Admiralty's Happy Wards

Merchant Seaman Thomas D. Dailey was whooping it up in a New Orleans saloon when he fell off a barstool and broke his leg. Whom did he sue? The saloon? The distiller whose spirits decked him? Not Seaman Dailey. He sued the owner of his ship, which was tied up 3 1/2 miles from the scene of his accident.

Claiming that he fell "in the service of the ship," Dailey demanded "wages, maintenance and cure" (full care until maximum recovery). As it happens, Dailey lost--but his seemingly preposterous suit was no surprise in the strange world of admiralty law. Before he got off the hook, Dailey's employer had to fight up to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and prove that the seaman had been AWOL and was a chronic alcoholic to boot.

Seafaring admiralty libelants (plaintiffs) have so many advantages that Dailey might well have expected to collect. Shipowners are simply no legal match for seamen, whose unique hardships long ago won them unique protection as "the wards of admiralty."

Classic Predisposition. Modern merchant seamen are a long voyage away from the "poor and friendless" creatures that the Supreme Court called their forebears in 1823. Strong laws and strong unions give them some remarkable privileges. Admiralty cases are heard in federal courts, and by federal statute seamen's wages cannot be attached except by wives and minor children. Seamen, on the other hand, may sue not only a shipowner but his ship itself. And wherever the ship flees other countries will honor a decree against it.

The law guarantees seamen specific amounts of food (meat every day), water and medicine, plus an eight-hour workday. Yet the work is still so dangerous that last year nearly 50% of all U.S. seamen suffered injuries.* Since ships are, in effect, monarchies afloat, seamen are also close to being indentured workers. Seamen have successfully resisted being covered by workmen's compensation, which pays only modest amounts for disability arising from employment. They revel in gambling for considerably larger awards through wide-ranging lawsuits.

By stretching the legal scope of seamen's employment, the Supreme Court has constantly expanded the right to "maintenance and cure." That right theoretically ends with willful misconduct, such as the contraction of venereal dis ease, but the court has held that seamen are "in the service of the ship" even when falling-down drunk ashore. In one famous case, a tipsy sailor tumbled out of a dance-hall window in Naples and broke his leg. Another dived into a dry dock a mile away from his ship in Palermo and was permanently disabled. Both casualties sued their shipowners for complete care, and won in the U.S. Supreme Court because "shore leave is an elemental necessity in the sailing of ships" and boozing it up is "a classic predisposition of sailors ashore."

What really keelhauls shipowners is "unseaworthiness"--a doctrine so interpreted by the Supreme Court that a seaman's own negligence can make the shipowner liable. Unseaworthiness covers not only faulty gear that makes a ship unseaworthy, but also faulty use of that gear by the crew--including the libelant. When one seaman dropped a heavy wrench on his toe, he successfully claimed that the wrench was "unseaworthy." Another collected after an "unseaworthy" shipmate beat him up. Still, there are limits. One intrepid seaman who amputated his own hand on the advice of an African witch doctor, and then sued on the ground that he himself was unseaworthy, got a fast judicial brushoff. "Not in this court," snapped the judge.

Strange & Wondrous. The doctrine of unseaworthiness virtually rules out the whole issue of negligence, along with the two classic defenses against it--assumption of risk, meaning the plaintiff's preknowledge of possible injury, and contributory negligence, such as failure to take proper precautions. (Baseball teams use both defenses against fans who get hurt while attempting to catch foul balls.) Moreover, the shipowner's absolute responsibility for seaworthiness is now being rapidly extended to longshoremen--people who are not even on his payroll. Dock-wallopers, unlike seamen, are covered by workmen's compensation, and since they cannot sue their immediate employers (stevedoring companies), they take to admiralty law to sue shipowners, who must in turn sue stevedoring companies for failure to supply "workmanlike services." To maritime employers, at least, this vicious circle is the strongest possible argument for abolishing admiralty injury cases by putting seamen under workmen's compensation.

Nevertheless, the Supreme Court last term bolstered the status quo in the case of a longshoreman who had slipped on some coffee beans that had fallen out of defective bags on a Puerto Rican pier. The longshoreman was not injured on the ship; the shipowner knew nothing about the errant beans. Yet the longshoreman sued the shipowner and was upheld. As everyone knows, said the court, a bean bag that fails to contain its beans is unfit and hence unseaworthy.

Understandably, when federal courts display the silver oar that signifies they are sitting in admiralty, judges often find themselves adrift. "The sea," as one judge recently mused, "is a strange and wondrous thing, and equally so is the law it inspires."

* Of which 14.5% stemmed from brawls, the biggest single cause of seamen's injuries.

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