The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that there was admiralty jurisdiction in a case in which an airplane hit a seawall. In Junhong v. The Boeing Corporation, (7th Cir. 7-8-2015) (2015 WL 4097738) (reporter cite 792 F.3d 805) a Boeing 777 crashed into a seawall that separated the ocean for the runway. Defendant removed the case based on admiralty jurisdiction. The district court concluded that admiralty did not apply because the record did not show that the aircraft was doomed while over navigable water. Defendant appealed and while the appeal was pending the NTSB issued a report concluding that while the plane was over the ocean an accident became inevitable. The Court of Appeals said:
“The district judge may have thought that federal jurisdiction depends on a high degree of certainty that jurisdictional facts exist. That seems to be the point of an “inevitability” approach, coupled with insistence on proof that relevant facts and inferences be established beyond dispute. Yet the rules are otherwise. Jurisdictional allegations control unless it is legally impossible for them to be true (or to have the asserted consequences). See St. Paul Mercury Indemnity Co. v. Red Cab Co., 303 U.S. 283, 289 (1938) (asking whether it “appears to a legal certainty” that the plaintiff cannot satisfy a jurisdictional requirement). That”?s equally true of a defendant”?s allegations in support of removal. See Dart Cherokee Basin Operating Co. v. Owens, 135 S.Ct. 547, 553-53 (2014). Given the NTSB”?s findings, it is possible for Boeing to show that this accident was caused by, or became inevitable because of, events that occurred over navigable water.”