Fitzgerald v. United States Lines Co.

CLARK, Circuit Judge, whom HAYS and MARSHALL, Circuit Judges, join

{dissenting).

Commentators have had occasion to refer to the Jones Act, 46 U.S.C. § 688, passed in 1920, as an example of “impossibly bad drafting.” Gilmore & Black, The Law of Admiralty 282 (1957). But since 1940 “the Supreme Court has been rewriting the law” and the “rewrite job has gone far enough to make it clear that a revolution has taken place.” Ibid. 248. In this process, recovery for personal injuries for unseaworthiness has practically swallowed Jones Act negligence, which remains only as a convenient tag upon which to…