Yamaha Motor Corp., U. S. A. v. Calhoun, 516 U.S. 199, 2 (1996)

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200

YAMAHA MOTOR CORP., U. S. A. v. CALHOUN

Syllabus

worker, or person otherwise engaged in a maritime trade, state remedies remain applicable and have not been displaced by the wrongful-death action recognized in Moragne. Pp. 206-216. (a) In The Harrisburg, 119 U. S. 199, this Court ruled that the general maritime law (a species of judge-made federal common law) did not afford a cause of action for wrongful death. Federal admiralty courts, prior to Moragne, tempered the harshness of The Harrisburg's rule by allowing recovery under state wrongful-death and survival statutes in maritime accident cases. See, e. g., Western Fuel Co. v. Garcia, 257 U. S. 233. Such state laws proved an adequate supplement to federal maritime law, until a series of this Court's decisions transformed the maritime doctrine of unseaworthiness into a rule making shipowners strictly liable to seamen injured by the owners' failure to supply safe ships. See, e. g., Mahnich v. Southern S. S. Co., 321 U. S. 96. By the time Moragne was decided, claims premised on unseaworthiness had become "the principal vehicle for recovery" by seamen and other maritime workers injured or killed in the course of their employment. 398 U. S., at 399. The disparity between the unseaworthiness doctrine's strict liability standard and negligence-based state wrongful-death statutes prompted the Moragne Court, id., at 409, to overrule The Harrisburg and hold that an action "lie[s] under general maritime law for death caused by violation of maritime duties." Pp. 206-209. (b) This Court rejects Yamaha's argument that Moragne's wrongful-death action covers the waters, creating a uniform federal maritime remedy for all deaths occurring in state territorial waters, and ousting all state remedies previously available to supplement general maritime law. The uniformity concerns that prompted the Moragne Court to overrule The Harrisburg related to ships and the workers who serve them, and to the frequent unavailability of unseaworthiness, a distinctively maritime substantive concept, as a basis of liability under state law. See 398 U. S., at 395-396. The concerns underlying Moragne were of a different order than those invoked by Yamaha. Notably, Yamaha seeks the contraction of remedies, not the extension of relief in light of the "humane and liberal" character of admiralty proceedings recognized in Moragne. See id., at 387. The Moragne Court tied its petitioner's unseaworthiness plea to a federal right-of-action anchor, but left in place the negligence claim she had stated under Florida's law, and thus showed no hostility to concurrent application of state wrongful-death statutes that might provide a more generous remedy. Cf. Sun Ship, Inc. v. Pennsylvania, 447 U. S. 715, 724. No congressionally prescribed, comprehensive tort recovery regime prevents such enlargement of damages here. See Miles v. Apex Marine Corp., 498 U. S. 19, 30-36. The only relevant congressional disposition, the Death on

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