Vaughan v. Atkinson

Opinion of the Court by

Mr. Justice Douglas,

announced by Mr. Justice Brennan.

This is a suit in admiralty brought by a seaman to recover (a) maintenance and cure and (b) damages for *528 failure to pay maintenance and cure.1 The District Court, while disallowing the claim for damages, granted maintenance, less any sums earned by the libellant during the period in question. 200 F. Supp. 802. The Court of Appeals affirmed, Chief Judge Sobeloff dissenting. 291 F. 2d 813. The case is here on a writ of certiorari. 368 U. S. 888.

Libellant served on respondents’2 vessel from November 26, 1956, to March 2, 1957, when he was discharged on termination of a voyage. On March 7, 1957, he reported to a United States Public Health Service Hospital for examination and was admitted on March 18, 1957, as an inpatient, and treated for suspected tuberculosis. On June 6, 1957, he was discharged to an outpatient status and he remained in that status for over two years. On August 25, 1959, he was notified that he was fit for duty as of August 19, 1959.

The hospital records show a strong probability of active tuberculosis. The Master furnished libellant a certificate to enter the hospital on his discharge, March 2, 1957. Though libellant forwarded to the owner’s agent an abstract of his clinical record at the hospital in 1957, the only investigation conducted by them was an interrogation of the Master and Chief Engineer, who stated that the libellant had never complained of any illness during his four months’ service. The owner made no effort to make any further investigation of libellant’s claim for maintenance and cure, and according to the findings did not bother even to admit or deny the validity *529 of that claim. Nearly two years passed during which libellant was on his own. Ultimately he was required to hire an attorney and sue in the courts to recover maintenance and cure, agreeing to pay the lawyer a 50% contingent fee. Even so, the District Court held that no damages for failure to furnish maintenance and cure had been shown. In its view such damages are payable not for attorney’s fees incurred but only when the failure to furnish maintenance and cure caused or aggravated the illness or other physical or mental suffering.

The District Court first allowed maintenance at the rate of $8 a day from June 6, 1957, to February 18, 1959. Since libellant during that period had worked as a taxi driver, the District Court ordered that his earnings be deducted from the amount owed by respondents. Subject to that credit, the order also provided that maintenance at $8 per day be continued until such time as the libellant reached the maximum state of recovery. The District Court allowed in addition 6% interest for each week’s maintenance unpaid. Subsequently the District Court extended the maintenance to cover the period from March 7, 1957, to March 17, 1957, and from February 18, 1959, through August 25, 1959, these later awards being without interest.

The Court of Appeals denied counsel fees as damages, relying on the conventional rule that in suits for breach of contract the promisee is not allowed that item in computing the damages payable by the promisor. And the Court of Appeals, following Wilson v. United States, 229 F. 2d 277, and Perez v. Suwanee S. S. Co., 239 F. 2d 180, from the Second Circuit, held that a seaman has the duty to mitigate damages and that since “the purpose of maintenance and cure is to make the seaman whole,” “he will get something more than he is entitled to” unless his *530 earnings during the period are deducted. 291 F. 2d, at 814, 815.

We disagree with the lower courts on both points.

I.

Equity is no stranger in admiralty; admiralty courts are, indeed, authorized to grant equitable relief. See Swift & Co. v. Compania Caribe, 339 U. S. 684, 691-692, where we said, “We find no restriction upon admiralty by chancery so unrelenting as to bar the grant of any equitable relief even when that relief is subsidiary to issues wholly within admiralty jurisdiction.”

Counsel fees have been awarded in equity actions, as where Negroes were required to bring suit against a labor union to prevent discrimination. Rolax v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 186 F. 2d 473, 481. As we stated in Sprague v. Ticonic Bank, 307 U. S. 161, 164, allowance of counsel fees and other expenses entailed by litigation, but not included in the ordinary taxable costs regulated by statute, is “part of the historic equity jurisdiction of the federal courts.” We do not have here that case. Nor do we have the usual problem of what constitutes “costs” in the conventional sense. Cf. The Baltimore, 8 Wall. 377. Our question concerns damages. Counsel fees were allowed in The Apollon, 9 Wheat. 362, 379, an admiralty suit where one party was put to expense in recovering demurrage of a vessel wrongfully seized. While failure to give maintenance and cure may give rise to a claim for damages for the suffering and for the physical handicap which follows (The Iroquois, 194 U. S. 240), the recovery may also include “necessary expenses.” Cortes v. Baltimore Insular Line, 287 U. S. 367, 371.

In the instant case respondents were callous in their attitude, making no investigation of libellant’s claim and *531 by their silence neither admitting nor denying it. As a result of that recalcitrance, libellant was forced to hire a lawyer and go to court to get what was plainly owed him under laws that are centuries old. The default was willful and persistent. It is difficult to imagine a clearer case of damages suffered for failure to pay maintenance than this one.3

II.

Maintenance and cure is designed to provide a seaman with food and lodging when he becomes sick or injured in the ship’s service; and it extends during the period when he is incapacitated to do a seaman’s work and continues until he reaches maximum medical recovery. The policy underlying the duty was summarized in Calmar S. S. Corp. v. Taylor, 303 U. S. 525, 528:

“The reasons underlying the rule, to which reference must be made in defining it, are those enumerated in the classic passage by Mr. Justice Story in Harden v. Gordon, Fed. Cas. No. 6047 (C. C.): the protection of seamen, who, as a class, are poor, friendless and improvident, from the hazards of illness and abandonment while ill in foreign ports; the inducement to masters and owners to protect the safety and health of seamen while in service; the maintenance of a merchant marine for the commercial service and maritime defense of the nation by inducing men to accept employment in an arduous and perilous service.”

Admiralty courts have been liberal in interpreting this duty “for the benefit and protection of seamen who are *532 its wards.” Id., at 529. We noted in Aguilar v. Standard Oil Co., 318 U. S. 724, 730, that the shipowner’s liability for maintenance and cure was among “the most pervasive” of all and that it was not to be defeated by restrictive distinctions nor “narrowly confined.” Id., at 735. When there are ambiguities or doubts, they are resolved in favor of the seaman. Warren v. United States, 340 U. S. 523.

Maintenance and cure differs from rights normally classified as contractual. As Mr. Justice Cardozo said in Cortes v. Baltimore Insular Line, supra, 371, the duty to provide maintenance and cure4 “is imposed by the *533 law itself as one annexed to the employment. . . . Contractual it is in the sense that it has its source in a relation which is contractual in origin, but given the relation, no agreement is competent to abrogate the incident.”

In Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 46, we held that a seaman who while an outpatient was living on his parents’ ranch without cost to himself was not entitled to maintenance payments. There maintenance and cure was wholly provided by others. Here the libellant was on his own for nearly two years and required to work in order to survive. It would be a sorry day for seamen if shipowners, knowing of the claim for maintenance and cure, could disregard it, force the disabled seaman to work, and then evade part or all of their legal obligation by having it reduced by the amount of the sick man’s earnings. This would be a dreadful weapon in the hands of unconscionable employers and a plain inducement, as Chief Judge Sobeloff said below (291 F. 2d, at 820), to use the withholding of maintenance and cure as a means of forcing sick seamen to go to work when they should be resting, and to make the seamen themselves pay in whole or in part the amounts owing as maintenance and cure. This result is at war with the liberal attitude that heretofore has obtained and with admiralty’s tender regard for seamen. We think the view of the Third Circuit (see Yates v. Dann, 223 F. 2d 64, 67) is preferable to that of *534 the Second Circuit as expressed in Wilson v. United States and Perez v. Suwanee S. S. Co., supra, and to that of the Fourth Circuit in this case.

Reversed.

Mr. Justice Frankfurter took no part in the decision of this case. Mr. Justice White took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.

Claims for damages for the illness and for wages, disallowed below, are not presented here.

The owner was American Waterways Corp., and National Shipping & Trading Corp. was its agent, both being respondents. Respondent Atkinson was the Master.

Whether counsel fees in the amount of 50% of the award are reasonable is a matter on which we express no opinion, as it was not considered by either the District Court or the Court of Appeals.

It derives from Article VI of the Laws of Oleron, 30 Fed. Cas. 1171, 1174:

“If any of the mariners hired by the master of any vessel, go out of the ship without his leave, and get themselves drunk, and thereby there happens contempt to their master, debates, or fighting and quar-relling among themselves, whereby some happen to be wounded: in this case the master shall not be obliged to get them cured, or in any thing to provide for them, but may turn them and their accomplices out of the ship; and if they make words of it, they are bound to pay the master besides: but if by the master’s orders-and commands any of the ship’s company be in the service of the ship, and'thereby happen to be wounded or otherwise hurt, in that case they shall be cured and provided for at the costs and charges of the said ship.”

Justice Story, in holding that maintenance and cure was a charge upon the ship, said concerning its history:

“The same principle is recognised in the ancient laws of Wisbuy (Laws of Wisbuy, art. 19), and in those of Oleron, which have been held in peculiar respect by England, and have been in some measure incorporated into her maritime jurisprudence. The Consolato del Mare does not speak particularly on this point; but from the provisions of this venerable collection of maritime usages in cases"nearly allied, there is every reason to infer, that a similar rule then prevailed in the Mediterranean. Consolato del Mare, cc. 124, 125; Boucher, Consulat de la Mer, cc. 127, 128. Molloy evidently adopts it as a general doctrine of maritime law (Molloy, b. 2, c. 3, § 5, p. 243); and *533 two elementary writers of most distinguished reputation have quoted it from the old ordinances without the slightest intimation, that it was not perfectly consonant with the received law and usage of England. Abb. Shipp, p. 2, c. 4, § 14; 2 Brown, Adm. 182-184. There is perhaps upon this subject a greater extent and uniformity of maritime authority, than can probably be found in support of most of those principles of commercial law, which have been so successfully engrafted into our jurisprudence within the last century.” Harden v. Gordon, 11 Fed. Cas. 480, 483.