Defendant owns a large facility on the bank of the Mississippi River that loads materials onto barges and rail cars. Also, Defendant owns four large towboats. Plaintiff worked for Defendant for the past eleven years, spending 90% of his time “welding various metal components around Defendant’s land-based facilities, on Defendant’s towboats, and on Defendant’s barges.” The remaining 10% of Plaintiff’s work was spent performing “various tasks on land and on docked boats, including reworking cable and transmission lines and doing repair work.”
Plaintiff was injured while riding as a passenger on a water taxi owned by Defendant, and used to transport crew members to and from job sites. Thereafter, Plaintiff filed a complaint alleging negligence under the Jones Act. Defendant filed a motion for summary decision arguing that Plaintiff was not a seaman. The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri agreed. Although Plaintiff contributed to the function of Defendant’s vessels, he did not have a sufficiently substantial connection to Defendant’s vessels:
[T]he Court agrees with Defendant that no reasonable jury could find that Plaintiff’s connection to the fleet of vessels is substantial in terms of its nature. The Supreme Court has indicated that Chandris’s second prong is intended to identify those employees “whose work regularly exposes them to the special hazards and disadvantages to which they who go down to sea in ships are subjected.” Lower courts have noted that the “special hazards and disadvantages” faced by seamen include the “need to fight fires without outside assistance, the need to abandon ship, the need to survive exposure to inclement weather until help arrives, potential delay or inconvenience in being transported offsite to receive medical attention, and being stuck on a vessel under the control of its Master and operator for extended periods of time until the next port call.” In contrast, maritime hazards that are faced by longshoremen and seamen alike—such as the danger of falling overboard, the trip-and-fall hazards associated with walking on decks, the risks of injuries while handling lines, the risks associated with wind-gusts and river turbulence, and the dangers associated with the movement of docked vessels in the water—are not considered perils of the sea for purposes of the Jones Act inquiry.
Courts have frequently found that individuals who work exclusively or primarily aboard docked vessels are, as a matter of law, not seamen because they are not regularly exposed to the perils of the sea, especially when other circumstances indicate that the individual is not assigned to the vessel as a member of its crew.
The Court has identified some cases in which courts have found that a plaintiff who worked largely aboard docked vessels was a seaman; however, those cases have involved other factors suggesting a substantial connection to the vessel, such as the plaintiff being assigned to the vessel, the plaintiff performing traditionally sea-based duties, and/or the plaintiff being treated as a Jones Act employee by his or her employer.
When Plaintiff’s duties are viewed in light of the above cases, it is clear that no reasonable jury could find that Plaintiff has a substantial connection to Defendant’s vessels that satisfies the second prong of the Chandris test. First, like the plaintiffs in Vasquez and Saienni, who worked primarily aboard docked vessels and only rarely on boats that were under way, Plaintiff is not regularly exposed to the special hazards and disadvantages faced by those who go out to sea. Plaintiff does 90% of his welding work (which is itself 90% of his work) “on land or connected to the land right there on the dock.” Although he boards docked vessels to do welding and other work, he only rarely does any work on vessels while they are moving up and down the river. Moreover, none of the other factors courts have used to find seaman status are present here. Plaintiff is not assigned to any vessel and is not a crew member of any vessel. After he finishes a project performed aboard a vessel or barge, he returns to shore. He admits that if he is assigned to anything, it is his welding truck. He does not regularly perform traditionally sea-based activities such as piloting towboats or acting as a lookout, and he has no marine license or marine radio, and uses his truck’s radio for land-based operations. Taken together, these facts establish that Plaintiff is not “a member of the vessel [s’] crew,” but is rather “a land-based employee who happen[ed] to be working on the vessel[s] at a given time.”
Because no reasonable jury could find that the second prong of Chandris is satisfied, Plaintiff is not a seaman within the meaning of the Jones Act, and Defendant is entitled to summary judgment on Plaintiff’s Jones Act claim.
Turner v. Wayne B. Smith, Inc., No. 2:13-cv-100-SPM, 2014 WL 6775796 (E.D. Mo. 12/2/14). Excellent image courtesy of Flickr user Greg Younger.