Opinion ID: 3013105
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Application of the Coverage Test

Text: The parties agree that the only dispute over Riggio’s coverage regards his status as a maritime worker — not the situs of the injury. Riggio makes two arguments in favor of coverage. First, he asserts that his job as a delivery clerk, which he was performing on the day of the injury, was a covered form of employment. Second, he contends that because he worked on occasion for Maher as a checker, and was subject by Maher to assignment on any day as a checker, this too confers coverage. We do not find Riggio’s first argument persuasive. Riggio admits in his brief that he “does not contend that his office activities, considered in isolation, confer [statutory coverage].” The law is clear that delivery clerks, performing the function that Riggio was on the day of his injury, are not covered under the Act. Maher Terminals, Inc. v. Farrell, 548 F.2d 476 (3d Cir. 1977); see also Sette v. Maher Terminals, Inc., 27 BRBS 223 (1993) (denying coverage for a delivery clerk). 10 In his second argument, Riggio urges us to look beyond the day of the injury in order to determine whether he was “engaged in maritime employment.” In other words, Riggio submits that because he worked half of his time as a checker, a job that is covered under the Act, see Rock, 953 F.2d at 64, and was subject to assignment as a checker, it would be improper to look merely at the moment of his injury to characterize whether he was engaged in maritime employment. Maher disagrees with this analysis and argues that our decision in Farrell, supra, is “on all fours” with the case at bar. The employee in Farrell, like Riggio on the day of his injury: worked in an office. He did not work on the pier, in the yard, or on the dock as a checker . . . . That on occasion he left the office to examine markings on cargo, and that in the past he had worked as a checker is not controlling. What is controlling is the nature of his primary duties. As we perceive the congressional intent, that is the sole test. Farrell’s primary duties being that of a clerk and not a checker, he is excluded from coverage. 548 F.2d at 478. Despite these similarities, Riggio contends, and the Board agreed, that the analysis in Farrell is no longer valid in light of Caputo and other subsequently decided Supreme Court cases. Riggio argues persuasively that Caputo’s holding that covered employees must “spend at least some of their time in indisputably longshoring operations,” 432 U.S. at 273, creates a broader scope of coverage than Farrell’s “primary duties” test. For further support, Riggio notes that in our decision in Rock, we cited with approval the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit’s opinion in Levins v. Benefits Review Board, 724 F.2d 4 (1st Cir. 1984). Levins concerned whether an employee who was called a “book clerk” was covered under the Act. Rather than look only at the title of the employee, the First Circuit examined “the actual nature of [the employee’s] regularly assigned duties as a whole.” Id. at 7 (quotation omitted) (emphasis in original). The First Circuit also rejected the use of the “primary duties” test from our opinion in Farrell because the Supreme Court stated in Caputo that workers who spend “at least some of their time 11 in indisputably longshoring operations” are covered. Id. at 8 (quoting Caputo, 432 U.S. at 273). The First Circuit examined the totality of the claimant’s job, and noted that serving as a runner, a covered job, constituted not “discretionary or extraordinary occurrences, but rather a regular portion of the overall tasks to which petitioner could have been assigned as a matter of course.” Id. at 9. Other Courts of Appeals have followed the same approach as the First Circuit and looked at the totality of the employee’s duties to determine whether he was engaged as a maritime employee. For example, in Boudloche v. Howard Trucking Co., 632 F.2d 1346 (5th Cir. 1980), the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concluded that an employee who worked between 2.5 to 5 percent of his time in traditional longshoring operations was covered. Id. at 1348. The Fifth Circuit specifically rejected a “substantial portion” test — akin to our “primary duties” test in Farrell — because the Supreme Court’s decisions in Caputo and Ford explained that only “some” of an employee’s time must be in longshoring operations in order to be covered. Id. The Fifth Circuit was careful to note, however, that its “decision does not undertake to define the point at which a worker’s employment in maritime activity becomes so momentary or episodic it will not suffice to confer status.” Id. Interestingly, Maher responds that the same aspect of Caputo upon which these Courts and Riggio rely supports its argument as well. Maher quotes our interpretation of Caputo in Rock in which we explained that the Supreme Court extended “coverage to an employee who throughout the day might have been assigned to unload a vessel but at the hour of the accident had been temporarily assigned a task that might not have been covered under the Act.” 953 F.2d at 63. Maher seizes on our use of the phrase, “throughout the day,” to suggest that we adopted a narrow conception of protection from shifting coverage solely to, in Maher’s words, “employees who walk in and out of coverage throughout the work day.” This is a misreading of Rock. As explained above, we declined to find coverage in that case because the claimant had worked for two years exclusively in a non-covered position and was only “nominally subject to reassignment” 12 to a covered job. 953 F.2d at 67 n.17. We also stated that Caputo “protects those employees who walk in and out of coverage on a frequent basis” and that Caputo followed the clear intent of the statute, “which was in part to avoid the shifting coverage caused by an employee’s constant movement during the workday between land and sea.” Id. In Rock, the claimant could not show that there was any real possibility of him working in a covered job. Riggio’s employment history is very different from that of the claimant in Rock; it more closely resembles those of the claimants in Levins and Boudloche. Because Maher stipulated at oral argument that Riggio spent half of his time employed as a checker, the mere fact that he was not employed in a covered position on the day of his injury, or even in the two weeks previous, does not call into question the conclusion that Riggio’s regular duties involve spending “at least some of his time in indisputably longshoring operations.” Caputo, 432 U.S. at 273. Further, Riggio was actually subject to reassignment as a checker, unlike the claimant in Rock, and the evidence does not support the conclusion that Riggio’s engagement in maritime employment was “so momentary or episodic” as to be insufficient to confer coverage. Boudloche, 632 F.2d at 1348. In a final attempt to deny Riggio coverage, Maher argues that we should not look at the employee’s overall employment history when conducting the coverage analysis and cites to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s decision in McGray Construction Co. v. Director, OWCP, 181 F.3d 1008 (9th Cir. 1999) for support. The facts in McGray, however, are easily distinguished from the case at bar. The claimant in McGray had been engaged in maritime employment in the past but had been subsequently hired by a different employer for a non-maritime job. The Ninth Circuit concluded that the claimant was not covered by the Act because it is impractical for an employer to know the prior work history of its employees and it would be unfair to treat employees working for an employer exclusively on a non-maritime job differently depending on this history. Id. at 1016. These concerns are not present in the instant case because it covers only Riggio’s work history while employed 13 by Maher, which should know that it routinely assigns Riggio to maritime employment. We believe that the proper analysis requires us to look at the “regular portion of the overall tasks to which [the claimant] could have been assigned as a matter of course,” Levins, 724 F.2d at 9, to determine whether he spends “at least some of [his] time in indisputably longshoring operations.” Caputo, 432 U.S. at 273. Because Riggio spent half of his time as a checker and his overall duties included assignment as a checker, an indisputably longshoring job, he is covered under the Act even though he worked as a delivery clerk on the day of his injury. The petition for review of the Board’s decision will be denied. A True Copy: Teste: Clerk of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit