Don’t Drink and Dive: Second Circuit Finds Admiralty Jurisdiction for Personal Injury Case

Don’t Drink and Dive: Second Circuit Finds Admiralty Jurisdiction for Personal Injury Case

By Michael Harrison

Germain v. Ficarra (In re Germain), 824 F.3d 258 (2d Cir. 2016).Matthew Ficarra sued Bruce Germain in New York state court for an injury sustained after the claimant dived from the deck of the defendant’s yacht. Ficarra had been drinking when he dived, and suffered an injury to his spinal cord which rendered him a quadriplegic. He alleged that Germain, as owner of the vessel, negligently failed to warn him about the dangers of diving in shallow water in Lake Oneida, part of New York’s Erie Canal System. The defendant removed the case to the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York, and simultaneously filed a petition under the Limitation of Liability Act. The district court remanded the case back to state court and dismissed the defendant’s petition, finding that subject matter jurisdiction was lacking because the case fell outside the scope of admiralty tort jurisdiction. Germain then appealed the dismissal to the Second Circuit, which reversed the district court’s decision.After discussing the history of admiralty tort jurisdiction, the court applied the test outlined in Jerome B. Grubart, Inc. v. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co., 513 U.S. 527 (1995). The court noted that while admiralty jurisdiction previously relied solely on a “location test” – whether a tort occurred on navigable waters or an injury suffered on land was caused by a vessel on navigable waters – it now relies on the location test and a “connection test.” The connection test analyzes whether (1) the incident has a potential to disrupt maritime activity, and (2) the activity giving rise to the injury bears a substantial relationship to what is traditionally considered maritime activity. The court noted that the incident must be described at an intermediate level of generality. The case must be described specifically enough to distinguish different cases but also generally enough to analogize the situation to similar cases.Applying the test to Germain’s petition, the court held found admiralty jurisdiction proper based on the facts alleged. The court stated that the district court had characterized the claimant’s injury with too much specificity. While the district court described the injury as “an injury to a recreational passenger who jumped from a recreational vessel in a shallow recreational bay of navigable waters,” the Second Circuit found that it was better characterized as an “injury to a passenger who jumped from a vessel on open navigable waters.” Essentially, the district court had described the case so specifically that it would be overly burdensome for similar cases to analogize the situation. The court also held that the district court’s application of the second prong was too narrow in its characterization of the activity that gave rise to the tort. Instead of defining the activity as “anchoring a recreational vessel in a shallow recreational bay without adequately warning a passenger about the risks of diving in,” the court described the activity as “the transport and care of passengers on board a vessel on navigable waters.”The court opined that the test was far from perfect: while designed to weed out cases that definitely should not be heard under admiralty jurisdiction, it is complex, unclear, and subject to inconsistent applications by the district courts. The court also advocated for a simpler test, citing Justice Thomas’s concurrence in Grubart. However, the court ultimately declined to follow any other rule, tepidly affirming Grubart while reversing the district court.