## Facts

- Harry Zych, doing business as American Diving and Salvage Company, located a shipwreck in Lake Michigan off the Illinois shore in 1989, believed to be the *Seabird*, which sank in 1868.
- Zych conducted salvage activity and filed a federal admiralty in rem action seeking (a) title under the law of finds or (b) a salvage award under maritime salvage law.
- Illinois intervened, asserting ownership under the Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987 (ASA) on the ground that the wreck was abandoned and embedded in Illinois’s submerged lands.
- On remand from an earlier appeal, the district court found the wreck embedded, held the ASA applicable, and concluded title vested in Illinois.
- Zych later abandoned his title claim, conceding Illinois owned the wreck, and pursued only a salvage award while challenging the ASA’s displacement of salvage law as unconstitutional.
- The district court dismissed the remaining claim, concluding that the Eleventh Amendment barred the action and that the ASA foreclosed the asserted salvage remedy.

## Issues

1. Whether the ASA is unconstitutional because it places certain abandoned, embedded shipwrecks under state ownership and displaces traditional federal salvage remedies for that category of wrecks.
2. Whether, after conceding state ownership of the wreck, a salvor’s claim for a salvage award is a suit against the state for money barred by the Eleventh Amendment absent waiver or valid congressional abrogation.

## Decision

- The Seventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal.
- The court held the ASA is constitutional as applied; Congress may alter the substantive content of admiralty and maritime law and may direct that state law governs certain abandoned, embedded wrecks.
- Because Zych conceded Illinois owned the wreck, his salvage-award demand necessarily sought payment from the state; the claim functioned as a suit for money against Illinois and was barred by the Eleventh Amendment.
- The ASA did not abrogate state sovereign immunity, and Illinois had not consented to suit.

## Legal Principles

- Congress has authority to modify substantive admiralty and maritime law and may reallocate title and remedies for defined maritime subjects, including abandoned shipwrecks embedded in a state’s submerged lands.
- The ASA vests title to qualifying abandoned, embedded shipwrecks in the relevant state and directs that such wrecks are governed by state law rather than federal salvage or finds doctrines.
- Salvage is a compensatory remedy payable by the property’s owner; when the owner is a state and no waiver or valid abrogation exists, a salvage-award claim is barred by the Eleventh Amendment.
- The Eleventh Amendment bars federal-court suits seeking monetary relief from a state treasury absent the state’s consent or a constitutionally valid congressional abrogation.

## Conclusion

The court upheld the ASA’s allocation of title and governance of abandoned, embedded shipwrecks to the states and ruled that, once the salvor conceded Illinois’s ownership, his request for a salvage award became a barred monetary claim against the state under the Eleventh Amendment.


Zych v. Unidentified, Wrecked & Abandoned Vessel, Believed to Be the Seabird, 19 F.3d 1136 (7th Cir. 1994)