Woodworth v. Industrial Accident Commission

CRAIG, J.

An application filed by the petitioner herein, a minor, by his guardian

ad litem,

with the Industrial Accident Commission, claiming compensation for injuries alleged to have been sustained while employed upon an improvised craft which loaded and unloaded passengers and fishing supplies to and from a launch which plied between said craft and an anchored pleasure boat, was rejected by the said Commission upon the ground that it was without jurisdiction of the cause. The petitioner thereupon filed an application for review of such decision.

It appeared that the respondent corporation and said William F. Storey maintained at a distance of about two and one-eighth miles from the shore of the Pacific Ocean a fishing barge, which was anchored, and to which the public were invited. Certain charges were made for the privileges of said barge, which included transportation thereto and return. Patrons were carried to the barge from a point about six hundred feet from the shore by a small launch. Between the points last mentioned said respondents placed a steel cable to which, the parties have stipulated, “was engaged a float approximately twenty feet square, constructed of empty drums or tanks bound together, upon which timbers were placed and likewise bound together, above and upon which was constructed a small deck with a room and seats for passengers and space for gasoline engine”. At the time of said injury the petitioner was operating such structure in carrying passengers thereon toward shore. The respondent Commission held, and it is here insisted, that “one employed under a maritime contract to serve

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as the sole member of the crew of a vessel and who sustained injury by contact with the machinery then being used to propel such craft, while transporting passengers for hire upon the navigable waters of the United States during a landward journey from an ocean-going craft to the shore, was engaged in activity so closely related to navigation and commerce as to be subject to the exclusive admiralty jurisdiction”. In support of its contention are cited article III, section 2, of the Constitution of the United States (Const., pt. 2, p. 284, U. S. C. A.) : “The judicial power shall extend to all cases ... of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction”; and section 24 of the Judicial Code (28 U. S. C. A., p. 32) : “The district courts shall have original jurisdiction as follows: . . . Third. Of all civil causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, saving to suitors in all cases the right of a common-law remedy where the common law is competent to give it, . . . ”