Weyerhaeuser Steamship Company v. United States/Opinion of the Court

In September of 1955 the United States Army Dredge Pacific and the petitioner's vessel F. E. Weyerhaeuser were in a collision off the Oregon coast. To recover for its resultant damages the petitioner brought this action against the United States under the Public Vessels Act. A cross-libel was filed, and the District Court after a hearing found that the collision had occurred through the mutual fault of both vessels. Applying the settled admiralty rule of divided damages, the court held that each party was entitled to recover from the other one-half of its provable damages and court costs. 174 F.Supp. 663 supplemented at 178 F.Supp. 496.

A United States Civil Service employee aboard the Pacific, Reynold E. Ostrom, had sustained personal injuries in the collision. He had received compensation for these injuries under the Federal Employees' Compensation Act, and had then filed a suit against the petitioner to recover damages. That lawsuit was subsequently settled by the payment to Ostrom of $16,000 by the petitioner, and Ostrom then repaid to the United States the amount which had previously been awarded him as statutory compensation, as required by the Compensation Act.

The United States objected to the inclusion, as part of the petitioner's damages from the collision, of the $16,000 which the petitioner had paid to Ostrom. The Government stipulated that the amount was a reasonable settlement of Ostrom's claim, and agreed that such a payment would ordinarily be includible as a proper item of the damages to be divided pursuant to the accepted admiralty formula. The Government took the position, however, that with respect to the amount paid Ostrom the established admiralty rule has been qualified by § 7(b) of the Federal Employees' Compensation Act, which provides that the liability of the United States under the Act for

'injury or death of an employee shall be exclusive, and in     place, of all other liability of the United States or such      instrumentality to the employee, his legal representative,      spouse, dependents, next of kin, and anyone otherwise      entitled to recover damages from the United States *  *  * on      account of such injury or death, in any direct judicial      proceedings in a civil action or in admiralty, or by      proceedings, whether administrative or judicial, under any      other workmen's compensation law or under any Federal tort      liability statute *  *  * .'

The District Court rejected the Government's argument and entered a decree which recognized the amount paid by the petitioner to Ostrom as part of the petitioner's provable damages from the collision. The Court of Appeals reversed, remanding the case to the District Court with directions to recompute the damages after excluding the Ostrom settlement, holding that the exclusive liability provision of § 7(b) of the Compensation Act precluded any liability of the United States on account of the petitioner's payment for Ostrom's personal injuries. 294 F.2d 179.

We granted certiorari to consider the single question whether the historic admiralty rule of divided damages in mutual fault collisions has been qualified, as the Court of Appeals held, by the exclusive liability provision of the federal compensation statute. 369 U.S. 810, 82 S.Ct. 688, 7 L.Ed.2d 611. For the reasons stated in this opinion, we hold that this provision of the compensation statute does not so limit the admiralty rule, and we accordingly reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

As this Court has pointed out, the Public Vessels Act 'was intended to impose on the United States the same liability (apart from seizure or arrest under a libel in rem) as is imposed by the admiralty law on the private shipowner * *  * .' Canadian Aviator, Ltd. v. United States, 324 U.S. 215, 228, 65 S.Ct. 639, 646, 89 L.Ed. 901. And there can be no question that a private shipowner in a case such as this would be liable for half of all the petitioner's provable damages, including the $16,000 paid to Ostrom. The Government argues, however, that the 'plain words' of the federal compensation statute nevertheless operate to limit the Government's liability in this case.

Section 7(b) provides that the compensation remedy shall be exclusive with respect to the Government's liability 'to the employee, his legal representative, spouse, dependents, next of kin, and anyone otherwise entitled to recover damages from the United States * *  * .' The Government points out that the general words 'anyone otherwise entitled to recover damages' literally would cover a shipowner entitled to recover divided damages after a mutual fault collision. But the general language upon which the Government relies follows explicit enumeration of specific categories: employees, their representatives, and their dependents. Under the traditional rule of statutory construction which counsels against giving to general words a meaning totally unrelated to the more specific terms of a statute, we think the meaning of the statutory language is far from 'plain.'

The legislative history of the Federal Employees' Compensation Act, originally passed in 1916, shows that the concern of Congress was to provide federal employees a swift, economical, and assured right of compensation for injuries arising out of the employment relationship, regardless of the negligence of the employee or his fellow servants, or the lack of fault on the part of the United States. The purpose of § 7(b), added in 1949, was to establish that, as between the Government on the one hand and its employees and their representatives or dependents on the other, the statutory remedy was to be exclusive. There is no evidence whatever that Congress was concerned with the rights of unrelated third parties, much less of any purpose to disturb settled doctrines of admiralty law affecting the mutual rights and liabilities of private shipowners in collision cases.

Section 5 of the Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act is nearly identical to § 7(b) of the Federal Employees' Compensation Act in providing that '(t)he liability of an employer * *  * shall be exclusive and in place of all other liability of such employer to the employee, his legal representative, husband or wife, parents, dependents, next of kin, and anyone otherwise entitled to recover damages from such employer at law or in admiralty on account of such injury or death *  *  * .' In Ryan Stevedoring Co. v. Pan-Atlantic S.S.C.orp., 350 U.S. 124, 76 S.Ct. 232, 100 L.Ed. 133, it was held that despite this exclusive liability provision, a shipowner was entitled to reimbursement from a longshoreman's employer for damages recovered against the shipowner by the longshoreman injured by the employer's negligence. The Court's decision in Ryan was based upon the existence of a contractual relationship between the shipowner and the employer. In a series of subsequent cases, the same result was reached, although the contractual relationship was considerably more attenuated. Weyerhaeuser S.S.C.o. v. Nacirema Co., 355 U.S. 563, 78 S.Ct. 438, 2 L.Ed.2d 491; Crumady v. The Joachim Hendrik Fisser, 358 U.S. 423, 79 S.Ct. 445, 3 L.Ed.2d 413; Waterman S.S.C.orp. v. Dugan & McNamara, 364 U.S. 421, 81 S.Ct. 200, 5 L.Ed.2d 169.

In the present case there was no contractual relationship between the United States and the petitioner, governing their correlative rights and duties. There is involved here, instead, a rule of admiralty law which, for more than 100 years, has governed with at least equal clarity the correlative rights and duties of two shipowners whose vessels have been involved in a collision in which both were at fault. The Schooner Catharine v. Dickinson, 17 How. 170, 177, 15 L.Ed. 233; The North Star, 106 U.S. 17, 21, 1 S.Ct. 41, 44, 27 L.Ed. 91. See Halcyon Lines v. Haenn Ship Ceiling and Refitting Corp., 342 U.S. 282, 284, 72 S.Ct. 277, 279, 96 L.Ed. 318. Long ago this Court held that the full scope of the divided damages rule must prevail over a statutory provision which, like the one involved in the present case, limited the liability of one of the shipowners with respect to an element of damages incurred by the other in a mutual fault collision. The Chattahoochee, 173 U.S. 540, 19 S.Ct. 491, 43 L.Ed. 801. The statute at issue in that case was the Harter Act, which categorically provides that cargo cannot collect directly from the carrying vessel for damages as a result of faults in navigation. The Court held that despite this statutory provision, the carrying vessel must share, according to the divided damages rule, damages sustained by the non-carrying vessel resulting from liability to the carrying vessel's cargo. See also Aktieselskabet Cuzco v. The Sucarseco, 294 U.S. 394, 55 S.Ct. 467, 79 L.Ed. 942.

In this case, as in The Chattahoochee, we hold that the scope of the divided damages rule in mutual fault collisions is unaffected by a statute enacted to limit the liability of one of the shipowners to unrelated third parties. The judgment is reversed.

Reversed.