Admiralty's Greatest Hits: Panama Railroad Co. v. Johnson*

Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce, Jan 2008 by Sturley, Michael F

I

INTRODUCTION

It is a great honor indeed to be a part of the Eighth Nicholas J. Healy Lecture. As is true for so many of those attending the Lecture, I have benefited significantly from Nick's influence in my professional development as an admiralty lawyer. I still vividly recall when I first met Nick-in his capacity as the editor of the Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce-in March, 1988, shortly after my first article was published in the Journal.' He invited me to lunch and we spent the better part of a delightful afternoon at India House. Although Nick had at that time recently retired from his teaching duties at the NYU Law School, he did not appear to have lost any of his teaching ability. And his ability to tell a good story exemplified the proud traditions of his beloved Ireland.

It has now been nearly twenty years since that initial meeting. I have had the pleasure of many more associations with Nick in the intervening years, ranging from service with him on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce to participating with him in the activities of the Comité Maritime International and the Maritime Law Association of the United States. It is both a pleasure and an honor for me to be once again associated with him in this Lecture established in his honor.

It is also a pleasure and an honor to be discussing admiralty's greatest hits with my distinguished colleagues on this panel. Trying to choose admiralty's greatest hits is not an easy task,2 but I think we all enjoyed the effort. Although some of our choices may have been surprising-both in what we included and in what we excluded-I am convinced that the Supreme Court's 1924 decision in Panama Railroad v. Johnson3 belongs on the list for several different reasons.

II

BACKGROUND

On October 8, 1920, just four months after Congress passed the Jones Act,4 Andrew Johnson was employed as quartermaster on the steamship Allianca, which was owned and operated by the Panama Railroad Co.5 As the ship sailed down the Guanuquil River in Ecuador toward the Pacific Ocean, en route back to the United States, Mr. Johnson was seriously injured in the course of his employment when he fell from a ladder while climbing from the deck to the bridge. According to the complaint, his injuries resulted from his employer's negligence in providing an inadequate ladder; the ship's officers' negligence "in permitting a canvas dodger to be stretched and insecurely fastened across the top of the ladder and in ordering the seaman to go up the ladder;" and "the unseaworthiness of the ship."7

If the accident had occurred five months earlier, before the passage of the Jones Act, Mr. Johnson's potential remedies would have been limited to those outlined by the Supreme Court in The Osceola? In response to a certified question from the court below, the Osceola Court had declared four settled "propositions:"

1.... [T]he vessel and her owners are liable, in case a seaman falls sick, or is wounded, in the service of the ship, to the extent of his maintenance and cure, and to his wages, at least so long as the voyage is continued.

2. . . . [T]he vessel and her owner are, both by English and American law, liable to an indemnity for injuries received by seamen in consequence of the unseaworthiness of the ship, or a failure to supply and keep in order the proper appliances appurtenant to the ship. ...

3. . . . [A]Il the members of the crew, except perhaps the master, are, as between memselves, fellow servants, and hence seamen cannot recover for injuries sustained through the negligence of another member of the crew beyond the expense of their maintenance and cure.

4.... [T]he seaman is not allowed to recover an indemnity for the negligence of the master, or any member of the crew, but is entitled to maintenance and cure, whether the injuries were received by negligence or accident.9

Under the first Osceola proposition, Mr. Johnson would have been entitled to maintenance and cure because he was "wounded, in the service of the ship."10 Under the second proposition, he would have been entitled to "an indemnity for injuries received ... in consequence of the unseaworthiness of the ship."11 But under the fourth (and perhaps the third) of the Osceola propositions, he would have had no negligence action against his employer.

Congress had undoubtedly12 intended to change the Osceola result five years earlier in section 20 of the 1915 Act to Promote the Welfare of American Seamen,13 which provided:

In any suit to recover damages for any injury sustained on board vessel or in its service seamen having command shall not be held to be fellow-servants with those under their authority.14

The Supreme Court, however, had found that the 1915 statute was "irrelevant."15 Congress had apparently believed that it was only the third Osceola proposition that denied seamen a negligence remedy against their employers.16 In Chelentis v. Luckenbach S.S. Co.," the Supreme Court "g[a]ve Congress a lesson on 'How to read a case' of a type familiar to any first term law student."18 The principal source of the seaman's lack of a negligence remedy was the fourth Osceola proposition. By abrogating only the third, Congress had worked no functional change in the law. No matter how obvious Congress's intent may have been, Mr. Chelentis had no negligence remedy.