Opinion ID: 419956
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Owner Liability under LSHWCA

Text: 18 Helaire's cause of action against Mobil is based upon his assertion that he was ordered by his stevedore employer to continue unloading operations in spite of high seas, poor visibility and rain, and that this inclement weather created a dangerous condition on deck. The casing Helaire had to traverse in order to unload it onto the platform was slippery from the rain and unsteady from the rocking of the boat in heavy seas. Although the hazardous condition was readily apparent and brought to the attention of his employer's supervisor, the unloading continued and his injury resulted. 9 19 The district court instructed the jury that Helaire was considered an invitee aboard the vessel and that 20 [a] vessel owner is subject to liability for physical harm caused by a condition of a vessel or its equipment, if, and only if, he knows or, by the exercise of reasonable care, would discover the condition and should realize that it involves an unreasonable risk of harm and should expect that invitees--that is, the longshoremen--would not discover or realize the danger or will fail to protect themselves against it and the vessel owner fails to exercise reasonable care to protect them against danger. 21 This is virtually a verbatim recitation of Sec. 343 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts. See supra note 6, at 7. The court went on to explain that 22 [t]he general rule is that the vessel owner is under no obligation to protect the invitee against dangers which are obvious and apparent. This is not a fixed rule, and all of the circumstances must be taken into account. And, where the vessel owner, in this case, Mobil or Cheramie--through its people aboard the Bo-Truc 25--where the vessel owner as a reasonable man should anticipate an unreasonable risk of harm to the invitee, not withstanding the obvious nature of the condition, the exercise of reasonable care may require additional precautions on the part of the vessel owner for the safety of the invitee who is aboard his vessel. 23 This is an accurate recounting of Sec. 343A which exempts a possessor of land for liability to an invitee for harm caused by obvious dangers unless the possessor should anticipate the harm despite such knowledge or obviousness. 24 Basically, therefore, the court instructed the jury that it could find liability if the owner knew, or as a reasonable man should anticipate harm, despite the fact that the condition was open and obvious. 10 Dean Prosser explains that, under the modern rule, the owner must not only use care not to injure the invitee by negligent activities, and warn him of latent dangers of which the owner knows, but that he must also inspect the premises to discover possible dangerous conditions of which he does not know, and take reasonable precautions to protect the invitee from dangers which are foreseeable from the arrangement or use. W. Prosser, The Law of Torts Sec. 61, at 393 (4th ed. 1971). Additionally, while in the usual case there is no obligation to protect the invitee against dangers which are known to him or which are so obvious and apparent to him that he may not reasonably be expected to discover them, this is certainly not a fixed rule.... In any case where the occupier, as a reasonable man, should anticipate an unreasonable risk of harm to the invitee notwithstanding his knowledge, warning, or the obvious nature of the condition, something more in the way of precautions may be required. This is true, for example, ... where the condition is one such as icy steps, which cannot be negotiated with reasonable safety even though the invitee is fully aware of it.... In all such cases the jury may be permitted to find that obviousness, warning or even knowledge is not enough. Id. at 394-95 (emphasis added). 25 If we consider the condition of the rain-soaked deck on the supply vessel analogous to the ice-laden steps on a landowner's property described by Dean Prosser, we conclude that an owner may be liable, assuming Restatement Sec. 343A applies, if as a reasonable man he should have anticipated that ice had built up on the steps and that this ice created an unreasonable risk of harm. Utilizing the Scindia standards, however, that owner would not be liable for injuries caused by a fall on the steps unless (1) he was actually aware that the steps were icy, and (2) he knew that the invitee would do nothing to protect himself (or his employees) from danger. 26 Although the circumstances in which this Court before Scindia indicated an owner might be held to a duty to anticipate harm which resulted from the stevedore's negligence are not frequent, they do exist. 11 The critical fact for our analysis is that imposition of liability upon the vessel in the absence of actual knowledge is not foreclosed under the Restatement standard and under our earlier holdings. But it clearly is foreclosed under Scindia. We must conclude, therefore, that Scindia did alter the law in this Circuit with respect to the specific negligence issue now under consideration. Once loading operations have begun, the vessel owner can be held liable for injuries to employees of the stevedore resulting from open and obvious dangers only in the event of actual knowledge of the danger and actual knowledge that he cannot rely on the stevedore to remedy the situation. 12 He is not held to a duty to discover the condition or to anticipate its danger. The critical questions in this case, therefore, are 1) whether the Mobil representative knew of the hazardous conditions on deck, and 2) whether the representative knew the Teledyne crane operator was not adequately protecting the longshoremen. Only if the fact of his actual knowledge of these two factors is undisputed and not subject to jury speculation can we view the court's instructions under Secs. 343 and 343A as harmless error. 27 Helaire testified at trial that he saw the Mobil supervisor on the platform three or four times in the course of the operation and during the night and that morning. However, when later recalled to the stand, he stated on cross examination that this had been on the night of February 11, when the loading was first attempted, not on the morning of the accident. The Mobil supervisor himself testified that he had no specific recollection whether he had been outside the morning of the accident, although he did admit going outside the night before. No one actually placed the supervisor on the platform at the time of the accident. 28 Additionally, there was no testimony to the effect that the Mobil company man had ever been apprised that the unloading operation was being carried out in spite of Helaire's protests concerning the weather conditions. Helaire testified only that he had complained to the Teledyne crane operator who was his immediate superior, and that the crane operator was the person who ordered him to continue the work because the company man wanted the boat unloaded. The record does not support a conclusion that Mobil desired to complete the unloading regardless of dangers. Such a statement might reflect only the oil company's general desire to unload the casing as quickly and efficiently as possible under the circumstances. The Mobil supervisor himself had no recollection of Helaire's accident, nor of any events on the morning in question. He testified that he relied on the Teledyne crane operator and toolpusher to shut down the operation if weather conditions made unloading unsafe, but admitted that, as a general matter, he periodically checked the work taking place on the platform. 29 While we agree with Helaire that this evidence might be sufficient to uphold a jury verdict finding Mobil negligent under the standard announced in Scindia, this cannot be the focus of our inquiry. In order to find that the court's instructions were harmless, we must be certain that the jury finding would of necessity have been the same under a proper Scindia charge. We would have to be convinced that the jury based its verdict on the conclusion that the owner knew of the dangerous condition and knew of the stevedore's refusal to heed Helaire's requests to suspend the unloading. It was the jury's province either to believe or disbelieve Helaire's testimony. 13 While there was no testimony offered in direct opposition to his assertion on direct examination that the supervisor had knowledge of the conditions and was outside during the unloading, neither was there any other testimony supporting Helaire's claim. Moreover, Mobil does not concede either the fact that its supervisor was present or that he had knowledge of the crane operator's decision. On the contrary, Mobil vigorously contests these issues. Under these circumstances, we cannot conclude that the jury believed that the Mobil representative had actual knowledge of the conditions, and that he knew that the Teledyne crane operator was not reacting to those conditions by suspending the offloading operation. As actual, not constructive, knowledge is mandated by the Supreme Court's Scindia requisites for liability under Sec. 905(b), we must reverse and remand to the district court to give a jury upon retrial the opportunity to answer these questions. 30 Helaire alternatively argues that the evidence was sufficient to find Mobil negligent under a second category of owner liability announced in Scindia -- i.e., that Mobil had actively involved itself in the unloading process so deeply that a contract provision, positive law, or custom then imposed a duty on the owner to supervise the stevedoring operations. 101 S.Ct. at 1622. The trial court did not instruct the jury concerning the possibility of Mobil's control over the stevedoring operation so as to impose a duty under custom or contract or by law. 31 We emphasize again that our review of the verdict of the jury, then, must turn upon whether the facts relating to Mobil's involvement in the unloading operation were established with complete certainty and to such a level that contract, custom, or positive law made Mobil responsible under the Scindia analysis. We cannot draw such a conclusion. We cannot find a guarantee in the evidence that control over the unloading operation was vested in the Mobil Company representative on the platform. Yet, without such a certainty, the erroneous instructions to the jury cannot support the jury's verdict. 32 There is no evidence in the record to support Helaire's contention that Mobil actively participated in the unloading operation. In fact, there was considerable dispute as to the actual role played by the company man on the platform. Testimony offered at trial indicated that Teledyne, the independent contractor who was Helaire's employer, was specifically hired by Mobil to operate and oversee the unloading operations, and that the Teledyne toolpusher was the man responsible for offloading the boats and all other phases of the unloading operations. While the Teledyne workers were ultimately responsible to the Mobil supervisor, simply because Teledyne was itself responsible to Mobil, certainly this general level of responsibility cannot be sufficient to constitute active involvement in the unloading operation. Nor is there any significant degree of responsibility placed upon Mobil for unloading in the contract between Mobil and Teledyne. 14 33 We conclude that Helaire did not establish facts concerning Mobil's activities in the unloading which would enable us to conclude that the jury necessarily relied upon those facts in reaching its verdict. A jury must resolve disputed evidence under proper instructions to draw a conclusion concerning the extent of Mobil's actual involvement in the unloading. 34 We emphasize that our holding evinces no opinion as to whether, when faced with determining these issues under proper instructions, a jury should or should not find Mobil negligent either by virtue of its control over the operations or by virtue of its knowledge of the dangerous conditions on deck. We say only that our decision remanding for a new trial is required by the absence of proper instructions concerning control and/or actual knowledge, and conflicting testimony as to those issues. Once we conclude that the jury finding as to Mobil's liability could have been based upon less involvement by Mobil than is required to establish liability under Scindia, there must be a new trial.