U.S. BOAT SAFETY ACT DOESN'T PREEMPT TORT SUITS, HIGH COURT SAYS.The Federal Boat Safety Act of 1971 giving the Coast Guard authority to set uniform safety standards Safety standards are standards designed to ensure the safety of products, activities or processes, etc. They may be advisory or compulsory and are normally laid down by an advisory or regulatory body that may be either voluntary or statutory. for recreational boats doesn't preempt pre·empt or pre-empt v. pre·empt·ed, pre·empt·ing, pre·empts v.tr. 1. To appropriate, seize, or take for oneself before others. See Synonyms at appropriate. 2. a. lawsuits under state tort law A body of rights, obligations, and remedies that is applied by courts in civil proceedings to provide relief for persons who have suffered harm from the wrongful acts of others. , the Supreme Court ruled unanimously Dec. 3. "Absent a contrary decision by the Coast Guard, the concern with uniformity does not justify the displacement of state common-law remedies that compensate accident victims and their families and that serve the Act's more prominent objective, emphasized by its title, of promoting boating safety," Justice John Paul Stevens John Paul Stevens (born April 20, 1920) is currently the most senior Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He joined the Court in 1975 and is the oldest and longest serving incumbent member of the Court. wrote in Sprietsma v. Mercury Marine Mercury Marine, founded in 1939, is a division of Brunswick Corporation of Lake Forest, Illinois, in the United States. Company beginnings The company began when engineer Carl Kiekhaefer purchased a small outboard motor company in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. (01-706). The ruling resolved a conflict among lower courts. Jeanne Sprietsma was killed when she fell into a lake while riding in a boat and was struck by the propeller propeller, device consisting of a hub with one or more blades that propels a craft to which it is attached by rotating its blades in a fluid such as air or water. of an outboard Not built in. Outboard devices are external to the main unit. Contrast with inboard. See offboard. motor made by Mercury Marine, a division of the Brunswick Corp. Her husband, Rex, filed a product liability lawsuit in Illinois, where they were residents, alleging the company's product was unreasonably defective because, among other things, the motor lacked a propeller guard. The trial judge granted Brunswick's motion to dismiss the lawsuit on grounds the action was preempted by the Federal Boat Safety Act, and the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the ruling. Brunswick appealed, arguing the federal law expressly preempted state-law tort tort, in law, the violation of some duty clearly set by law, not by a specific agreement between two parties, as in breach of contract. When such a duty is breached, the injured party has the right to institute suit for compensatory damages. actions, and even if the law itself didn't this lawsuit was implicitly preempted because the Coast Guard has considered requiring propeller guards and decided against doing so. The Supreme Court rejected both arguments. Stevens noted that the federal law generally bars states from enacting "a law or regulation establishing a recreational vessel or associated equipment performance or other safety standard . . . this is not identical to a regulation" prescribed by the Coast Guard. "We think that this language is most naturally read as not encompassing common-law claims," Stevens wrote, and the law's "saving clause buttresses this conclusion." It reads: "Compliance with this chapter or standards, regulations, or orders prescribed under this chapter does not relieve a person from liability at common law or under State law." Nor did the Coast Guard's decision not to require propeller guards implicitly preempt this lawsuit, Stevens said. The agency simply decided such a regulation couldn't be justified under "stringent" requirements for accident data, he wrote. "The Coast Guard did not take the further step of deciding that, as a matter of policy, the States and their political subdivisions should not impose some version of propeller guard regulation, and it most definitely did not reject propeller guards as unsafe," Stevens said. "The Coast Guard's apparent focus was on the lack of any 'universally acceptable' propeller guard for 'all modes of boat operation.' But nothing in its official explanation would be inconsistent with a tort verdict premised on a jury's finding that some type of propeller guard should have been installed on this particular kind of boat equipped with respondent's particular type of motor." Stevens noted that this interpretation was backed up by the Coast Guard and U.S. solicitor general An officer of the U.S. Justice Department who represents the federal government in cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. The solicitor general is charged with representing the Executive Branch of the U.S. government in cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. . |
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