American River Transp. Co. v. U.S. Maritime Svcs., Inc., 2007 WL 1760579 (5th Cir. June 19, 2007)

Josh Clemons

In June the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana’s decision that the non-dependent parents of a longshoreman who died while working on a barge were not entitled to damages from the barge owner for loss of society.

Background
The events giving rise to this case are tragic. Jacques Allemand and Darnell Page were work-release inmates providing labor on the barge ART 529, owned by American River Transportation Co. (ARTCO). On a February day in 2003 the pair were performing barge-cleaning tasks when Page was hit by a high-pressure stream of water, knocked unconscious, and fell into the Mississippi River. Allemand saw the accident and plunged into the river to save his colleague. Despite his best efforts, he was killed when two moored barges collided. Page died as well.

After the deaths ARTCO went to federal district court in Louisiana to initiate proceedings to limit its liability for the incident. Jacques Allemand’s divorced parents, Lester and Edna Allemand, who had not been supported financially by their son, made an appearance in the court to claim survivors’ damages as well as damages for loss of society based on their son’s allegedly wrongful death.

ARTCO asked the district court for summary judgment on the ground that non-dependent parents are not entitled to damages for loss of society in a maritime wrongful death action. The court granted the request, reasoning that only dependents are entitled to recovery for loss of society in this situation. The Allemands appealed the decision to the Fifth Circuit.

The Fifth Circuit Decision
The appeals court began its discussion of the case with a primer on the history of the maritime wrongful death cause of action. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1886 held that there was no cause of action for wrongful death in maritime law.1 Twenty-one years later the Court changed course and allowed that wrongful death actions could be brought in federal court when the death occurred in state territorial waters.2 In 1920 Congress stepped in with the Jones Act, which provided for a wrongful death cause of action in negligence when a seaman is killed in the course of his employment, and the Death on the High Seas Act, which permits a wrongful death action in negligence or unseaworthiness for deaths on the high seas (whether or not in the course of employment). The statutes permitted only pecuniary damages.

This combination of cases and statutes created an irrational jumble of available causes of action, which depended in a seemingly arbitrary way on the legal status of the deceased and the waters in which he met his fate. Over the next seventy years the Supreme Court endeavored to create a more workable system in a series of decisions that established, among other things, that there is a general maritime cause of action for wrongful death in territorial waters, but that the Jones Act does not allow for recovery for loss of society in the wrongful death of a seaman.

This court framed the question before it thusly: “whether the non-dependent survivors of a deceased longshoreman or harborworker may recover for loss of society when the death occurs in state waters.”3 It then provided the rationale for why the answer is no.

The primary reason was precedent. The Fifth Circuit had held in two previous cases that the non-dependent survivors of seamen could not recover for loss of society in a maritime wrongful death action. The court noted in those cases that the special concern that the law has for the survivors of seamen is motivated by the desire to ensure the survivors’ continued financial support. With non-dependent survivors, this concern is absent. In addition, the goal of achieving uniformity in maritime law would be undermined by allowing non-dependents to recover.

The court acknowledged that Allemand and Page, the decedents in this case, were not “seamen” within the meaning of the Jones Act, but reasoned that this distinction did not weaken its logic. The Supreme Court had denied this kind of recovery for the survivors of seamen, the court noted, so it would be anomalous to extend it to the survivors of non-seamen. The court cited decisions in other circuits, including the Second, Sixth, and Eleventh, that accorded with this reasoning.

The Allemands cited contrary precedent from the Ninth Circuit in which that court allowed recovery by non-dependents on the ground that the statutes and Supreme Court cases do not explicitly require the dependent/non-dependent distinction to be made. This court was not persuaded by the Ninth Circuit’s reasoning. Neither was it swayed by the Allemands’ appeal for a more “humane” outcome; the Supreme Court, it said, has emphasized that uniformity in maritime law is a more important consideration than humanitarian outcomes.

The Allemands tried one more argument: that there is no reason to distinguish dependents from non-dependents when damages are not being sought to compensate for monetary loss. Unfortunately for them, the court had rejected that line of argument in a previous decision because it would do something courts are very hesitant to do without substantial justification: open up an extremely large class of potential plaintiffs. As the court noted here, allowing non-dependents to recover for loss of society would raise the specter of courtrooms filled with aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and even friends and lovers. Better, the court declared, to limit recovery to dependents, for whom the wrongful death action was originally created.

Conclusion
The court decided that its own precedent, the reasoning of other circuits, and the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court compelled it not to allow recovery of damages for wrongful death by the non-dependent parents of a longshoreman who died in territorial waters. The court affirmed the district court’s decision and dismissed the Allemands’ claim.

Endnotes
1. The Harrisburg, 119 U.S. 199 (1886).
2. The Hamilton, 207 U.S. 398 (1907).
3. American River Transp. Co. v. U.S. Maritime Svcs., Inc., 2007 WL 1760579 at *4 (5th Cir. June 19, 2007) (emphasis in original).