IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

No. 15-30020

Summary Calendar

GARRARD M. MYERS, 

 Plaintiff - Appellant

v.

HERCULES OFFSHORE SERVICES, L.L.C., 

 Defendant - Appellee

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Eastern District of Louisiana

USDC No. 2:13-CV-4870

Before HIGGINBOTHAM, ELROD and SOUTHWICK, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:*

Following a bench trial, the United States District Court for the Eastern 

District of Louisiana held that plaintiff Garrard Myers did not establish his 

injury was due to defendant Hercules Offshore Services, L.L.C.’s negligence or 

the unseaworthiness of the defendant’s vessel. Myers appeals the district 

court’s judgment and its denial of his motion for new trial. We AFFIRM.

 

* Pursuant to 5TH CIR. R. 47.5, the court has determined that this opinion should not 

be published and is not precedent except under the limited circumstances set forth in 5TH 

CIR. R. 47.5.4.

United States Court of Appeals

Fifth Circuit

FILED

September 25, 2015

Lyle W. Cayce

Clerk

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FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

In May 2013, Myers injured his left ankle while aboard Hercules’ drilling 

rig, HERCULES 49. In June 2013, Myers brought suit against Hercules 

pursuant to the Jones Act and general maritime law. See 46 U.S.C. 30104 et 

seq. Myers alleged that his injuries were the result of Hercules’ negligence and

the unseaworthiness of HERCULES 49 because the vessel’s shower stalls

lacked handrails and slip-resistant surfaces or mats. In September 2014, the 

district court conducted a bench trial.

At trial, two different factual accounts of the accident were given. Myers 

testified that when exiting the shower stall adjacent to his bunkroom, he 

slipped on the shower floor and injured his ankle. Hercules’ offshore 

installations manager Randall O’Bryan testified that when he asked Myers 

what happened, Myers “explained that his slipper [] broke and he slipped in 

the shower.” Myers testified that his flip flop did not break before, during, or 

after he slipped in the shower, and that he did not tell O’Bryan that it broke.

The deposition of a Hercules galley hand was submitted at trial. The galley 

hand, who was in the shower room at the time of the accident, testified that he 

saw Myers immediately after he fell, and Myers’s flip flops were not broken. 

O’Bryan also testified that Myers prepared a handwritten incident 

report that either he or toolpusher Lewis Hillman subsequently transcribed. 

The handwritten report was not presented at trial. The transcribed report

read: “When getting out of shower, my shower shoe on left foot broke causing 

my left foot to slip and twist and resulted in falling out of shower.” Both 

O’Bryan and Hillman testified that the transcribed report would not have been 

any different from the handwritten report. Myers did not testify to making a 

handwritten report but did concede that he signed the transcribed report. He

stated, however, that he signed only the second page of the report and did not 

see the first page where the incident details were recorded. 

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In October 2014, the district court issued its “Findings of Fact and 

Conclusions of Law” ruling in favor of Hercules. The court found that the 

“weight of the evidence leads to the conclusion that Myers slipped and fell 

when his flip flop . . . broke, which is not attributable either to Hercules’ alleged 

negligence or the alleged unseaworthiness of the vessel.” It further held that 

the “HERCULES 49 was stationary and secured to the water bottom at the 

time of Myers’s accident” and “[t]here are no regulations or other requirements 

that such a vessel have handrails in the shower.” Therefore, “the HERCULES 

49 was not unseaworthy for lacking handrails or mats in the shower.” Myers 

filed a motion for new trial and/or to alter or amend the judgment which the 

district court summarily denied. Myers timely appealed.

DISCUSSION

Where a case is decided at a bench trial, we review the district court’s 

factual findings for clear error. Bertucci Contracting Corp. v. M/V 

ANTWERPEN, 465 F.3d 254, 258 (5th Cir. 2006). “Findings of fact shall not 

be set aside unless clearly erroneous, and due regard shall be given to the 

opportunity of the trial court to judge the credibility of the witnesses.” Id.

(citation, quotation marks, and alterations omitted). If the district court’s 

findings are “plausible in light of the record viewed as a whole, the court of 

appeals cannot reverse even though, if sitting as the trier of fact, it would have 

weighed the evidence differently.” Id. The denial of a motion for new trial 

after a bench trial is “within the sound discretion of the trial court and will not 

be disturbed unless there is an abuse of that discretion or misapprehension of 

the law; review of the denial of a motion for new trial is especially deferential.” 

Thompkins v. Belt, 828 F.2d 298, 302 (5th Cir. 1987) (citation and quotation 

marks omitted). 

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The district court found that Myers failed to establish either negligence 

or unseaworthiness because the “weight of the evidence” led to the conclusion 

that his injury occurred when his flip flop broke. As the court pointed out in 

its order, O’Bryan testified at trial that Myers told him that his flip flop “broke”

as he was exiting the shower. In his deposition testimony, O’Bryan explained 

that he interpreted “broke” possibly to mean that the flip flop’s “Y”-shaped 

strap was pulled from the sole of the shoe, and that the strap was pushed back 

through the sole thereafter. O’Bryan also testified at trial that Myers prepared 

an incident report detailing that his flip flop broke. Both O’Bryan and Hillman 

testified that there was no reason the handwritten report would be different 

from the transcribed report. Myers argues that there was conflicting evidence. 

For example, he testified that his flip flop was not broken, that he never told 

anyone it was broken, and that the strap never came out of the sole.1 None of 

this changes our conclusion. “Where there are two permissible views of the 

evidence, the factfinder’s choice between them cannot be clearly erroneous.” 

Bertucci Contracting Corp., 465 F.3d at 258 (citation and quotation marks 

omitted). There was no clear error here. 

In addition to the district court’s findings about whether the flip flop 

broke, the district court also determined that Myers failed to establish that his 

injury was caused by either Hercules’ negligence or the vessel’s 

unseaworthiness. Myers does not address this determination and, accordingly, 

that finding is not entitled to reversal.

 

1 Myers also argues that O’Bryan “gave inconsistent information on what he was 

supposedly told by Myers” because one Hercules employee testified that “O’Bryan specifically 

told him Myers did not slip – rather his injury was caused when his flip flop became snagged 

on the shower lip.” What the employee actually said is: “[O’Bryan] told me he didn’t slip, he 

said he snagged his flip-flop, whatever he was wearing, shoewear, coming out of the shower, 

and it became detached.” 

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As to the district court’s denial of the motion for new trial, Myers states 

that the “central issue brought up in the motion was the district court’s failure 

to examine the physical evidence admitted at trial.” He contends that the 

district court’s failure to examine the actual flip flops at trial was an abuse of 

discretion because the “flip flops were in evidence and were clearly shown to 

be not broken.” Myers does not allege that the court did not see the flip flops; 

instead, he appears to object to the court’s failure to inspect them more closely. 

A fact finder is required to consider all properly introduced evidence and give 

that evidence the weight it deserves. U.S. Postal Serv. Bd. of Governors v. 

Aikens, 460 U.S. 711, 714 n.3 (1983). Here, the evidence was introduced in 

court. When physical evidence is introduced at a bench trial, neither caselaw 

nor common sense establishes a minimum distance the judge must be from 

that evidence before the judge’s obligation to consider the evidence is satisfied. 

The district judge saw the evidence and gave it the weight she thought it 

deserved. 

AFFIRMED.

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