New Maintenance and Cure - 5th Circuit - No Restitution for Employers

There is something about the sea that makes humans poetic.

As a corollary, there is something about maritime cases that make judges very eloquent. Case in chief - consider this closing from Boudreaux v. Transocean Deepwater, Inc., Maintenance and Cure decision of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals:

We are offered no reason to depart from precedent. There is only the change of advocates and judges, by definition irrelevant to the settling force of past jurisprudence — always prized but a treasure in matters maritime. All this against the cold reality that the sea has become no less dangerous, and the seaman no less essential to maritime commerce. 

As my faithful readers are aware, seamen enjoy a worker-compensation-type benefit called maintenance and cure.  It is an age-old common law duty on employers of seamen to treat and care for their injured sailors.

In this case, an employee brought a maintenance and cure claim against his employer.  The employee failed to disclose serious back problems in his pre-employment medical questionnaire, affirmately saying "no" to several inquiries about his back trouble.  Less than five months after his hire, he claimed an injury to his back.  The employer paid maintenance and cure benefits for five years.  The employee later brought suit for additional maintenance and cure and for punitive damages.  The employer obtained summary judgment on the employee's claim after discovery revealed the non-disclosure.  Then, the employer brought a counterclaim for restitution, seeking the earlier maintenance and cure payments made to the employee.

The district court, assuredly mindful of the facts, recognized a heretofore unknown right of restitution in maritime law, and granted summary judgment on the counterclaim.  The Fifth Circuit reversed this decision and found that maritime law has never recognized such a cause of action and policy reasons underlying the maintenance and cure claim vitiated any attempt to move the law towards recognizing such a cause of action.