## Facts

- Ira S. Bushey & Sons, Inc. operated a floating drydock in Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal.
- The Coast Guard cutter *Tamaroa*, owned by the United States, was placed in Bushey’s drydock for overhaul under contract.
- Coast Guard personnel had continuous access to the vessel and necessarily entered through Bushey’s facility to board the ship.
- A Coast Guard seaman, returning from authorized shore leave while intoxicated, entered the drydock area at night and opened valves controlling flooding tanks on one side of the drydock.
- The drydock listed, the *Tamaroa* slid off its blocks and struck the wall, and portions of the drydock and vessel were damaged.
- Bushey sought damages from the United States on a vicarious liability theory.

## Issues

1. Whether the claim was properly brought under the Public Vessels Act rather than the Federal Tort Claims Act.
2. Whether the United States was vicariously liable under maritime respondeat superior for a seaman’s intoxicated, purposeless act causing damage while returning from shore leave.

## Decision

- The Second Circuit held the action fell within the Public Vessels Act, rejecting the view that the vessel’s “inert” status in drydock removed the case from the Act’s coverage.
- The court affirmed judgment for Bushey, holding the United States liable under respondeat superior.
- The seaman’s conduct, though drunken and not intended to serve the employer, was sufficiently connected to the employment because the harm resulted from risks characteristic of keeping seamen assigned to a vessel with access to the overhaul site.

## Legal Principles

- A claim for damage “caused by a public vessel” may include damage arising from the vessel’s placement in a facility and the presence and activities of its crew in connection with overhaul, even absent an active “collision” by the vessel itself.
- For respondeat superior under maritime law, “scope of employment” does not turn solely on whether the employee acted with a purpose to serve the employer.
- An employer may be vicariously liable where the employee’s conduct and resulting harm are foreseeable in the enterprise-risk sense—i.e., the type of harm can flow from risks created by employing and situating the worker as part of the employer’s operations—even if the precise act is not predictable.
- Risks associated with seamen returning from shore leave, including intoxicated misconduct within areas they are expected to access in connection with their ship, can be treated as characteristic incidents of the maritime enterprise.

## Conclusion

The Second Circuit treated the suit as governed by the Public Vessels Act and held the United States vicariously liable because the seaman’s drunken sabotage, though irrational and not motivated by service to the employer, fell within the enterprise risks created by assigning crew to a vessel undergoing overhaul with routine access through the drydock facility.


Ira S. Bushey & Sons, Inc. v. United States, 398 F.2d 167 (2d Cir. 1968)