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California Supreme Court:
Exclusiveness of Workers Compensation Remedy Does Not Destroy Federal Maritime Claims
Opinion Says Supremacy Clause Protects Causes of Action, Federal Statute Excluding Certain Workers From National Employee Benefits Does Not Undermine Suit
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The California Supreme Court held yesterday that an order sustaining a demurrer was improperly affirmed as to the general maritime claims asserted by a plaintiff who was injured on a ship owned by the yacht association for which he worked, saying that the claims were neither barred by a federal law excluding “club” employees from certain national workplace benefits nor by the exclusive nature of the state workers’ compensation scheme.
Appealing the order was Brian Ranger, who filed a complaint against the Alamitos Bay Yacht Club, based in Long Beach, after he slipped and fell on what he alleges was an “uneven, slippery” surface of the boat he was attempting to board, having been tasked with lowering the vessel into navigable waters and securing it to a mooring.
He initiated the suit after applying for workers’ compensation in California.
Ranger’s operative complaint asserts claims for negligence and unseaworthiness under common law maritime jurisprudence, which may be pursued in state court so long as the substantive remedies issued conform to federal law.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark Kim sustained a demurrer filed by the yacht club on the ground that Ranger failed to allege facts necessary to implicate federal admiralty jurisdiction because he failed to show that his fall posed “more than a fanciful risk to maritime commerce.”
Shepard’s Opinion
In an opinion authored by Justice John Shepard Wiley Jr., Div. Eight of this district’s Court of Appeal affirmed on different grounds, declining to consider whether admiralty jurisdiction was implicated, and instead holding that the claims were barred by the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act (“LHWCA”), codified at 33 U.S.C. §901 et seq., which rendered California’s workers’ compensation scheme the sole remedy available to Ranger.
As amended in 1984, the LHWCA excludes from the federal workers’ compensation scheme any maritime workers who are employed by a “club” and who are “subject to coverage” by their state. In a unanimous decision, authored by Justice Kelli Evans, the high court said:
“We conclude the Court of Appeal erred. The 1984 amendments to the LHWCA specify which workers’ compensation scheme—federal or state—applies, but they did not themselves purport to abrogate available general maritime remedies for those outside the LHWCA’s scope. Nor, under the supremacy clause of the federal Constitution, may the exclusive remedy provision in California’s workers’ compensation scheme be applied to deprive a plaintiff of a substantive federal maritime right.”
Evans added:
“Whether Ranger’s general maritime claims might be barred under other provisions of the LHWCA—and whether Ranger’s claims properly invoked admiralty jurisdiction in the first place—are issues the Court of Appeal has not yet addressed. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeal and remand for further proceedings.”
Legislative Text
Noting that “[t]he 1984 amendments to the LHWCA…did not explicitly state whether workers excluded from its scope could pursue otherwise available common law maritime remedies,” Evans said that “[h]ad the LHWCA intended to abrogate general maritime remedies for every worker who was not an employee as defined in the act, one would expect to see that intent expressed more clearly.”
She also pointed out that a Senate report accompanying the enactment of the LHWCA made the “obvious” observation that the amendments left “undisturbed” the “large body of decisional law relative to traditional maritime employers and harbor workers.”
Wiley relied on the 2019 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dutra Group v. Batterton, in which the court instructed admiralty courts exercising their common law authority to “‘look primarily to…legislative enactments for policy guidance” in analyzing whether punitive damages were available to the plaintiffs in that case.
Saying that “[w]e are not persuaded that general maritime causes of action can be analogized to punitive damages,” Evans said the “reliance on Batterton is misplaced.”
The justice added:
“The Club does not explain why workers who are excluded from the LHWCA—and who did not receive the benefit of the bargain Congress struck with covered workers—must nonetheless suffer the limitations that are a part of that federal scheme.”
California Scheme
Evans noted that state law may be applied to maritime actions so long as it does not conflict with an established federal law and opined:
“The exclusive-remedy provision in California’s workers’ compensation law would conflict with the established maritime claim for negligence, a tort that maritime law has recognized ‘for more than a century.’…It likewise would conflict with the tort of unseaworthiness, which has long been ‘settled’ under general maritime law.”
She continued:
“Assuming those causes of action are otherwise available to Ranger…, we resolve the conflict here in favor of the federal maritime right….To hold, as the Court of Appeal did, that the state workers’ compensation remedy supplanted Ranger’s general maritime claims would violate this fundamental admiralty principle.”
Pointing out that Wiley’s opinion created a “split in authority” on the issue of whether California’s workers’ compensation remedy displaced a plaintiff’s maritime claims, Evans cited the 2002 First District opinion in Freeze v. Lost Isle Partners, which held that general maritime claims against an employer are not barred by the exclusivity provision of California’s Workers’ Compensation Act.
The jurist declared:
“After careful consideration of case law from our court and the United States Supreme Court, decisions from the intermediate federal appellate courts as well as the courts of our sister states, and the thoughtful contributions by commentators, we conclude that neither the 1984 amendments to the LHWCA nor the exclusive-remedy provision in the California Workers’ Compensation Act bars a plaintiff under admiralty jurisdiction from seeking further relief for an injury under general maritime law.”
The case is Ranger v. Alamitos Bay Yacht Club, 2025 S.O.S. 477.
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