Cite as: 516 U. S. 199 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
maha correctly points out that uniformity concerns informed our decision in Moragne.
The uniformity concerns that prompted us to overrule The Harrisburg, however, were of a different order than those invoked by Yamaha. Moragne did not reexamine the soundness of The Harrisburg out of concern that state monetary awards in maritime wrongful-death cases were excessive, or that variations in the remedies afforded by the States threatened to interfere with the harmonious operation of maritime law. Variations of this sort had long been deemed compatible with federal maritime interests. See Western Fuel, 257 U. S., at 242. The uniformity concern that drove our decision in Moragne related, instead, to the availability of unsea-worthiness as a basis of liability.
By 1970, when 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. Moragne, 398 U. S., at 399. But with The Harrisburg in place, troubling anomalies had developed that many times precluded the survivors of maritime workers from recovering for deaths caused by an unseaworthy vessel. The Moragne Court identified three anomalies and concluded they could no longer be tolerated.
First, the Court noted that "within territorial waters, identical conduct violating federal law (here the furnishing of an unseaworthy vessel) produces liability if the victim is merely injured, but frequently not if he is killed." 398 U. S., at 395. This occurred because in nonfatal injury cases, state substantive liability standards were superseded by federal maritime law, see Kermarec v. Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, 358 U. S. 625, 628 (1959); Pope & Talbot, 346 U. S., at 409, which provided for maritime worker recovery based on unseaworthiness. But if the same worker met death in the territorial waters of a State whose wrongful-death statute did not encompass unseaworthiness (as was the
211
Page: Index Previous 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007