Tallentire v. Offshore Logistics, Inc.

• Decision Date: 15 March 1985
• Docket Number: Nos. 83-3296,83-3328,s. 83-3296
• Citation: 754 F.2d 1274
• Parties: , 53 USLW 2491 Beth A. TALLENTIRE, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. OFFSHORE LOGISTICS, INC., et al., Defendants, Air Logistics, Defendant-Appellee. Corine Ann Soudelier TAYLOR, Individually, as administratrix of the estate of Michael John Taylor, and as natural tutrix of the minor, Leslie Ann Taylor, Plaintiff-Appellant Cross-Appellee, v. BELL HELICOPTER TEXTRON, a DIVISION OF TEXTRON, INC., Defendant. Corine Ann Soudelier TAYLOR, etc., Plaintiff-Appellant Cross-Appellee, v. AIR LOGISTICS, INC., Defendant-Appellee Cross-Appellant, v. HALLIBURTON SERVICES, Intervenor-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 1274

754 F.2d 1274

1986 A.M.C. 23, 53 USLW 2491

Beth A. TALLENTIRE, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. OFFSHORE LOGISTICS, INC., et al., Defendants, Air Logistics, Defendant-Appellee.

Corine Ann Soudelier TAYLOR, Individually, as administratrix

of the estate of Michael John Taylor, and as

natural tutrix of the minor, Leslie Ann

Taylor, Plaintiff-Appellant Cross-Appellee, v. BELL HELICOPTER TEXTRON, a DIVISION OF TEXTRON, INC., Defendant.

Corine Ann Soudelier TAYLOR, etc., Plaintiff-Appellant Cross-Appellee, v. AIR LOGISTICS, INC., Defendant-Appellee Cross-Appellant, v. HALLIBURTON SERVICES, Intervenor-Appellee.

Nos. 83-3296, 83-3328.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

March 15, 1985.

Davidson, Meaux, Sonnier & McElligott, V. Farley Sonnier, Lafayette, La., for plaintiffs-appellants.

Phelps, Dunbar, Marks, Claverie & Sims, Howard Daigle, Jr., New Orleans, La., for Air Logistics.

Charles Hanemann, Houma, La., for Taylor.

Ronald A. Johnson, Johnson & McAlpine, New Orleans, La., for Halliburton Serv.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

Before GARZA, JOLLY and DAVIS, Circuit Judges.

W. EUGENE DAVIS, Circuit Judge:

These consolidated cases stem from the death of two offshore workers in the crash of a helicopter some thirty miles off the Louisiana coast. The helicopter was owned and operated by Air Logistics, a division of Offshore Logistics, Inc., and was manufactured by Bell Helicopter, a division of Textron, Inc. Air Logistics is a division of Offshore Logistics, a Louisiana corporation, (hereafter referred to as Air Logistics); Bell is a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Rhode Island. Both actions included claims under the Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA), 46 U.S.C. Sec. 761 et seq., the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), 43 U.S.C Sec. 1331 et seq., and the law of Louisiana. The district court held that DOHSA furnished Taylor and Tallentire with their exclusive remedy. Air Logistics admitted liability. Bell did not admit liability, but agreed to pay any judgment which Air Logistics was unable to satisfy. Pursuant to the trial judge's pretrial ruling restricting the claims to those arising under DOHSA, and striking all claims founded on Louisiana law, trial was devoted solely to the issue of damages under DOHSA. No evidence of Bell's liability was introduced at trial, and no party appeals the judgment in its favor, thus the only defendant before us is Air Logistics.

In this appeal, Taylor and Tallentire press a common claim that Louisiana's wrongful death statute applies to this helicopter crash on the high seas, either of its own force or as adopted federal law through section 1333 of OCSLA. In view of the clear mandate of section 7 of DOHSA reserving to litigants their rights of recovery under state wrongful death acts, we reverse the district court's denial of benefits recoverable under Louisiana law.

I. APPLICABILITY OF STATE WRONGFUL DEATH STATUTES TO HIGH SEAS DEATHS

A. BACKGROUND

Today we are invited to make further adjustments in the volatile field of maritime wrongful death and for the sake of clarity, our analysis of the subject requires a brief historical discussion.

The jurisprudential and legislative saga leading to this decision began almost a century ago when the Supreme Court held in THE HARRISBURG, 119 U.S. 199, 7 S.Ct. 140, 30 L.Ed. 358 (1886) that the general maritime law of the United States afforded no remedy for wrongful death. The admiralty courts were not entirely stymied by this forced parsimony and state wrongful death acts, if available, were enforced in admiralty to allow recovery in wrongful death cases. ¹ This practice was approved by the Supreme Court in the case of a high seas death in THE HAMILTON, 207 U.S. 398, 52 L.Ed. 264, 28 S.Ct. 133 (1907). Though the admiralty courts were disposed to grant a remedy when one could be fashioned, ² in the case of high seas deaths the coverage supplied by state statutes was not uniform, and did not adequately fill the void left by THE HARRISBURG. This is one of the considerations which led to the passage in 1920 of DOHSA and its companion legislation, the Jones Act (currently codified at 46 U.S.C. Sec. 688 et seq.) See Moragne v. States Marine Lines, 398 U.S. 375, 393-94, 90 S.Ct. 1772, 1783-84, 26 L.Ed.2d 339, 351-53 (1970). Section 1 of DOHSA provides:

Whenever the death of a person shall be caused by a wrongful act, neglect, or default occurring on the high seas beyond a marine league from the shore of any state, ... the personal representative of the decedent may maintain a suit for damages in the district courts of the United States, in admiralty, for the exclusive benefit of the decedent's wife, husband, parent, child, or dependent relative against the vessel, person, or corporation which would have been liable if the death had not ensued.

46 U.S.C. Sec. 761.

After 1920, DOHSA supplied a uniform remedy for deaths occurring over a marine league from shore; within territorial waters, after some initial confusion, state statutes continued to hold sway. ³ The evolution of maritime wrongful death remedies continued in 1970 with Moragne v. States Marine Lines, in which the Supreme Court overruled THE HARRISBURG and established a remedy for wrongful death grounded in the general maritime law of the United States. Six years later, this circuit held in In re S/S HELENA, 529 F.2d 744, 753 (5th Cir.1976), that after Moragne there was no longer any reason for admiralty courts to apply state wrongful death acts in territorial waters. A further critical development occurred in 1978 with Mobil Oil Corp. v. Higginbotham, 436 U.S. 618, 98 S.Ct. 2010, 56 L.Ed.2d 581 (1978), in which the Supreme Court held that damages recoverable under DOHSA may not be supplemented by the Moragne death remedy. Generally, in post-Higginbotham actions by survivors of non-seamen, this circuit was left with the Moragne remedy supreme in territorial waters, DOHSA supreme on the high seas, and state statutes, it was strongly hinted, out of the picture altogether. ⁴

The problem we have before us now arises because DOHSA permits recovery of only pecuniary damages--lost wages, loss of services, and the like. ⁵ Many state wrongful death acts, including Article 2315 of the Louisiana Civil Code, allow recovery for non-pecuniary losses such as loss of love and affection. In an effort to recover these non-pecuniary losses, Taylor and Tallentire offer two alternative theories under which the Louisiana statute could apply to their actions. The first is that Article 2315 applies through section 1333 of OCSLA. The second is that DOHSA does not preempt state wrongful death acts, and Article 2315 grants them rights of its own force as state law. We address each of these contentions in turn. ⁶

B. APPLICATION OF LOUISIANA LAW THROUGH Sec. 1333 OF OCSLA

"The purpose of the Lands Act was to define a body of law applicable to the seabed, the subsoil, and the fixed structures such as those in question here on the outer Continental Shelf." Rodrigue v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 395 U.S. 352, 355, 89 S.Ct. 1835, 1837, 23 L.Ed.2d 360, 364 (1969). Section 1333 of OCSLA adopts the law of the adjacent state, including tort law, as surrogate federal law for the area the act covers. ⁷ This provision was included in OCSLA in recognition of the fact that offshore workers were likely to have significant ties with adjacent states. Since the decedents in this case were platform workers, although their deaths did not occur on a platform, Taylor and Tallentire assert that OCSLA should apply.

Assuming that OCSLA does apply, it nonetheless would not permit recovery of non-pecuniary damages via the Louisiana statute. Section 1333 of OCSLA adopts state laws as surrogate federal law only "to the extent that they are applicable and not inconsistent with this subchapter or other federal laws or regulations...." 43 U.S.C. Sec. 1333 (emphasis added). It is established in this circuit that DOHSA applies to crash of a helicopter on the high seas, so Louisiana law could be adopted only to the extent it is not inconsistent with DOHSA. ⁸ This leaves the far more difficult question of whether state wrongful death statutes are preempted by DOHSA.

C. PREEMPTION OF STATE STATUTES BY DOHSA

The heart of this issue is the interpretation of section 7 of DOHSA:

The provisions of any state statute giving or regulating rights of action or remedies for death shall not be affected by this chapter. Nor shall this chapter apply to the Great Lakes or to any waters within the territorial limits of any State, or to any navigable waters in the Panama Canal Zone.

46 U.S.C. Sec. 767 (emphasis added).

We begin with the proposition that section 7 is broad enough on its face to support Taylor and Tallentire's argument that if a state statute grants a right to recover for a high seas death, it is not preempted by DOHSA. As discussed more fully below, however, there has been considerable uncertainty over the effect of this seemingly simple provision. The heart of the debate over the interpretation of section 7, in turn, is the effect of the ill-starred "Mann Amendment."

As originally drafted, section 7 read "[t]he provisions of any State statute giving or regulating rights of action or remedies for death shall not be affected by this act as to causes of action accruing within the territorial limits of any state ...", 59 Cong.Rec. 4482 (1920), a formulation which would obviously allow DOHSA to preempt state remedies on the high seas. During floor debate on the bill, Representative Mann of Illinois introduced an amendment to strike the phrase "as to causes of action accruing within the territorial limits of any state," id. at 4484, leaving the provision in its present form. The debate at the time reflects considerable confusion among the members of Congress concerning the effect of the amendment, a confusion which is reflected...