Opinion ID: 200625
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Stewart's Functional Dual capacity Analysis

Text: 21 Stewart's first argument is essentially that all injuries occurring incident to repair work on a vessel implicate the defendant's capacity as a vessel owner rather than as an employer. According to Stewart, it is significant that the scow had been taken out of service and had done no dredging for two days prior to the accident. Once the crew (Stewart included) was diverted from their ordinary dredging activities to work on repair-related activities, the work they performed could only be considered vessel work, not dredging work. To support this argument, Stewart argues by analogy that [i]f Dutra dredging company had chartered the Scow 4 from another entity, it would have returned the Scow 4 to said entity to replace the engine. A dredging contractor would not purchase a new engine in a vessel it did not own. Moreover, the Southworth Milton employee hired to repair the engine had nothing to do with the dredging operation. As a result, Stewart maintains that the repair operations that led to his injury furthered a distinctly vessel objective. 22 This argument does not differ from the functional analysis rejected by the Morehead Court in any significant way. In Morehead, the plaintiff argued that the purpose of leaving the hatch open furthered the vessel's purposes, and did not further any employment purpose. Rejecting this argument, we noted that the LHWCA had been amended to provide employees and employers with a greater degree of certainty as to the coverage in effect. Id. at 615. Accordingly, the legislative history of the 1984 Amendments documents the legislature's concerns about predicating coverage upon the nature of the task the employee was performing when injured: 23 The situation in which a worker may be covered at one time, and not covered at another, depending on the nature of the work which the worker is performing at the time of the injury must be avoided since such a result would be enormously destabilizing and would thus defeat one of the essential purposes of the amendments. 24 Id. (quoting H.R.Rep. No. 98-570(I), 98th Cong., 2d Sess., reprinted in 1984 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2734, 2736-37). 25 Eschewing this approach, we noted that as is typical in the case of harbor workers... [employees] were expected as part of their employment duties to lend a hand with supporting maritime chores as well as to pursue their particular construction trade. Id. at 614. Since both Morehead and the employee who left the hatch open were performing tasks that were contemplated by the terms of their employment, we deemed that the defendant was liable only in its capacity as employer. 26 Like Morehead, Stewart was performing the work he was hired to do. Although Stewart spent the majority of his time aboard the SUPER SCOOP, he, like the other employees on the SUPER SCOOP, was hired to perform tasks relating both to dredging and to occasional maintenance work on both vessels. His job contemplated performing maintenance tasks on a variety of engines and machinery related to the dredging process, including engines used for the dredging-crane, scow engines, and deck winches used for moving the dredge. He was therefore performing his regular duties as an engineer on a dredging operation. 27 Stewart has not cited any cases to the effect that major repair work on a vessel is inherently vessel-oriented, and not employment-oriented work. Given Morehead 's explicit rejection of a functional approach to dual capacity cases and Congress's plain intention to avoid creating uncertainty as to actions covered by the LHWCA, we are compelled to reject this argument.