SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

No. 94–820

METROPOLITAN STEVEDORE COMPANY, PETITIONER v. JOHN RAMBO et al.

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit

[June 12, 1995]

Justice Stevens, dissenting.

The statutory provision that the Court construes today was enacted in 1927. Although one 1985 case reached the result the Court adopts today, Fleetwood v. Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co., 776 F. 2d 1225 (CA4), over 60 years of otherwise consistent precedent accords with respondent's interpretation of the Act. For the reasons stated by Judge Warriner in his dissent in Fleetwood, I would not change this settled view of the law without an appropriate directive from Congress. Judge Warriner correctly observed:

"Beginning with the first opinion dealing with the question, handed down in 1933, and continuing without wavering thereafter, the courts have uniformly interpreted the term `change in conditions' in Section 22 of the Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act (LHWCA), 33 U. S. C. §922 (1982), to refer exclusively to a change in the physical condition of the employee receiving compensation. This also was `the meaning generally attributed to similar phraseology in state workman's compensation acts' in existence before or shortly after the enactment of the LHWCA in 1927. See Atlantic Coast Shipping Co. v. Golubiewski, 9 F. Supp. 315, 317 (D.Md. 1934).

"The majority's nice effort to distinguish this prior case law serves only to highlight the numerous and varied factual situations in which the federal courts have withstood temptation and have strictly adhered to this interpretation. In McCormick Steamship Co. v. United States Employees' Compensation Commission, 64 F. 2d 84 (9th Cir. 1933), for example, the Court refused to allow the modification of a compensation order under Section 22 where the employee's earnings were diminished as a result of deteriorating economic conditions. Id., at 85. Conversely, the fact that an employee received higher wages because of better economic conditions in the 1940's was held not to constitute a `change in conditions' so as to allow a reduction in the employee's compensation award. Burley Welding Works v. Lawson, 141 F. 2d 964, 966 (5th Cir. 1944). The courts have refused to find a `change in conditions' where the employee was imprisoned in a penitentiary for life, Atlantic Coast Shipping Co. v. Golubiewski, 9 F. Supp. at 316–19, or where the employee was committed to an insane asylum. Bay Ridge Operating Co. v. Lowe, 14 F. Supp. 280, 280–82 (S.D.N.Y. 1936).

"In every one of these cases, decided soon after the effective date of the Act, the respective courts explicitly stated and held that the term `change in conditions' in Section 22 refers to the physical condition of the employee receiving compensation. In a more recent case, General Dynamics, Inc. v. Director, Office of Workers' Compensation Programs, 673 F. 2d 23 (1st Cir. 1982), the court reiterated this interpretation: `[c]ourts uniformly have held a "change in conditions" means a change in the employee's physical condition, not other conditions.' Id., at 25[, n. 6] (citing Burley Welding Works, Inc. v. Lawson, 141 F. 2d at 966).

"Despite fifty years, and more, of precedent, the majority has overturned this established construction of the term `change in conditions' and has revised it to have it apply to changes in economic conditions occurring during the term of compensation. Such a departure from settled prior case law is not warranted absent any indication from the Congress that such a change in the statute is what is desired by the lawmakers. Congress, it should not be necessary to add, indicates its desires by adopting legislation.

.	.	.	.	.

"Fifty years is a long time. And perhaps it can be argued that the Board's, and the courts', and the Congress' erstwhile interpretation of the phrase was inhumane, or unenlightened, or an anachronism, or something else even more disparaging. But it cannot be argued, I submit, that the prior interpretation was not and is not the law." Id., at 1235–1236 (footnotes omitted).

For those reasons, I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.