Article by Stephen K. Carr
In 1990, the Supreme Court, in a valiant effort to unify maritime law, handed down Miles v. Apex Marine Corp. The Court held that in all actions for wrongful death of a seaman, whether pursuant to the Jones Act, the Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA), or general maritime law, recovery was limited to those damages that were pecuniary in nature. Although it sought to restore uniformity to this area of maritime law, the Miles Court left a number of unanswered questions. Although much has and will be drawn from both its express and implied language, the only certainty Miles grants us are its particular holdings. That is, loss of society is nonpecuniary and thus not recoverable in a maritime wrongful death action. Furthermore, the specific holding in Miles limited damages in a survival action to losses suffered prior to death. Numerous unresolved issues remain.
Quite conspicuous in its absence from the Supreme Court's decision is any discussion regarding punitive damages. The Fifth Circuit had earlier denied recovery of punitive damages on the grounds that the evidence was legally insufficient, yet Justice O'Connor, writing for the Court, never addressed this issue. In spite of the Court's silence, courts have since applied Miles's “pecuniary” limitation to deny punitive damages as a matter of law.
How then is this interpretation to be applied in the context of maintenance and cure? Courts have traditionally reserved for maintenance and cure an honored place among maritime causes of action—a place where attorney's fees and, at times, punitive damages have been available to punish the most callous of defendant shipowners. It is now unclear whether special damages may still be awarded in such cases. Attorney's fees, by definition, are clearly pecuniary in nature. Yet, if fees are classified as punitive damages, they should be preempted under the blanket rule that evolved from Miles.
Questions abound in the realm of compensatory damages as well. First and foremost is the issue of whether Miles, on its facts, should be limited simply to wrongful death actions or whether its general principles should be expanded to include causes of action for personal injury as well. The Supreme Court upheld its earlier holding in Sea-Land Services v. Gaudet but limited application of Gaudet's holding to territorial longshoremen. The result is to perpetuate two rules of maritime law-one for seamen and one for nonseamen. However, there is no obvious explanation for placing longshoremen on a legally higher ground than seamen. By retaining two sets of rules, the Supreme Court itself is impeding uniform application of maritime law.
This Article will review Miles, the maritime traditions from which it is drawn, and the precedent it has set. In doing so, it will be necessary to review the application of damages before and after Miles with respect to both compensatory and punitive damages. From this analysis, several conclusions are drawn. First, although Miles successfully rid the law of much of the ambiguity regarding the pecuniary nature of compensatory damages, the confusion left by its wake highlights the need for comprehensive maritime legislation. Second, although most post-Miles courts addressing the issue of punitive damages, other than in a maintenance-and-cure scenario, have denied recovery, the ground on which these courts have based their decisions is less than firm. Third, a sharp split exists in post-Miles case law on the issue of recovery of punitive damages in actions for maintenance and cure, which trumpets the need for some unifying act or event. Punitive damages should properly be limited or controlled, if not by the courts, then by legislative mandate.
About the Author
Stephen K. Carr. Senior Partner, Haight, Gardner, Poor & Havens, New York, New York. B.A., University of Toronto, 1951; LL.B., Georgetown Univ., 1954.
Citation
68 Tul. L. Rev. 595 (1994)