Cite as: 516 U. S. 199 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
The anomalies described in Moragne relate to ships and the workers who serve them, and to a distinctly maritime substantive concept—the unseaworthiness doctrine. The Court surely meant to "assure uniform vindication of federal policies," 398 U. S., at 401, with respect to the matters it examined. The law as it developed under The Harrisburg had forced on the States more than they could bear—the task of "provid[ing] the sole remedy" in cases that did not involve "traditional common-law concepts," but "concepts peculiar to maritime law." 398 U. S., at 401, n. 15 (internal quotation marks omitted). Discarding The Harrisburg and declaring a wrongful-death right of action under general maritime law, the Court concluded, would "remov[e] the tensions and discrepancies" occasioned by the need "to accommodate state remedial statutes to exclusively maritime substantive concepts." 398 U. S., at 401.10
Moragne, in sum, centered on the extension of relief, not on the contraction of remedies. The decision recalled that " 'it better becomes the humane and liberal character of proceedings in admiralty to give than to withhold the remedy, when not required to withhold it by established and inflexible rules.' " Id., at 387 (quoting The Sea Gull, 21 F. Cas. 909, 910 (No. 12,578) (CC Md. 1865) (Chase, C. J.)). The Court tied Petsonella Moragne's plea based on the unseaworthiness
10 The Court might have simply overruled The Tungus, see supra, at 209, thus permitting plaintiffs to rely on federal liability standards to obtain state wrongful-death remedies. The petitioner in Moragne, widow of a longshore worker, had urged that course when she sought certiorari. See Moragne v. States Marine Lines, Inc., 398 U. S. 375, 378, n. 1 (1970). But training Moragne solely on The Tungus would have left untouched the survivors of seamen, who remain blocked by the Jones Act from pursuing state wrongful-death claims—whether under a theory of negligence or unseaworthiness. See Gillespie v. United States Steel Corp., 379 U. S. 148, 154-155 (1964). Thus, nothing short of a federal maritime right of action for wrongful death could have achieved uniform access by seafarers to the unseaworthiness doctrine, the Court's driving concern in Moragne. See 398 U. S., at 396, n. 12.
213
Page: Index Previous 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007