Potter Stewart

“ There is ample room for argument, in the light of history, as to how the law of unseaworthiness should have or could have developed. Such theories might be made to fill a volume of logic. But, in view of the decisions in this Court over the last 15 years, we can find no room for argument as to what the law is. ”

“ It was against the background of such limitations of the carrier's strict duty to redeliver cargo, and in derogation of them, that the more limited, though absolute, duty to furnish a seaworthy vessel emerged. Unlike the strict duty imposed on carriers in general to redeliver cargo, it was a concept rooted in the peculiarly maritime hazards of carriage by sea. It expressed, and became the focus of, American judicial resistance to broad disclaimers, and was implied despite relatively specific limitations in the contract of carriage. ”

“ When it appears that a challenged doctrine has been uncritically accepted as a matter of course by the inertia of repetition-has just 'grow'd' like Topsy-the Court owes it to the demands of reason, on which judicial law-making power ultimately rests for its authority, to examine its foundations and validity in order appropriately to assess claims for its extension. ”

“ No area of federal law is judge-made at its source to such an extent as is the law of admiralty. The evolution of judge-made law is a process of accretion and erosion. We are told by a great master that law is civilized to the extent that it is purposefully conscious. ”

“ The English courts were strongly influenced by the inherent limitations of the owner's actual control of a vessel (see, e.g., Gibson v. Small, supra, at 404) ; while the American so highly esteemed the protection of life and property, presumably to be so gained, as to have held the owner in effect absolutely liable to select master and crew who would in fact diligently see to the continuing seaworthiness of the vessel. ”

“ Confined to the facts of the case, the decision that intervening negligence would not constitute a defense to an action for injuries resulting from an unseaworthy condition is consistent with the rule of the cargo and insurance cases, confining the absolute warranty to damage resulting from initial unseaworthiness. The rope, which was new, had decayed from overlong or improper storage, not from use, and was, it is right to assume defective from the start of the voyage. ”

“ Even the admiralty courts of the nineteenth century, during the growth of American shipping found no justification in peculiarly maritime concerns for imposing an absolute duty at all times after the start of the voyage to maintain the vessel in seaworthy condition. ”

“ Not until the late nineteenth century did there develop in American admiralty courts the doctrine that seamen had a right to recover for personal injuries beyond maintenance and cure. During that period it became generally accepted that a shipowner was liable to a mariner injured in the service of a ship as a consequence of the owner's failure to exercise due diligence. ”

“ Sieracki, 328 U.S. 85, 66 S.Ct. 872, 90 L.Ed. 1099, the Court effectively scotched any doubts that might have lingered after Mahnich as to the nature of the shipowner's duty to provide a seaworthy vessel. The character of the duty, said the Court, is 'absolute.' 'It is essentially a species of liability without fault, analogous to other well known instances in our law. Derived from and shaped to meet the hazards which performing the service imposes, the liability is neither limited by conceptions of negligence nor contractual in character. ”

“ The Court in Mahnich was not remotely called upon, in rejecting those premises as it did, to consider whether the absolute warranty of seaworthiness extends to conditions arising after the commencement of the voyage. Finally, there is evidence that if the Court made any assumption about the scope of the warranty it assumed that, as in the case of cargo until the Harter Act, it was absolute, but only as to conditions existing at the commencement of the voyage. ”

“ This judicial evolution was doubtless influenced as well by the similarly absolute implied warranty in contracts of marine insurance by which the assured, whether shipowner, charterer, or shipper, warranted the seaworthiness of the vessel at the start of its voyage as a condition upon the attaching of the policy. The origin of this rule has been attributed to the customary understanding of the risks actually undertaken by the insurer. See, e.g., Tetreault, Seamen, Seaworthiness, and the Rights of Harbor Workers, 39 Cornell L.Q. 381, 395. ”

“ In America, the result of the conflicts created by this divergence in the law of two maritime nations was the Harter Act of 1893, 27 Stat. 445, 46 U.S.C.A. §§ 190-195. The carrier was thereby permitted to disclaim any duty other than to exercise due diligence in the preparation of the vessel. If he in fact exercised such diligence, he was freed of liability for losses 'resulting from faults or errors in navigation or in the management' of the vessel. The purpose and effect of the Act was to strike a compromise between the English and American standards so as to reduce conflicts between them. ”

“ Coleridge, J. (at 408) , distinguished the insurance warranty as turning on doctrines which 'have no place in any other branch of the law,' and confined the duty of owner to seamen to the scope of master-servant law on land. A similar disposition to analogize maritime to non-maritime activity on the part of the English common-law courts was manifested in Readhead v. Midland R. Co., (1869) L.R., 4 Q.B. 379, where the claim was advanced that a railway passenger injured when a wheel broke was, by analogy to the warranty of seaworthiness as to cargo, entitled to compensation for his injuries. ”

“ Had there been negligence, either in permitting the spawn to accumulate or in failing to remove it, the admiralty principles developed in the cargo cases, and taken over into personal injury cases, would warrant an imposition of liability, although as to cargo damage the Harter Act and the Carriage of goods by Sea Act would, of course, bar recovery. ”

“ In Poignant the libellant, a crew member, slipped on a small piece of garbage lying in a passageway of the ship. The vessel lacked garbage chutes, and the garbage was pulled, in cans, through the passageway to a railing, where it was jettisoned. The Court of Appeals first expressed the view that any unseaworthy condition which existed had in all probability arisen after the voyage had commenced. It said, much as the Court now holds, that Alaska Steamship Co. v. Petterson, 347 U.S. 396, 74 S.Ct. 601, 98 L.Ed. 798, required it to apply a rule of absolute liability nonetheless. ”

“ As the case is decided, however, we are told that even though there is no claim that the vessel should have made different provisions for the unloading of its catch or the debarking of its crew, the shipowner is liable for an injury caused by a temporary unsafe condition arising from the normal operation of the vessel, not the result of fault or mismanagement of anyone on board, and which no one had a reasonable opportunity to remedy. ”

“ The reasons for the development are evident. The hazards of the sea were great even in vessels properly maintained and outfitted; in imperfect ships they became intolerable. Since at the start of a voyage the familiar facilities of the home port were ordinarily available to the owner to permit him to reduce the risk, it was not unreasonable to require him at the peril of extensive liability to make the vessel seaworthy-reasonably fit for the intended voyage, see The Silvia, 171 U.S. 462, 464, 19 S.Ct. ”

“ No cargo or insurance cases were relied upon, and none of the cases cited had found such liability. The only reliance on English law was on the Act of 1876, supra, which defined the duty as requiring the exercise of due diligence to render the vessel seaworthy. It appears instead that it was the intention of The Osceola to adopt the analysis of Judge Addison Brown in The City of Alexandria, D.C.S.D.N.Y.1883, 17 F. 390, which it cited, under which a seaman could recover only for injuries resulting from that limited species of negligence which resulted in an unseaworthy condition. ”

“ He asserts that these conclusions flow from the rule of Sandanger, supra, that the owner's liability to compensate seamen for injuries caused by the unseaworthiness of his vessel is 'absolute.'
Respondent contends, and the lower courts held, that the fact that spawn on the rail caused petitioner's injury is not, of itself, sufficient to establish respondent's liability. It urges two related propositions in the alternative in support of its judgment. ”

“ In 1944 this Court decided Mahnich v. Southern S.S.C.o., 321 U.S. 96, 64 S.Ct. 455, 88 L.Ed. 561. The suit was brought by a seaman under the general maritime law (the statute of limitations having run on Jones Act claims) for injuries which he incurred at sea when a rope, with which the staging on which he was working fifteen feet over the deck was rigged, parted and he fell. The mate in charge had taken the rope, which was unused, but at least two years old, from the Lyle Gun (a life-saving device) box. ”

“ As has frequently been noted, the second proposition, a dictum declaring a right to 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' (189 U.S. at page 175, 23 S.Ct. at page 487) does not appear to have announced a doctrine of liability without fault. ”

“ The respondent is held liable, without being told that there was something left undone which should have been done, for petitioner is not asked to show, as was the libellant in Poignant, that the vessel ought to have been outfitted differently, that is, in a fashion which would have prevented the dangerous condition from arising at all. ”

“ Petitioner asserts that if the presence of spawn on the rail rendered it not reasonably fit for its function, then, without more-and particularly without regard to the length of time the spawn had remained on the rail respondent was liable to compensate him for his consequent injuries. ”

“ But where, as here, there is neither a claim that the vessel was initially unseaworthy, nor any showing of negligence, the imposition of liability seems to me borrowing from Judge Magruder, a 'hard doctrine,' 'startlingly opposed to principle.' 265 F.2d at page 432.
The Court is not fashioning a rule designed to protect life, cf. ”