Opinion ID: 791344
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Whether the decedent was a member of a crew of any vessel

Text: 19 The LHWCA and the Jones Act, 46 U.S.C. § 740 et seq. are mutually exclusive compensation regimes for injured maritime workers. The Jones Act provides for an action for damages at law for any seaman who[,] . . . in the course of his employment, sustains a personal injury. 46 U.S.C.App. § 688(a). By contrast, the LHWCA provides compensation for injuries sustained by land-based maritime workers and expressly excludes a master or member of a crew of any vessel, i.e. any seaman, from coverage. See 33 U.S.C. § 902(3)(G), 905(a). Accordingly, if a person is a seaman for the purposes of the Jones Act, he is excluded from coverage under the LHWCA, and cases interpreting the scope of the term seaman under the Jones Act necessarily interpret the scope of the LHWCA's exclusion of a master or member of a crew of any vessel. Chandris, 515 U.S. at 355-56, 115 S.Ct. 2172. Conversely, it is `odd but true that the key requirement for Jones Act coverage now appears in [the LHWCA].' Id. (quoting Wilander, 498 U.S. at 347, 111 S.Ct. 807). 20 The Supreme Court has recognized that there are two requirements for seaman status: (1) an employee's duties must `contribut[e] to the function of the vessel or to the accomplishment of its mission,' and (2) the employee must have a connection to a vessel in navigation . . . that is substantial in terms of both its duration and its nature. Id. at 368, 115 S.Ct. 2172 (quoting Wilander, 498 U.S. at 355, 111 S.Ct. 807) (alteration in original, internal quotation marks omitted). 21 Petitioner conceded below, and does not now contest, that her husband satisfied the first requirement — that is, he contribut[ed] to the function of the [purported] vessel or to the accomplishment of its mission. Upon review, petitioner initially maintained that the decedent did not meet the second requirement in two ways: she argued (1) that the dredge on which her late husband worked was not a vessel in navigation, and (2) that even if it was, his connection to the dredge was not substantial in terms of both its duration and its nature. In light of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Stewart v. Dutra Construction Co., ___ U.S. ___, 125 S.Ct. 1118, 160 L.Ed.2d 932 (2005), however, petitioner now concedes that a structure such as a bucket dredge involved herein is, in fact, a vessel. Pet'r's Letter Br. of Mar. 21, 2005, at 2. Nonetheless, because the Supreme Court's ruling revised our Court's previous test for vessel status under the LHWCA, we apply the holding in Stewart to the facts of this case. 22
23 In Stewart, the Supreme Court considered whether a dredge is a `vessel' under the [LHWCA], and concluded that it is. 125 S.Ct. at 1121. To qualify as a vessel, a ship must be `used, or capable of being used, as a means of transportation on water.' Id. at 1124 (quoting Rev. Stat. § 3, codified at 1 U.S.C. § 3). While structures may lose their character as vessels if they have been withdrawn from the water for extended periods of time, id. at 1128, permanently moored[,] or otherwise rendered practically incapable of transportation or movement, id. at 1127, a ship does not move in and out of vessel status because it is temporarily at anchor, docked . . . or berthed for minor repairs, id. Likewise, a watercraft [does not] pass in and out of Jones Act coverage depending on whether it was moving at the time of the accident. Id. at 1128. Provided that at the time of the accident a watercraft's use as a means of transportation remains a practical possibility, rather than merely a theoretical one, it qualifies as a vessel in navigation for the purposes of LHWCA coverage. Id. 24 Applying these tests to the dredge at issue in Stewart, the Supreme Court emphasized that the dredge was not only `capable of being used' to transport equipment and workers over water — it was used to transport those things. Indeed, it could not have dug the Ted Williams Tunnel had it been unable to traverse the Boston Harbor, carrying with it workers like Stewart. Id. at 1128. The Court added that [d]espite the seeming incongruity of grouping dredges alongside more traditional seafaring vessels under the [LHWCA and Jones Act], Congress and the courts have long done precisely that. Id. at 1129. 25 In all material respects, the bucket dredge in the instant case is indistinguishable from the dredge at issue in Stewart: both have a clamshell bucket . . . suspended beneath the water, and both move long distances by tugboat and navigate short distances by manipulating . . . anchors and cables. Id. at 1121. In addition to sharing these physical features, the dredge on which the decedent worked was actively used to deepen navigation channels in the vicinity of Staten Island and could not have performed this task without the ability to transport equipment and workers across navigable waters. 26 The Supreme Court's decision in Stewart supersedes the three-part test we developed in Tonnesen v. Yonkers Contracting Co., 82 F.3d 30 (2d Cir.1996), which stated that a floating structure would not qualify as a vessel in navigation if, inter alia, the transportation function performed by the [purported vessel] was merely incidental to its primary purpose of serving as a work platform. Id. at 36. On the basis of Stewart, we conclude that the test announced in Tonnesen no longer applies and that the bucket dredge on which the decedent worked is properly classified as a vessel for purposes of the LHWCA.
27 Although petitioner does not dispute that, for a period of three or four consecutive weeks, the decedent worked exclusively as an oiler aboard a dredge that was (1) located in the middle of the water and (2) moved across the channel, Hr'g Tr. of Apr. 15, 1996, at 37-38, she nonetheless challenges ALJ Kaplan's determination that the decedent had a substantial connection to the dredge. Petitioner concedes that under certain circumstances, four weeks of work could be a substantial connection to a vessel, Pet'r's Br. at 13, but contends that ALJ Kaplan erred principally by failing to consider the decedent's work history — which included predominantly land-based work over the course of thirty-five years — prior to his work on the dredge. 28 As a preliminary matter, we conclude that ALJ Kaplan need not have considered the decedent's prior work history. The Supreme Court has unequivocally stated that [t]here [is] no . . . need to examine the nature of an employee's duties with prior employers, Harbor Tug & Barge Co. v. Papai, 520 U.S. 548, 557, 117 S.Ct. 1535, 137 L.Ed.2d 800 (1997), because this would undermine the interests of employers and maritime workers alike in being able to predict who will be covered by the Jones Act . . . before a particular work day begins, id. at 558 (internal quotation marks omitted). Therefore, if an employee receives a new work assignment in which his essential duties are changed, he is entitled to have the assessment of the substantiality of his vessel-related work made on the basis of his activities in his new position.  Chandris, 515 U.S. at 372, 115 S.Ct. 2172 (emphasis added). The Supreme Court specifically contemplated situations in which someone who had worked for years in an employer's shoreside headquarters is then reassigned to a ship in a . . . seaman's job that involves a regular and continuous, rather than intermittent, commitment of the worker's labor to the function of the vessel. Id. In such circumstances — which strongly resemble those of the decedent's employment aboard the dredge in the instant case — the Court concluded that [s]uch a person should not be denied seaman status if injured shortly after the reassignment. Id. 29 Based on the record before us, we hold that, during the time period that the decedent worked aboard the dredge, he established a connection to the vessel that was substantial in terms of both its duration and its nature rather than merely transitory or sporadic. Chandris, 515 U.S. at 368, 115 S.Ct. 2172. Bearing in mind that [t]he inquiry into the nature of the employee's connection to the vessel must concentrate on whether the employee's duties take him to sea, Papai, 520 U.S. at 555, 117 S.Ct. 1535, we particularly note that the decedent worked aboard an active vessel, maintaining the ship's engines so that it could perform the task of transporting equipment and personnel across a navigable waterway. Cf. id. at 559, 117 S.Ct. 1535 (finding no substantial connection where employee was hired for one day to paint [a] vessel at dockside and he was not going to sail with the vessel after he finished painting it); O'Hara v. Weeks Marine, Inc., 294 F.3d 55, 64 (2d Cir.2002) (finding no substantial connection where employee performed tasks aboard a barge that was at all times secured to [a] pier). 30 With respect to petitioner's final argument — that we should disregard the decedent's employment aboard the dredge because this employment was temporary, rather than of indefinite or permanent duration, see Pet'r's Letter Br. of Mar. 21, 2005, at 5 — even if we were to perceive a distinction between temporary or fill-in work and more permanent kinds of employment, the coverage of the LHWCA does not depend on any such distinction, nor does petitioner point to any authority suggesting that it does. 31 We therefore find no error in the legal reasoning of either ALJ Kaplan or the Board, and we affirm their findings that the decedent had a substantial connection to a vessel at the time of his injury. In our view, both the ALJ and the Board properly determined, in light of the considerable evidence in the record, that the decedent had a connection to the dredge that was substantial in both its duration and its nature.