The Stormy Seas of Situs: Reevaluating the Situs Requirement of the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act

IntroductionThe Longshore and Harbor Worker's Compensation Act (LHWCA),1 first passed in 1927 and significantly amended in 1972, provides compensation for employees injured in the course of certain maritime employment.2 Initially, the Act's strict location-based requirement allowed only those injured on "navigable waters" to receive compensation, but the 1972 amendments extended coverage to workers who were injured on certain "adjoining areas," provoking much controversy over which workers could receive coverage and where they must be working.3 Today, claimants must satisfy both a status (employment) requirement and a situs (geographical) requirement to receive coverage.4 Essentially, the question becomes how far to extend coverage, and the courts have split, most favoring one extreme or the other.5On April 29, 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit decided a worker's compensation case under the LHWCA, holding that the worker's injury had not occurred on a qualifying situs.6 The court looked to the "plain meaning" of the Act, overruling its former precedent in Texports Stevedore Co. v. Winchester,7 and adopted an approach similar to the Fourth Circuit's narrow interpretation of the situs requirement.8 This result differs significantly from the Third and Ninth Circuits' broad interpretations of the Act, which focus on Congress's intent in passing the Act, rather than the plain meaning of the statute.9 Such liberal interpretations provide that sites further from navigable waters qualify for coverage, but they also potentially fail to put appropriate bounds on the Act; as a result, some courts utterly disregard the Act's situs requirement in cases that satisfy the status requirement and provide over-inclusive coverage beyond what Congress likely intended.10This Comment argues that the Fifth Circuit inappropriately overruled its own precedent, using a simplistic, plain-meaning interpretation of the LHWCA to discard Congress's purpose in passing the Act and create further inconsistency in the relief provided to injured workers by the various circuit courts. Part I of this Comment examines the LHWCA's background and legislative history and discusses relevant case law from the circuit courts. Part II analyzes the courts' implementation of the LHWCA using the canons of construction and compares the Fourth and Fifth Circuits' narrow approaches with the Third and Ninth Circuits' broad approaches. This Comment concludes that Congress should abolish the Act's situs requirement in favor of a status-only test and revise its statutory language to clearly reflect its intent. In the meantime, the circuit courts should standardize their approaches to the situs question so that arbitrary line-drawing does not lead to inconsistent results among similarly-situated employees in different jurisdictions. The resulting approach would reflect the Ninth Circuit's flexible-but not overbroad-factors test, which considers whether the site is appropriate for maritime use, whether nearby properties are dedicated to maritime activity, whether the site is close to the waterway, and whether it could feasibly be closer.11I. BackgroundGrasping the currently muddled state of LHWCA jurisprudence and the need for statutory revision12 requires an examination of the Act's evolution from its initial passage in 1927 to the present day. Such an examination of the Act and the related jurisprudence reveals that problems of fair and coherent line-drawing have plagued Congress, courts, and plaintiffs since before the statute's inception.13 This section will first outline the specific conditions prompting Congress's passage of the LHWCA and its subsequent revisions and then scrutinize specific court opinions that have influenced or contributed to the current circuit split.A. The Longshore and Harbor Workers ' Compensation Act (LHWCA)Most pertinent among the various iterations of the LHWCA are the 1927 version-for a historical understanding of the Act-and the 1972 amendments, which significantly expanded the scope of the Act. …