In the 1945 case of Hust v. Moore-McCormack Lines, Inc., the U.S Supreme Court ruled on a matter concerning maritime law and workers' compensation. The plaintiff, Hust, was an employee of Moore-McCormack Lines who had been injured while working aboard one of their ships in New York Harbor. He sought damages under both state workers' compensation laws and federal maritime law (the Jones Act). The defendant argued that he should only be able to claim under one or the other but not both simultaneously. However, the court held that there was no conflict between these two sets of laws; they were designed to operate independently from each other with different purposes - state laws for providing quick relief without proving fault and federal law for compensating negligence on part of employer/ship owner. Therefore, it concluded that Hust could indeed pursue claims under both jurisdictions concurrently.

In the dissenting opinion for Hust v. Moore-McCormack Lines, Inc., Justice Robert H. Jackson argued that the majority's decision to allow a seaman to sue his employer for negligence under general maritime law was inconsistent with congressional intent and previous court rulings. He contended that Congress had already provided a comprehensive scheme of remedies for injured seamen through statutes like the Jones Act, which allowed them to sue their employers in federal or state courts based on negligence claims. According to Justice Jackson, allowing additional lawsuits under general maritime law would undermine this statutory framework and create confusion about applicable standards of liability and available damages. Furthermore, he pointed out that prior Supreme Court decisions had rejected attempts by seamen to bypass these statutory remedies in favor of more generous common-law rights.