Zubik v. Bethlehem Steel Co.

• Decision Date: 28 February 1941
• Docket Number: 99-1941
• Citation: Zubik v. Bethlehem Steel Co., 144 Pa.Super. 13, 18 A.2d 441 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1941)
• Parties: Zubik v. Bethlehem Steel Company, Appellant
• Court: Pennsylvania Superior Court

18 A.2d 441

144 Pa.Super. 13

Zubik v. Bethlehem Steel Company, Appellant

No. 99-1941

Superior Court of Pennsylvania

February 28, 1941

Argued October 22, 1940.

Appeal from judgment of C. P. Allegheny Co., July T., 1940, No 2004, in case of Marie Zubik v. Bethlehem Steel Company.

Appeal by defendant from award of Workmen's Compensation Board.

The facts are stated in the opinion of the Superior Court.

Appeal dismissed and judgment entered for claimant, before Gardner Dithrich and Musmanno, JJ., opinion by Musmanno, J. Defendant appealed.

Errors assigned related to the action of the court below in dismissing defendant's exceptions.

Judgment affirmed.

P. K Motheral, with him Reed, Smith, Shaw & McClay, for appellant.

John B. Nicklas, Jr., of McCrady, McClure, Nicklas & Hirschfield, with him E. B. Wolfe, for appellee.

Before Keller, P. J., Cunningham, Baldrige, Stadtfeld, Parker, Rhodes and Hirt, JJ.

OPINION

Rhodes, J.

This is a workmen's compensation case.The claimant is the widow of Robert Zubik, who was accidentally killed in the course of his employment with defendant company.The only question presented is one of jurisdiction -- whether the fatal accident so happened as to bring it within admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, or whether the Workmen's Compensation Act(Act ofJune 4, 1937, P. L. 1552, which reenacted and amended the title and act approved the second day of June, 1915, P. L. 736, 77 PS § 1 et seq.) applies.

The claim for compensation was allowed by the referee, whose findings of fact, conclusions of law, and award were affirmed by the Workmen's Compensation Board.The court below affirmed the board and entered judgment in favor of claimant.Defendant has appealed.

The facts are not in dispute.Deceased was drowned in the Allegheny River, a navigable stream, on November 21, 1938, as the result of an accident sustained in the course of his employment with defendant.Defendant was engaged in the erection of the Highland Park Bridge, which connects the south shore of the Allegheny River at Highland Park, Pittsburgh, Pa., with the north shore in the Borough of Aspinwall, Pa. Deceased was employed as a life guard, and he was thus carried on defendant's payroll.At the time of the accident deceased's duties were to transport workmen who were working on the bridge span, or piers, from the north shore of the river to their place of employment, either by using his motor gasoline launch or a rowboat, and, after depositing the men on the bridge by boat, to take up his position under the span and patrol the water thereunder, acting as a life guard in the event any men fell from the span into the river.At the conclusion of the day's work, or whenever required to do so, he would transport the men back to the north shore of the river.The original hiring as a life guard provided for the use of deceased's rowboat.The evidence does not disclose when he started to use his eight-ton motor boat.Whenever the motor boat was used defendant furnished the gasoline and oil.Deceased was paid an hourly wage, working forty hours a week, and it is conceded that the relationship of employer and employee existed.On the day of the accident, November 21, 1938, at approximately 8 a.m., deceased had taken three workmen to pier No. 3 in the center of the river in a dense fog.On his way back to the north shore he lost his direction in the fog, proceeded downstream, went over a dam, located approximately 500 feet west of the pier, and was drowned.

Defendant insists that deceased's contract of employment with defendant was a maritime contract, having direct relation to navigation, and that the matter is exclusively within admiralty jurisdiction.

Under the Federal Constitution the judicial power shall extend "to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction."United States Constitution, art. 3, § 2, cl. 1, U.S.C. A.This provision was made effective by section 9 of the Judiciary Act of 1789(ch. 20,1 Stat. at L. 76), whereby the district courts of the United States were given "exclusive original cognizance of all civil causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction ....," and so continued in the Judicial Code, § 24 (3), 28 U.S.C. A. § 41 (3).

It is the established principle with respect to those activities which are directly connected with commerce and navigation in their interstate and international aspects that the law must be uniform throughout the United States, and that the laws of the various states cannot modify or vary it.Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen, 244 U.S. 205, 37 S.Ct. 524, 61 L.Ed. 1086, L. R. A. 1918C, 451, Ann. Cas. 1917E, 900.See, also, Knickerbocker Ice Co. v. Stewart, 253 U.S. 149, 40 S.Ct. 438, 64 L.Ed. 834, 11 A. L. R. 1145.

It is also the general doctrine that, in contract matters, admiralty jurisdiction depends upon the nature of the transaction, and in tort matters upon the locality.Grant Smith-Porter Ship Co. v. Rohde, 257 U.S. 469, 42 S.Ct. 157, 66 L.Ed. 321, 25 A. L. R. 1008.

In the present case, as was said in P. J. Carlin Construction Co. v. Heaney, 299 U.S. 41, 57 S.Ct. 75, 81 L.Ed. 27: "'No recovery is sought against the employer .... because of any wrong alleged to have been done by the employer.A recovery is sought as the result of injuries for which the statute[The Workmen's Compensation Law, Consol. LawsN. Y. C. 67], read into the contract, gives a right to recovery.'"

But it is also a general rule that, where the employment concerns only local matters and has but an incidental relation to navigation and maritime commerce, a state law, such as our Workmen's Compensation Act, may be applied, since, under such circumstances, its application will not work material prejudice to any characteristic features of the general maritime law.^[1]Grant Smith-Porter Ship Co. v. Rohde, supra;Millers' Indemnity Underwriters v. Braud et al., 270 U.S. 59, 46 S.Ct. 194, 70 L.Ed. 470;Sultan Railway & Timber Co. v. Department of Laborand Industries of the State of Washington, 277 U.S. 135, 48 S.Ct. 505, 72 L.Ed. 820;P. J. Carlin Construction Co. v. Heaney, supra;In re Herbert's Case, 283 Mass. 348, 186 N.E. 554.

In Grant Smith-Porter Ship Co. v. Rohde, supra, an employee, a carpenter, was injured at work on a partially completed vessel lying in navigable waters.It was held by the Supreme Court of the United States that, although the incompleted structure upon which the accident occurred was lying in navigable waters, neither the employee's general employment nor his activities at the time had any direct relation to navigation or commerce; that the injury was suffered within a state whose positive enactment prescribed an exclusive remedy therefor, and, as both parties had accepted and proceeded under the statute, it could not properly be said that they consciously contracted with each other in contemplation of the general system of maritime law; and that, under such circumstances, regulation of the rights, obligations, and consequent liabilities of the parties, as between themselves, by a local rule, would not necessarily work material prejudice to any characteristic feature of the general maritime law, or interfere with the proper harmony or uniformity of that law in its international or interstate relations.

In Millers' Indemnity Underwriters v. Braud et al., supra, it was held that, although the work of an employee submerging himself from a floating barge anchored in a navigable river in order to remove the timbers of an abandoned set of ways was maritime in nature, and the record disclosed facts sufficient to show a maritime tort to which the general admiralty jurisdiction would extend save for the provisions of the state compensation act, recovery was under the state workmen's compensation law, since the matter was one of mere local concern, and its regulation by the state would work no material prejudice to any characteristic feature of the general maritime law.

The holding of the New York Court of Appeals(Lahti v. Terry & Tench Co., Inc., et al.,240 N.Y. 292, 148 N.E. 527) that the rights and remedies of one injured while employed in the construction of a pier, when standing on a floating raft in navigable water, were fixed by maritime law, was reversed by a memorandum opinion of the United States Supreme Court(273 U.S. 639, 47 S.Ct. 90, 71 L.Ed. 817) upon the authority of Millers' Indemnity Underwriters v. Braud et al., supra.

In Sultan Railway & Timber Co. v. Department of Labor and Industries of the State ofWashington, supra, it was held that a state may bring within the operation of its workmen's compensation laws men employed in handling logs on navigable waters of the United States in connection with placing them in booms and conducting them to sawmills before transportation is begun and after it is ended.

In Alaska Packers Ass'n v. Industrial Accident Commission, 276 U.S. 467, 469, 48 S.Ct. 346, 72 L.Ed. 656, it was held that, even if the cause of action was within admiralty jurisdiction, the work was not "so directly connected with navigation and commerce that to permit the rights of the parties to be controlled by the local law would interfere with the essential uniformity of the general maritime law.The work was really local in character."

In P. J. Carlin Construction Co. v. Heaney, supra, the defendant construction company was engaged in building operations on an island in a navigable river.Heaney and others employed about the work crossed daily from the mainland to the island on a steamboat.The owner's contract with the construction company provided that he was to charge fares at the rate of 10 cents a round trip, and that if his daily fares did not amount to sixty dollars the company would pay him the difference.While on her way...