Trial News

At oral arguments in a case involving a seaman seeking punitive damages for an injury he sustained aboard an unseaworthy vessel, the U.S. Supreme Court debated whether the Jones Act, general maritime law, and public policy arguments limit access to nonpecuniary damages in unseaworthiness cases. (Dutra Grp. v. Batterton, No. 18-266 (U.S. oral arg. Mar. 25, 2019).)

Christopher Batterton was a deckhand for The Dutra Group, a marine construction company, and was assigned to work on three vessels near Newport Beach, Calif. In August 2014, while Batterton was working aboard one of the vessels, a hatch cover blew open as pressurized air was being pumped into a vessel compartment, crushing his left hand.  

In October 2014, Batterton sued The Dutra Group in California federal district court, alleging claims for maintenance and cure, negligence under the Jones Act, and unseaworthiness. To support his unseaworthiness claim, Batterton alleged that the hatch cover would not have blown open and he would not have been injured if the vessel had been equipped with an exhaust mechanism to relieve pressure. He requested punitive damages as part of that claim.

The defendant moved to strike Batterton’s demand for punitive damages, arguing that nonpecuniary damages are not available for unseaworthiness claims. The district court denied the motion, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed, as Trial News previously reported. (880 F.3d 1089 (9th Cir. 2018).) The Supreme Court granted the defendant’s petition for review of the availability of punitive damages for unseaworthiness claims.

The defendant argues that the Supreme Court’s opinion in Miles v. Apex Marine Corp. precludes Jones Act seamen from receiving nonpecuniary damages for their injuries (498 U.S. 19 (1990).) In Miles, a seaman was stabbed to death by a fellow crewmember, and his mother brought negligence and unseaworthiness claims, alleging the shipowner should have known of the crewmember’s propensity for violence. In Miles, the Supreme Court held that the Jones Act permits only pecuniary damages and that, because general maritime law must conform to statutory maritime law, nonpecuniary damages were unavailable for the unseaworthiness claim too. The defendant also cited McBride v. Estis Well Service, LLC, in support. There, the Fifth Circuit held that “punitive damages are nonpecuniary losses” that cannot be recovered under the Jones Act or general maritime law. (768 F.3d 382 (5th Cir. 2014).)

However, Batterton alleges that the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Evich v. Morris, a wrongful death case holding that punitive damages are available for unseaworthiness claims, is controlling. (819 F.2d 256 (9th Cir. 1987).) Batterton rejects The Dutra Group’s argument that Miles implicitly overruled Evich. While the Court in Miles held that nonpecuniary damages are unavailable under general maritime law, Batterton posits that in Atlantic Sounding Co., Inc. v. Townsend, the Court clarified that these unavailable nonpecuniary damages include only loss of society and lost future earnings claims. (557 U.S. 404 (2009).)

At oral arguments, Washington, D.C., attorney Seth Waxman, representing The Dutra Group, along with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Samuel Alito, distinguished Townsend from Batterton’s unseaworthiness claim. Sotomayor noted that she doesn’t see a clear case where punitive damages were awarded for unseaworthiness. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg echoed that sentiment: “[T]he evidence is very slim that there were punitive damages, in fact, awarded for unseaworthiness claims.” 

David Frederick, of Washington, D.C., representing Batterton, countered that “about 70 percent of these kinds of [unseaworthiness] cases arise in state court” and that there have been “punitive damages awards in state court proceedings that have not led to reported judgments and not been appealed and that have been paid.” Frederick also noted that there is a distinction between maintenance and cure claims that “overlap entirely with a Jones Act claim” and must be brought against the employer, and unseaworthiness claims, which passengers also can file against the shipowner. To disallow punitive damages in unseaworthiness cases would limit potential recovery for a larger swath of plaintiffs, some of whom do not have Jones Act remedies available to them. 

Justice Elena Kagan also questioned how, if the 1920 Jones Act was a “a signal to courts to stop” considering common law remedies for maritime claims, “courts. . . keep thinking about revising, developing these common law actions.” AAJ, in its amicus brief in support of the plaintiff, explains that “unseaworthiness claims are general maritime actions that predate the Jones Act . . . and were left undisturbed, along with other maritime claims, by the enactment of the Jones Act as a separate remedy that may be pursued.”  

Addressing general public policy arguments against punitive damages, Frederick noted that “nearly ten years has now elapsed since Townsend, [and] we don’t have runaway juries for maintenance and cure claims” and that “it’s, in fact, not the case that in those rare circumstances when punitive damages are awarded, that there has been some disproportionate problem of runaway.” Likewise, AAJ’s amicus brief asserts that The Dutra Group is “rais[ing] a false specter of increased costs for the maritime industry.” Both Frederick and AAJ cite Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, in which the Court noted “that discretion to award punitive damages has not mass-produced runaway awards” and that “the median ratio of punitive to compensatory awards has remained less than 1:1.” (554 U.S. 471 (2008).)

Attorney Preston Easley, of San Pedro, Calif., who represents Batterton, said “the justices were well-prepared and were hard on both sides” during oral arguments. While the defendant argued that allowing punitive damages would destroy the U.S. maritime industry, Easley said that “Townsend is proof that it hasn’t in the case of maintenance and cure, and it won’t in the case of unseaworthiness.” He added that The Dutra Group “has produced no studies showing the adverse effects of punitive damages on the maritime industry” following the Court’s decision in Townsend ten years ago.  

Jeffrey White, associate general counsel for AAJ, agreed, adding that “following the Supreme Court’s decision in Townsend, allowing punitive damages for willful failure to pay maintenance and cure, our members have noticed vessel owners are more cooperative (if grudgingly) in processing and approving M&C claims. We expect the same will happen when punitives are authorized for unseaworthiness claims. This is just the financial incentive vessel owners need to invest in safety.”