Opinion ID: 195675
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Vessel Owner's Duty of Safe Condition

Text: 29 First, the vessel owner's duty of safe condition is met if the condition of the vessel when entrusted to the stevedore poses no reasonably foreseeable risk to any worker, even assuming a complete failure on the part of the stevedore-employer to monitor the vessel workplace for safety. On the other hand, because longshoring is particularly dangerous, in many respects inherently so, see Johnson v. A/S Ivarans Rederi, 613 F.2d 334, 339 n. 5 (1st Cir.1980), few on-board appurtenances would ever satisfy such an exacting threshold. Accordingly, the foreseeability standard to which a vessel owner is held under its duty of safe condition has been relaxed: ordinary care under the circumstances now governs the owner's discharge of its duty to turn the vessel over in such condition that an expert and experienced stevedoring contractor, mindful of the dangers he should expect to encounter, arising from the hazards of the ship's service or otherwise, will be able by the exercise of ordinary care to conduct cargo operations with reasonable safety to persons and property. See Federal Marine Terminals, Inc. v. Burnside Shipping Co., 394 U.S. 404, 416-17 n. 18, 89 S.Ct. 1144, 1151-52 n. 18, 22 L.Ed.2d 371 (1969) (emphasis added) (citation omitted). 30 Unlike the vessel owner, however, the stevedore is subject to detailed legislative and administrative prescriptions for affording its workers a safe workplace. See, e.g., 33 U.S.C. Sec. 941 (1993); 29 C.F.R. Secs. 1918.1-1918.106, Sec. 1918.25 (1993) (implementing regulations for ladders); see also Scindia, 451 U.S. at 170, 101 S.Ct. at 1623-24. Thus, a vessel owner reasonably may rely on the stevedore-employer's supervision of its own employees in their interaction with and avoidance of obvious or anticipated hazards foreseeably associated with stevedoring on board the owner's vessel. See, e.g., Polizzi v. M/V Zephyros II Monrovia, 860 F.2d 147, 149 (5th Cir.1988); Jupitz v. National Shipping Co., 730 F.Supp. 1358, 1362 (D.Md.1990) (noting that vessel owner's duty is to turn over the cargo area in a reasonably safe condition; ... not to turn over the area completely free of all hazards) (emphasis added). Conversely, under current law a vessel owner may be held liable, even for obvious or anticipated hazards, upon a showing that the owner effectively disabled the stevedore-employer or the longshore worker from taking ameliorative measures to avoid the hazard. See Teply v. Mobil Oil Corp., 859 F.2d 375, 378 (5th Cir.1988); Theriot v. Bay Drilling Corp., 783 F.2d 527, 536 (5th Cir.1986). 31