Jerome B. Grubart, Inc. v. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co., 513 U.S. 527, 17 (1995)

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Cite as: 513 U. S. 527 (1995)

Opinion of the Court

for personal injury by motorist who was rear-ended while waiting for a ferry on a floating pontoon serving as the ferry's landing); Chapman v. Grosse Pointe Farms, 385 F. 2d 962 (CA6 1967) (no admiralty jurisdiction over claim of swimmer who injured himself when diving off pier into shallow but navigable water). In the cases after Executive Jet, the Court stressed the need for a maritime connection, but found one in the navigation or berthing of pleasure boats, despite the facts that the pleasure boat activity took place near shore, where States have a strong interest in applying their own tort law, or was not on all fours with the maritime shipping and commerce that has traditionally made up the business of most maritime courts. Sisson, 497 U. S., at 367; Foremost, 457 U. S., at 675. Although we agree with petitioners that these cases do not say that every tort involving a vessel on navigable waters falls within the scope of admiralty jurisdiction no matter what, they do show that ordinarily that will be so.5

III

Perhaps recognizing the difficulty of escaping the case law, petitioners ask us to change it. In cases "involving land based parties and injuries," the city would have us adopt a condition of jurisdiction that

"the totality of the circumstances reflects a federal interest in protecting maritime commerce sufficiently weighty to justify shifting what would otherwise be state-court litigation into federal court under the federal law of admiralty." City Brief 32.

5 Because we conclude that the tort alleged in Count I of Great Lakes's complaint satisfies both the location and connection tests necessary for admiralty jurisdiction under 28 U. S. C. § 1333(1), we need not consider respondent Great Lakes's alternative argument that the Extension of Admiralty Jurisdiction Act, 46 U. S. C. App. § 740, provides an independent basis of federal jurisdiction over the complaint.

543

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