Word: seamens
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Seafaring admiralty libelants (plaintiffs) have so many advantages that Dailey might well have expected to collect. Shipowners are simply no legal match for seamen, whose unique hardships long ago won them unique protection as "the wards of admiralty...
Classic Predisposition. Modern merchant seamen are a long voyage away from the "poor and friendless" creatures that the Supreme Court called their forebears in 1823. Strong laws and strong unions give them some remarkable privileges. Admiralty cases are heard in federal courts, and by federal statute seamen's wages cannot be attached except by wives and minor children. Seamen, on the other hand, may sue not only a shipowner but his ship itself. And wherever the ship flees other countries will honor a decree against...
...guarantees seamen specific amounts of food (meat every day), water and medicine, plus an eight-hour workday. Yet the work is still so dangerous that last year nearly 50% of all U.S. seamen suffered injuries.* Since ships are, in effect, monarchies afloat, seamen are also close to being indentured workers. Seamen have successfully resisted being covered by workmen's compensation, which pays only modest amounts for disability arising from employment. They revel in gambling for considerably larger awards through wide-ranging lawsuits...
...stretching the legal scope of seamen's employment, the Supreme Court has constantly expanded the right to "maintenance and cure." That right theoretically ends with willful misconduct, such as the contraction of venereal dis ease, but the court has held that seamen are "in the service of the ship" even when falling-down drunk ashore. In one famous case, a tipsy sailor tumbled out of a dance-hall window in Naples and broke his leg. Another dived into a dry dock a mile away from his ship in Palermo and was permanently disabled. Both casualties sued their shipowners...
...Scotch. With more losses to come, the strike has already dealt the U.S. economy a $2.2 billion blow-$67 million for each day of the strike. Commerce Secretary Connor estimated that 191,000 workers were idled by the strike: not only the 60,000 striking longshoremen, but 38,000 seamen and other maritime workers, 45,000 railroadmen, 48,000 truckers. With 855 ships tied up, U.S. ocean shippers were deprived of 161 million tons of freight. The nation's strangled lines of trade also cost highway carriers 9,000,000 tons of business, railways 7,000,000 tons...