall as early as 1928. At that time he expressed that admiralty cases do not arise under the Constitution or laws of the United States, but are as old as navigation itself and that the Law of Admiralty, as it has existed for ages, is applied by our courts to the cases as they arise. American Insurance Co. v. Canter, 26 U.S. (1 Pet.) 511, 7 L.Ed. 242 (1828). It is clear that as to maritime matters the prevailing assumption has been that the constitutional grant of admiralty jurisdiction to the federal courts and to the local courts pursuant to the saving-to-suitors clause, presupposed the existence of an at large body of substantive federal maritime law to be drawn upon in deciding maritime cases. The weight of such an assumption in the choice of law cases has been great. Once it is assumed that the Constitution presupposed the existence of a body of maritime law, deciding that the law is binding in all courts, admiralty or common-law, is but a step. Stumberg, Maritime Cases in Common-Law Courts, 3 Tex.L.Rev. 246 (1925). If the body of legal principles adopted or created by the federal admiralty courts is merely another form of federal common law, mascarading under the title of General Maritime Law, then it has seemed obvious to many scholars that cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction must be covered by those principles, no matter what forum, state or federal, is charged with the task of deciding such cases. See Gilmore & Black, The Law of Admiralty, 1957, Sections 1-16 et seq., page 40 et seq.

Just as the Constitution does not specify the source of the substantive law to be applied by federal...