stating that whether a contract invokes the federal courts' admiralty jurisdiction is particularly difficult, as "the boundaries of admiralty jurisdiction over contracts — as opposed to torts or crimes — being conceptual rather than spatial have always been difficult to draw.”
How later courts described this case
- stating that whether a contract invokes the federal courts' admiralty jurisdiction is particularly difficult, as "the boundaries of admiralty jurisdiction over contracts — as opposed to torts or crimes — being conceptual rather than spatial have always been difficult to draw.”
- explaining that “ ‘[t]he only question is whether the transaction relates to ships and vessels, masters and mariners, as the agents of commerce ’ ” (quoting 1 E. Benedict, Admiralty 131 (6th ed. 1940)) (emphasis added)
- explaining that the determination of whether to apply state law in admiralty involves an accommodation of interests and holding that the New York stat ute of frauds did not apply to maritime contract
- noting “that a shipowner’s duty to provide maintenance and cure may ordinarily be discharged by the issuing of a master’s certificate carrying admittance to a public hospital, and that a seaman who refuses such a certificate or the free treatment to which it entitles him without just cause, cannot further hold the shipowner to his duty to provide maintenance and cure.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Steelmet, Inc. v. Caribe Towing Corp., 779 F.2d 1485 (1986)
Next, in Kossick v. United Fruit Co., 365 U.S. 731, 81 S.Ct. 886, 6 L.Ed.2d 56 (1961), the Court held that the New York statute of frauds was inapplicable to a dispute arising out of an oral contract concerning a seaman's maintenance and cure.
The opinion
Mr. Justice Whittaker,
dissenting.
Like the Court of Appeals, 275 F. 2d 500 , I think the oral contract here claimed by petitioner was not a maritime but a New York contract and barred by its statute of frauds. New York Personal Property Law, § 31, par. 2. I therefore dissent.