Opinion ID: 539878
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Recovery by Ship's Officer for Injury under the Jones Act

Text: 8 Sun argues that Mr. Kelley had the responsibility to ensure that the operations on the boat were conducted in a safe manner and that his failure to do so caused his injury. Since Mr. Kelley was in charge of the deckhands, Sun asserts that, as a matter of law, he cannot claim damages for an accident that resulted from his failure to perform properly his supervisory role.
9 Sun principally relies on two cases to support its assertion that Mr. Kelley, as a supervisory officer, is barred from recovery. In Walker v. Lykes Bros. S.S. Co., 193 F.2d 772 (2d Cir.1952), Judge Learned Hand was presented with an injury incurred by a ship's master when a filing cabinet drawer in his office fell on him after a catch malfunctioned. The defendant argued that the duty to ensure that the catch operated correctly belonged to the master, and thus his own negligence caused his injury. 10 In Judge Hand's view, this situation did not present a claim of contributory negligence, as that term usually is employed in the law of torts. Rather, it presented an absolute bar to the plaintiff's recovery. To reach this conclusion, Judge Hand first acknowledged--albeit somewhat grudgingly 2 --the conventional rubric that contributory negligence is the breach of a duty to the wrongdoer. Id. at 773. He then drew a sharp distinction between this duty--which the law imposes upon the injured person, regardless of any conscious assumption of a duty towards the wrongdoer--and a duty which the injured person has consciously assumed as a term of his employment. Id. at 773. For breach of the general duty of care owed to the wrongdoer under a contributory negligence analysis, the plaintiff's recovery under the Jones Act is reduced; in other words, the comparative negligence of each act is assessed. By contrast, for breach of the duty of employee to employer, recovery is prohibited. 3 Applying this analysis, Judge Hand concluded: 11 In the case at bar, since the plaintiff was master of the ship, he fell within this doctrine, because it is well settled that the duty of the master in the case of damage to the ship is to do all that can be done towards bringing the adventure to a successful termination; to repair the ship, if there be a reasonable prospect of doing so at an expense not ruinous; just as it is his duty to care for the cargo, or not to overload the ship. Thus, if the plaintiff failed to repair the catches, although he was able to do so, his failure was not only contributory negligence in the first sense, but also a breach of his duty to the defendant which barred his recovery absolutely. 12 Id. at 774 (footnotes omitted). 13 The second case, Peymann v. Perini Corp., 507 F.2d 1318 (1st Cir.1974), cert. denied, 421 U.S. 914, 95 S.Ct. 1572, 43 L.Ed.2d 780 (1975), dealt with a chief engineer who injured himself in the engine-room by slipping off an oily pipe rail. The plaintiff charged that he should have been supplied with a stepladder. At trial, the plaintiff admitted that it was his duty to obtain a stepladder if needed, and to ensure that, among other things, the rail was free from oil. Id. at 1321. The First Circuit agreed with the trial court that a seaman cannot create the peril and then make a claim against the ship. Id. at 1322-23. 4
14 At oral argument, Sun's counsel acknowledged that there is a substantial body of authority holding that, if the employer is independently negligent through one of his other servants, the negligence of the supervisory employee is to be considered on a contributory negligence analysis, but not as a total bar. The Second Circuit had an opportunity to revisit the Walker rule in Johannessen v. Gulf Trading & Transp. Co., 633 F.2d 653 (2d Cir.1980). In that case, the ship's captain died after he descended into a gas-filled tank on the ship. The rescue attempt was unsuccessful, apparently due to negligence on the part of his crewmen. After reviewing the Jones Act, the court concluded that [a]lthough the master of a vessel has total charge of all operations, the negligence of his subordinate is not imputed to him for purposes of a Jones Act claim. Id. at 655 n. 2. 15 In Viller's Seafood Co. v. Vest, 813 F.2d 339 (11th Cir.1987), the Eleventh Circuit specifically declined to follow Peymann. The plaintiff, a ship's captain, was injured when a ladder upon which he was standing became unfastened and toppled. The district court held that the ship had no liability to the captain because the injury was caused wholly by his own lack of care. Id. at 341. The Eleventh Circuit rejected this view, and limited Walker to cases in which the injured officer actually knew of the existence of the unseaworthy condition before the accident. We are unwilling to extend the doctrine to a case in which no misconduct or actual knowledge of the existence of an unseaworthy condition has been proven. Id. at 342-43. 16 The Fifth Circuit similarly rejected a claim that the plaintiff was barred from recovery due to his failure to carry out a duty owed by him to his employer. Kendrick v. Illinois Cent. Gulf R.R. Co., 669 F.2d 341 (5th Cir.1982) (FELA case). The court, citing Walker and Peymann, acknowledged that the nonperformance of a duty may offset the employer's liability. Id. at 344 n. 6. Nevertheless, the claim would not be totally barred: 17 For even if an employee's injury resulted in part from his own negligence, whether in failing to carry out his duties or in some other respect, such negligence would only reduce, not bar, recovery unless the employer were not negligent at all and the employee's negligence was the sole cause of his injury. 18 Id. at 344. 19 In Tringali v. Hathaway Mach. Co., 796 F.2d 553 (1st Cir.1986), the plaintiff was the boat's master. He was injured when a winch malfunctioned and mangled his leg. The defendant, citing both Peymann and Walker, claimed that the plaintiff should have recognized and corrected the dangerous condition that led to his injury. The district court disagreed, and the First Circuit affirmed. Walker and Peymann were distinguishable, the court concluded, because in those cases the ship's officer had actual knowledge of the dangerous conditions and also had a duty to remedy them. Id. at 557.
20 We believe that the modern cases after Walker and Peymann present the prevalent rule of law in the United States. The inquiry at trial should endeavor to apportion responsibility for the injury. This does not mean, however, that a supervisory employee will recover in every case for injuries suffered on the ship. A ship's officer can be found to be negligent with respect to his accident. If such negligence is the sole cause of the injury, the employer's non-negligence bars recovery. See Boudreaux v. Sea Drilling Corp., 427 F.2d 1160, 1161 (5th Cir.1970). As Judge Hand noted in Walker, the bar is not based on the contributory negligence of the officer, but on a finding of no negligence of the employer. But when the employer is negligent, and that negligence is based on activity other than that of the ship's officer, recovery is permitted to the extent of the employer's negligence. 21 The defendant, Sun, would have this court acknowledge the supervisory duties of Mr. Kelley as first mate and end the inquiry there. Accepting such a proposition effectively would bar all ship's officers from recovery for injuries caused at least in part by the negligence of another seaman. This approach frustrates the congressional intent embodied in the Jones Act, which was designed to give seamen an available remedy for injuries sustained in an inherently dangerous profession. Our rejection of a rule absolutely barring recovery by a ship's officer comports with the statute's rejection of a harsh application of contributory negligence. When the Jones Act was adopted in 1915, it extended to seamen the right of recovery against their employers that railroad employees already enjoyed. 5 Congress made clear that contributory negligence does not bar recovery to railroad employees, and thus also cannot act as a bar to seamen. [T]he fact that the employee may have been guilty of contributory negligence shall not bar a recovery, but the damages shall be diminished by the jury in proportion to the amount of negligence attributable to such employee.... 45 U.S.C. Sec. 53. Here, the evidence of record certainly supports the determination of the district court that Mr. Kelley's injury was not attributable entirely to his own negligence. Therefore, the court committed no error in determining that Mr. Kelley was not barred totally from recovery.