The Suits in Admiralty Act of 1920, c. 95, 41 Stat. 525, which
was intended to substitute an equivalent remedy against the United
States
in personam for the right
in rem against
its merchant vessels permitted by the Shipping Board Act of 1916,
c. 451, 39 Stat. 728, provides, (§ 2):
"That in cases where if such vessel were privately owned or
operated . . . , a proceeding in admiralty could be maintained at
the time of the commencement of the action herein provided for, a
libel
in personam may be brought against the United States
. . . provided that such vessel is employed as a merchant vessel. .
. ."
Held, construing the two acts together, that the
proviso does not mean that the vessel, being a merchant vessel,
must be actively employed as such when the action is commenced, and
that, where a vessel was at all times previously engaged in the
mercantile trade, and so engaged when the cause of action arose,
the mere fact that she was laid up and out of use when the action
in personam began and thereafter did not prevent its
maintenance. P.
266 U. S.
110.
Reversed.
Page 266 U. S. 109
Appeal under Jud.Code § 238 from a decree of the district court
dismissing a libel
in personam for want of jurisdiction.
See 267 U. S. 267 U.S.
86.
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE TAFT delivered the opinion of the Court.
James Shewan & Sons, a corporation of New York, on the 12th
day of May, 1922, filed a libel in admiralty against the United
States in the District Court for the Southern District of New York
to recover the value of repairs made during the month of May, 1920,
on the steamship
Biran. The libel averred that the
Biran was owned by the United States and at all the times
mentioned was engaged in the mercantile trade, that the lien upon
the vessel was one which ordinarily could be enforced in admiralty
by proceeding
in rem against the vessel.
The jurisdiction to sue the United States was questioned by
exceptive allegations. It was agreed at the hearing that, on the
11th day of June, 1921, the steamship
Biran, which had
theretofore been in the merchant service of the United States, was
laid up in the care and custody of caretakers employed by the
United States Shipping Board, in the out-of-use and laid-up fleet
of that Board anchored in the Hudson River within the District, and
so remained at and after the time when the libel was filed herein,
and that, since June 11, 1921, it had carried neither crew nor
cargo, nor been the subject of any operating
Page 266 U. S. 110
agreement for use in the merchant or other service, nor had it
been transferred by the Shipping Board to any other department or
agency of the government. The libelant relied for its right to sue
the United States upon the Suits in Admiralty Act (Act March 9,
1920, c. 95, 41 Stat. 525). That act provides in its first section,
with an exception not important here, that no vessel owned by the
United States or by any corporation in which the United States owns
the capital stock, or in the possession of the United States or of
such corporation, or operated by or for the United States or such
corporation, shall hereafter, in view of the provision made
elsewhere in the act for a libel
in personam, be subject
to arrest or seizure by judicial process in the United States.
The second section is, in part:
"That, in cases where if such vessel were privately owned or
operated, or if such cargo were privately owned and possessed, a
proceeding in admiralty could be maintained at the time of the
commencement of the action herein provided for, a libel
in
personam may be brought against the United States or against
such corporation, as the case may be, provided that such vessel is
employed as a merchant vessel or is a tug boat operated by such
corporation."
The section further provides that such suit shall be brought in
the district where the party suing resides or has its principal
place of business, or in which the vessel or cargo charged with
liability is found.
The district court, following
Mack Engineering & Supply
Co. v. United States, 291 F. 713, dismissed the case solely
for lack of jurisdiction, because the vessel whose repairs are the
subject of this suit was laid up, and was not, when the action
commenced, employed as a merchant vessel, and the judge has so
certified in this proceeding in error under § 238 of the Judicial
Code.
We think this view is based on too narrow a construction of the
section. It leads to the result that one who
Page 266 U. S. 111
repairs a merchant vessel owned by the United States is excluded
from the benefit of the act if, immediately after the repairs are
made, the United States shall lay her up, although still a merchant
vessel in character and without change of her to any other service.
If a vessel engaged in the service as a merchant vessel negligently
collides with and injures another vessel, and then at once is laid
up before suit is brought under this act, the owner of the vessel
injured under such construction will have no cause of action
against the United States for the injury. This act was enacted
chiefly for the purpose of relieving the United States from
obstruction to its commercial traffic by the seizure of merchant
vessels owned by it or under its control, and was intended to
substitute an equivalent remedy against the United States
in
personam for the right
in rem against the vessel,
which the Act of 1916 had permitted.
Blamberg Bros. v. United
States, 260 U. S. 452,
260 U. S. 458.
We do not find anything in the Act of 1916 which would prevent its
liberal construction to enable one who had repaired a vessel
engaged solely as a merchant vessel for the United States from
proceeding against that vessel
in rem under the Act of
1916, even though after the repairs had been made upon her as a
commercial vessel, she was subsequently laid up, if she had not
then acquired character as a public vessel. So we do not think that
the decision in
The Lake Monroe Case, 250 U.
S. 246, would have been different had she thus been laid
up after she had injured the libelant's vessel in that case.
Obviously, under the Act of 1916, liability to suit of a vessel
owned or controlled by the United States as a merchant vessel
depended primarily not upon the time when the suit was to be
brought and the vessel was to be seized, but upon her character as
one solely engaged in merchant service when the transaction
occurred out of which the liability grew.
Page 266 U. S. 112
In view of the purpose of Congress in the Act of 1920 merely to
substitute an action
in rem for an action
in
personam, the natural construction would be one which,
ceteris paribus, would measure the extent of the right to
sue the United States
in personam by that which had been
granted in the Act of 1916 to sue
in rem its offending or
responsible vessel. The date of natural importance in fixing the
liability
in rem would seem to be that of the event out of
which the liability grew. The date of the suit would be important
only in the application of a statute of limitation or a change in
character of the vessel from that of a merchant vessel to public
vessel, or possibly some kind of a change in ownership or the
happening of some other circumstance after the event which would
exempt the offending vessel if privately owned from seizure under
the rules of admiralty law. It is in respect of such changes in the
situation before suit that the phrase
"in cases where if such vessel were privately owned . . . , a
proceeding in admiralty could be maintained at the time of the
commencement of the action herein provided"
is used, and it does not qualify or in any way add to the force
of the subsequent and final proviso "that such vessel is employed
as a merchant vessel or is a tug boat operated by such
corporation."
What, then, does the proviso mean? Are the words to be construed
as if they read "is being actively employed as a merchant vessel"?
Such a construction is a narrow one, and not in accord with the
equitable purpose of Congress. The important line between immunity
from judicial seizure of government vessels under the Act of 1916
was between public vessels and those engaged in merchant service.
The mere laying up of a vessel engaged in the latter service would
not change its character unless the government did something
affirmative to make it a public vessel. It would have been an
unjust result
Page 266 U. S. 113
to hold that, under that act a mere suspension of the vessel's
activity in merchant trade destroyed its
quasi-personal
responsibility for its wrongs done or its liabilities incurred in
that trade. In view of the relation of the Act of 1920 to the Act
of 1916, unless the words of the proviso of § 2 of the Act of 1920
make any other construction unreasonable, the mere laying up of the
vessel before suit brought under the act should not prevent a libel
in personam against the United States for a claim which,
under the Act of 1916, might be enforced against the vessel itself.
The words of the proviso may reasonably and more liberally be
interpreted as a limitation that the vessel is a merchant vessel
and shall not have lost its character as such. Thus, construed, § 2
gives the district court jurisdiction in such a case as this.
Decree reversed.