IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF ALABAMA

SOUTHERN DIVISION

ROBERT BLACKWELL, )

Plaintiff, )

 )

v. ) CIVIL ACTION 09-0649-WS-C

 )

INLAND DREDGING COMPANY, LLC, )

Defendant. )

 

CHARLES M. LYONS, )

Plaintiff, )

 )

v. ) CIVIL ACTION 09-0650-WS-M

 )

INLAND DREDGING COMPANY, LLC, )

Defendant. )

ORDER

These related matters come before the Court on the Joint Motion to Consolidate (doc. 43)

filed in Blackwell v. Inland Dredging Company, LLC, Civil Action 09-0649-WS-C. In the Joint

Motion, counsel for plaintiffs Robert Blackwell and Charles Lyons, as well as counsel for

defendant, Inland Dredging Company, LLC, jointly request that these actions be consolidated for

all purposes including trial, and that the trial setting from Lyons v. Inland Dredging Company,

LLC, Civil Action 09-0650-WS-M, be applied to this consolidated action.

Review of the court files confirms that these actions are closely related. In the Blackwell

action, the plaintiff brings Jones Act and other claims against Inland Dredging arising from

injuries that he sustained on April 28, 2009, while employed as a deckhand assigned to the M/V

TIGER, a vessel owned by defendant. Likewise, in the Lyons action, the plaintiff brings Jones

Act and other claims against Inland Dredging arising from injuries that he sustained on April 28,

2009, while employed as a deckhand assigned to the M/V VOLUNTEER, another vessel owned

by defendant. It appears that plaintiff Blackwell was injured while attempting to rescue plaintiff

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Lyons, who was injured upon falling overboard; thus, both plaintiffs’ claims arise from the same

incident on the same date. Both plaintiffs are bringing the same or substantially similar claims

against the same defendant, and there is substantial identity of counsel in both actions. In short,

court records bolster the parties’ assertion that Blackwell and Lyons are properly viewed as

companion cases involving the same or similar facts and witnesses as to the same man-overboard

incident.

Pursuant to Rule 42(a), Fed.R.Civ.P., a district court has authority to order consolidation

when “actions before the court involve a common question of law or fact.” Id. The Eleventh

Circuit has explained that consolidation pursuant to Rule 42(a) “is permissive and vests a purely

discretionary power in the district court.” Young v. City of Augusta, 59 F.3d 1160, 1168 (11th

Cir. 1995) (quoting In re Air Crash Disaster at Florida Everglades, 549 F.2d 1006, 1013 (5th

Cir. 1977)). In exercising that discretion, district courts must weigh the risk of prejudice and

confusion wrought by consolidation against the risk of inconsistent rulings on common factual

and legal questions, the burden on the parties and the court, the length of time, and the relative

expense of proceeding with separate lawsuits if they are not consolidated. See Hendrix v.

Raybestos-Manhattan, Inc., 776 F.2d 1492, 1495 (11th Cir. 1985); Jackson v. Ford Consumer

Finance Co., 181 F.R.D. 537, 539 (N.D. Ga. 1998); State of Ohio ex rel. Montgomery v. Louis

Trauth Dairy, Inc., 163 F.R.D. 500, 503 (S.D. Ohio 1995) (in determining whether consolidation

is appropriate, “the court balances the value of time and effort saved by consolidation against the

inconvenience, delay, or expense increased by it”). Ultimately, district courts in this Circuit

have been “encouraged ... to make good use of Rule 42(a) ... in order to expedite the trial and

eliminate unnecessary repetition and confusion.” Hendrix, 776 F.2d at 1495 (citation and

internal quotation marks omitted).

Upon review of the Motion to Consolidate, and other relevant portions of the court file in

both cases, the Court agrees with counsel that consolidation is appropriate here, pursuant to Rule

42(a). As described supra, the factual and legal issues presented in both actions appear

substantially similar and will likely be identical in numerous respects. The identities of the

parties are substantially similar in both cases, and the claims joined in the two lawsuits overlap

considerably. Based on considerations of efficiency, judicial economy, the risk of inconsistent

rulings on common questions, the burden on the parties and the court, and the relative expense of

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proceeding separately versus together, consolidation of these actions would plainly streamline

these proceedings and eliminate unnecessary repetition and confusion. Simply stated, it would

be more sensible and efficient to litigate all issues of fault and liability arising from the manoverboard incident on April 28, 2009 involving Inland Dredging vessels in a single proceeding

than to do so piecemeal in multiple actions. 

For all of the foregoing reasons, as well as the fact that no party opposes consolidation,

the Court exercises its discretion in favor of consolidating these actions for all purposes

(through and including trial), pursuant to Rule 42(a). The Motion to Consolidate is granted. To

effectuate consolidation, the Clerk of Court is hereby directed to extract documents 1 through

47 from Civil Action No. 09-0650-WS-M and to make those documents a part of the court file in

Civil Action No. 09-0649-WS-C. Furthermore, the Court finds that there is no present reason to

maintain Civil Action No. 09-0650-WS-M as an open file. Therefore, the Clerk is directed to

submit a JS-6 to the Administrative Office which indicates that 09-0650 is statistically closed

and thus removed from the pending docket of this Court. The Clerk shall thereafter maintain that

file as a closed file. To avoid any confusion, and given that 09-0650 will henceforth be a closed

file that has been swallowed whole by 09-0649, the parties are ordered not to include the

caption of 09-0650 in any future filings in this action and not to file any pleadings directly in 09-

0650. Rather, all future filings in these consolidated proceedings should be made exclusively in

09-0649.

As a practical consequence of this consolidation, it is necessary to harmonize the

divergent Rule 16(b) Scheduling Orders previously entered in the two cases, so as to subject the

parties to a single unified set of pretrial and trial deadlines. Accordingly, it is ordered that the

Scheduling Order previously entered in the Lyons action (and found at document 39 of Civil

Action No. 09-0650-WS-M) will govern for all purposes in this consolidated action henceforth,

and that the deadlines in the Scheduling Order previously entered in the Blackwell action (and

found at document 34 of Civil Action No. 09-0649-WS-C) will be of no further force and effect. 

By way of example, then, the discovery completion date in this consolidated action is now July

30, 2010, with the final pretrial conference to be held on January 11, 2011 at 10:00 a.m., and

non-jury trial to be held during the February 2011 civil term. The Lyons Scheduling Order is

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now the only operative Rule 16(b) Order in these proceedings.

DONE and ORDERED this 9th day of June, 2010.

s/ WILLIAM H. STEELE 

CHIEF UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

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