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I
INTRODUCTION
The river of ink keeps flowing under Miles v. Apex Marine,1 one of the most resilient of all precedents of Admiralty Law. The more Miles is distinguished, the more it is risen again, like in the latest debate over punitive damages in unseaworthiness claims.
The Fifth Circuit, in McBride v. Estis Well Services,2 used a sweeping reading of Miles to deny punitive damages in unseaworthiness claims, while the Ninth Circuit, in Batterton v. Dutra Group,3 reached the opposite conclusion by a negative analysis of the reasons given by the Fifth Circuit and making a direct critique to Miles.
This article suggests that the answer to the question of punitive damages in unseaworthiness cannot be found in the everlasting Miles diatribe, actually that it should not, and proposes that the validity of the punitive damages remedy does not depend upon, and is in no way tied with, the Jones Act, DOHSA, FELA and not even General Maritime Law.
Punitive damages are a cause of action of their own, and the importation of assumed limitations by Miles and progeny is pure and simple legal doctrine contraband.
The article concludes wondering whether this latest conflict will be resolved and how, urging that it should be and proposes a solution that is totally independent from, and totally unrelated to, the hypnotic Miles doctrine, which, the article ends up guessing, will never find a merciful burial site.
II
THE CONFLICT-A CLASH OF TITANS
May 18, 2015: The Supreme Court denies certiorari of McBride's sweeping denial of punitive damages in unseaworthiness claims and in all Admiralty claims as well. However, this was not the end of the story-in fact it was only the real beginning.
An important conflict was left open. It was natural to wonder whether the rest of the Circuits would have followed McBride, implicitly anointed by the Supreme Court, or whether someone would have found otherwise.
The Ninth Circuit obliged with Batterton barely three years later, setting the stage for a head-on confrontation with McBride. Unlike the Fifth Circuit's full-scale target of all remedies,4 the Ninth addressed "the only question whether punitive damages are an available remedy for unseaworthiness claims."5
McBride answered that punitive damages are not available in unseaworthiness for being non-pecuniary losses. The issue...