Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Joseph Zeiter, owner of two 2021 Sea-Doo personal watercraft, filed a complaint in the Eastern District of California seeking exoneration from or limitation of liability under the Shipowner's Limitation of Liability Act. Amber "Kitty" Westbrook, a claimant, moved to dismiss the complaint as untimely. The Act requires a limitation action to be brought within six months after a claimant gives the owner written notice of a claim, a rule the court drew from Martz v. Horazdovsky, 33 F.4th 1157 (9th Cir. 2022), quoting the provision then at 46 U.S.C. § 30511(a), now codified at § 30529(a).
Westbrook contended that Zeiter filed slightly more than seven months after she sent him a letter she characterized as notice. Because her motion relied on evidence outside the complaint, the court had converted it into a motion for summary judgment under Rule 56, with the letter now properly before it. Her entitlement to judgment therefore depended on whether the letter gave adequate notice. The parties also disputed whether Zeiter received the letter, but the court treated that dispute as immaterial because it concluded the letter's contents were insufficient in any event.
The court noted that a limitation action is costly, since the owner must transfer its interest in the vessel and pending freight to a court-appointed trustee or deposit an equivalent amount with the court. It said courts therefore require clarity in Limitation Act notice letters.
The Court’s Holding
The court denied Westbrook's converted motion for summary judgment. Relying on Martz, it explained that a notice must clearly state that the claimant intends to bring a claim or claims against the owner, through a definite statement of intent to file suit or by asserting a legal right in some other way. The test is objective: the writing's contents control, not how the recipient perceives it.
Applying that test, the court found that Westbrook's letter did not state an intent to sue Zeiter. Its subject line was "Letter of Representation and Request for Preservation of Evidence," and it described its purpose as securing preservation of evidence. Although it mentioned a "personal injury claim," it did not say the claim was against Zeiter and did not blame him for the accident. It said only that the client was injured as a passenger on a jet ski registered to him that was involved in a collision with another vessel. The court compared Martz, where a letter that equivocated about asserting a claim was inadequate even though its subject line suggested an adversarial proceeding.
The court added its understanding that injured parties routinely send preservation letters to people they do not intend to sue, and that an owner may need evidence even when someone else caused a collision. Read as a whole, the letter was an evidence-preservation letter rather than a claim-notice letter, so Westbrook had not shown she was entitled to summary judgment. The order is limited to that result. It denies the motion only, and it does not decide liability, the merits of exoneration or limitation, or the effect of any writing other than this letter.
Key Takeaways
- Under the Limitation Act, the six-month filing period runs from written notice that clearly states the claimant's intent to bring a claim against the vessel owner.
- Courts judge the notice objectively by the letter's contents, not by how the recipient understood it.
- A letter framed as a representation and evidence-preservation request, which did not identify the owner as the target of the claim, did not start the clock in this case.
- Whether the owner actually received the letter did not matter here, because the letter's content failed the standard.
- The denial leaves Zeiter's limitation complaint standing against this timeliness challenge and does not resolve the merits of exoneration, limitation, or liability.
Why It Matters
This is an unreported district court order applying Martz, which is binding Ninth Circuit authority. The order itself carries no precedential weight, but it illustrates how courts apply the objective clarity standard to common post-accident correspondence. It shows that a preservation letter that mentions an injury claim without clearly naming the owner as an intended defendant may not trigger the six-month period.
Because the ruling arises on a converted motion and turns on a single letter, its reach is narrow. Claimants who want to start the clock should state an intent to sue in clear terms, and owners should not assume that every post-incident letter starts the deadline. The decision also leaves the disputed receipt question unresolved, which could matter if a different letter were at issue.