Skowronek v. American Steamship Co.

• Decision Date: 12 October 2007
• Docket Number: No. 06-1918.,06-1918.
• Citation: 505 F.3d 482
• Parties: Larry SKOWRONEK, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. AMERICAN STEAMSHIP COMPANY, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

505 F.3d 482

Larry SKOWRONEK, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. AMERICAN STEAMSHIP COMPANY, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 06-1918.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: June 7, 2007.

Decided and Filed: October 12, 2007.

ARGUED: Thomas W. Emery, Garan Lucow Miller, Detroit, Michigan, for Appellant. Dennis M. O'Bryan, O'Bryan Baun Cohen Kuebler Karamanian, Birmingham, Michigan, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Thomas W. Emery, Caryn A. Gordon, Garan Lucow Miller, Detroit, Michigan, for Appellant. Dennis M. O'Bryan, O'Bryan Baun Cohen Kuebler Karamanian, Birmingham, Michigan, for Appellee.

Before: CLAY, GILMAN, and McKEAGUE, Circuit Judges.

McKEAGUE, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which GILMAN, J., joined. CLAY, J. (pp. 489-98), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.

OPINION

McKEAGUE, Circuit Judge.

In this case, we consider the validity of a maintenance rate that is applicable to ill crew members and is one of the terms of a collective bargaining agreement (CBA). The CBA contained, inter alia, a maintenance rate of $56.00 per week for ill crew members and a rate of $300.00 per week for injured crew members. Due to this differential treatment, the district court granted Plaintiff-Appellee Larry Skowronek, an ill crew member, summary judgment and awarded him the injured crew member rate. We REVERSE.

I. BACKGROUND

The facts in this case are not in dispute. Skowronek was employed as a wheelsman aboard Defendant-Appellant American Steamship Company's ship, the M/V John J. Boland. On September 3, 2004, while at sea, Skowronek suffered a heart attack. He departed the ship at that time, and he remained unfit for duty until December 2, 2004. As a member of the Seafarer's International Union while he was employed by American Steamship, the terms and conditions of Skowronek's employment were governed by a CBA between his union and his employer. The portion of the CBA relevant to this case provides:

The Weekly Recovery Stipend shall be paid at the rate of three hundred dollars ($300.00) weekly and will be composed of fifty-six dollars ($56.00) maintenance (eight dollars ($8.00) per day contractual rate) and two hundred forty-four dollars ($244.00) contractual support benefit.

Such payments are an obligation of the employer to an employee who suffered an injury aboard the ship covered under Maritime Law, which incapacitates him for at least seven (7) days and shall be due and payable not less frequently than each second week anniversary of the injury. Such coverage shall be retroactive to the date of injury. The injured seaman must see a doctor chosen by the employer at reasonable times when requested. Unless mutually extended, payments will not exceed one (1) year.

The payment of this benefit shall constitute satisfaction of the obligation to pay maintenance but otherwise shall not constitute a waiver or be deemed to lessen any legal or contractual rights held by such injured employee. It is agreed that the Weekly Recovery Stipend is separate and distinct from any other rights and options of the employee, except as specified above.

When a member of the unlicensed personnel is entitled to maintenance under the Maritime Law, he shall be paid maintenance at the rate of eight ($8.00) per day for each day or part thereof of entitlement, upon presentation of a medical abstract. This payment shall be made regardless of whether he or she has or has not retained an attorney, filed a claim for damages, or taken any other steps to that end. The payments due hereunder shall be paid in a timely manner, generally not less frequently than twice monthly.

Skowronek v. Am. S.S. Co., No. 05-73961, 2006 WL 1494947, at *1 (E.D.Mich. May 25, 2006). Thus, the CBA provides that injured crew members are entitled to payments of $300.00 per week for the time they are unfit for duty. That amount includes an $8.00 per day maintenance payment. Ill crew members, however, are entitled only to the $8.00 per day maintenance payment.

American Steamship therefore paid Skowronek $56.00 per week during the period he was unfit for duty. On September 8, 2005, he commenced an action in Michigan state court in which he sought $300.00 per week for the period. He complained that the CBA discriminated against ill crew members. American Steamship removed the case to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. Both parties filed motions for summary judgment, and on May 25, 2006, the district court granted Skowronek's motion and denied American Steamship's. The latter filed a timely appeal.

II. ANALYSIS

This Court reviews a district court's grant of summary judgment under the de novo standard. Nichols v. Moore, 477 F.3d 396, 398 (6th Cir.2007). Summary judgment is proper "if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). The district court must draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the nonmoving party. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 255, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986).

Under United States maritime law, "maintenance" is the shipowner's duty to provide food and lodging to a seaman who becomes ill or injured while in the service of the ship. Vaughan v. Atkinson, 369 U.S. 527, 531, 82 S.Ct. 997, 8 L.Ed.2d 88 (1962). The right to maintenance is related to the right to cure, which is "care, including nursing and medical attention during such period as the duty continues." Calmar S.S. Corp. v. Taylor, 303 U.S. 525, 528, 58 S.Ct. 651, 82 L.Ed. 993 (1938). The shipowner's duty to pay maintenance continues until either the seaman has recovered or his condition is declared permanent. Vella v. Ford Motor Co., 421 U.S. 1, 5, 95 S.Ct. 1381, 43 L.Ed.2d 682 (1975). The duty exists irrespective of both whether the shipowner was negligent and whether the illness or injury is job-related. Id. at 4, 95 S.Ct. 1381. Maintenance has traditionally been said to serve three purposes: "(1) to protect the poor and improvident seaman while ill in foreign ports, (2) to encourage shipowners to protect the seaman's safety and health while in service, and (3) to induce employment in the merchant marine." Gardiner v. Sea-Land Serv., Inc., 786 F.2d 943, 946 (9th Cir.1986) (citing Vella, 421 U.S. at 3-4, 95 S.Ct. 1381).

The issue in this case is whether the maintenance rate of $56.00 per week applicable to ill crew members is enforceable even though injured crew members are entitled to a rate of $300.00 per week, where those provisions are part of a CBA that contains several other terms governing the working conditions of union crew members. We hold that it is.

Federal appellate courts have all but uniformly concluded that maintenance rates specified in a CBA will be enforced, regardless of whether they actually cover a crew member's daily food and lodging expenses. Indeed, in addition to our decision in Al-Zawkari v. Am. S.S. Co., 871 F.2d 585, 588 (6th Cir.1989), the First, Second, Fifth, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits have so held.¹ The Third Circuit's decision in Barnes v. Andover Co., L.P., 900 F.2d 630, 640 (3d Cir.1990), stands alone in holding to the contrary. The analysis in Gardiner, on which we and our sister circuits have relied, considered the enforceability of maintenance rates in the context of national labor policy. See 786 F.2d at 948. Specifically, the Ninth Circuit noted that such policy is predicated on the assumption that employees bargain most effectively by acting through freely chosen labor organizations. Id. Consequently, it would not "lightly embrace the repudiation of contractual obligations enumerated in a collective bargaining agreement"; rather, it would "choose the rule that w[ould] promote the enforcement of collective bargaining agreements." Id. The court further emphasized that "it is clearly the policy of our national labor legislation to encourage both labor and management to negotiate contracts that will effectively regulate every aspect of their complex relationship." Id. at 948-49. Thus, because the parties in that case included a maintenance rate in the CBA, "[t]he national labor policy of promoting and encouraging collective bargaining agreements would be unduly compromised were we to conclude" that the rate was anything but "a consequence of the normal `give and take' process of collective bargaining"; therefore, the rate is "entitled to the same reliability accorded to other terms and conditions within the same agreement." Id. at 949.

The Ninth Circuit emphasized that the maintenance rate "is but one of many elements contained within the Union contract and over which the parties negotiate, and there may be a considerable amount of `give and take' exercised by the parties in coming to a final agreement on all of the elements." Id. Consequently, the maintenance rate's adequacy "should not be examined in isolation by the court because the determination of its adequacy in relation to the whole scheme of benefits has already been made by the union and the seamen who voted for the contract." Id. Therefore, Gardiner held that "when a benefits package includes an express reference to a precise rate of maintenance, the adequacy of this rate, considered in isolation, is not a subject for judicial speculation when the rate is part of a total package of wages and benefits resulting from the process of collective bargaining." Id.

Like many of our sister circuits, we have found Gardiner's reasoning persuasive, and we have accordingly adopted it. In Al-Zawkari, the plaintiff crew member who had become ill aboard the defendant's ship instituted an action in which he argued that the maintenance paid to him was both insufficient and "in conflict with the intent and purpose of the Supreme Court's decisions imposing the maintenance requirement upon shipowners." 871 F.2d at 586....