Opinion ID: 3010666
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Connection To A Vessel

Text: Under the second part of the Chandris seaman status test, an employee must demonstrate that he or she has a connection to a vessel in navigation (or to an identifiable group of such vessels) that is substantial in terms of both its duration and nature. 515 U.S. at 368, 115 S.Ct. at _________________________________________________________________ 4. We note that in making this determination, we do not consider the evidence of Shade's prior employment history with Great Lakes, because as we hold below, such evidence is inadmissible, and thus cannot be considered by a court in deciding a motion for a judgment as a matter of law. See Lightning Lube, 4 F.3d at 1198-1200. 12 2190. Typically, this requirement is fulfilled by examining the employee's connection with the vessel to which he or she was assigned at the time of his or her injury. However, in certain circumstances, this connection might not be sufficient to meet the substantiality requirement of the seaman status test, even though the employee performs traditional seaman activities on a regular and continuous basis. For example, the employee's job responsibilities might require performance on a number of different vessels, rather than permitting a permanent connection to one vessel. Confronted with this problem, courts have enabled employees to fulfill the seaman status test by demonstrating that they are assigned to a fleet of vessels, rather than to only one vessel, under a doctrine known as the Fleet Seaman Doctrine. See, e.g., Reeves v. Mobile Dredging & Pumping Co., 26 F.3d 1247, 1253-55 (3d Cir. 1994) (describing the development of the doctrine). In fact, the Chandris test contemplates this doctrine, because it expressly permits an employee to demonstrate a connection not only to a vessel in navigation, but alsoto an identifiable group of such vessels. 515 U.S. at 368, 115 S.Ct. at 2190. By permitting this aggregation, the Fleet Seaman Doctrine thus ensures that a seaman receives Jones Act coverage even though he or she is not assigned permanently to a specific vessel, but instead regularly performs seaman's work on different vessels. See Gizoni v. Southwest Marine Inc., 56 F.3d 1138, 1141 (9th Cir. 1995) (Under the fleet seaman doctrine, one can acquire `seaman' status through permanent assignment to a group of vessels under common ownership or control.). For instance, in Braniff v. Jackson Ave.-Gretna Ferry, Inc., 280 F.2d 523, 528 (5th Cir. 1960), John Braniff worked as the Superintendent in charge of all maintenance, repair and overhaul work for his employer. Id. at 525. In performing this job, he would travel from vessel to vessel, but would be stationed only temporarily at each vessel. Braniff subsequently drowned while repairing a machine on one of his employer's ferries. See id. Based on his limited contact with the ferry, Braniff could not establish a substantial connection to a single vessel in navigation even though his job required him to perform seaman's duties on a regular and ongoing basis. In holding that Braniff could 13 be a seaman under the Jones Act, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit permitted an aggregation of Braniff 's connections to the other vessels in the fleet beyond the single ferry he worked on immediately prior to his death, because he was  `assigned permanently'  to those vessels and performed  `a substantial part of his work on the' several specified `vessel(s).'  Id. at 528 (citing Offshore Co. v. Robison, 266 F.2d 769, 779 (5th Cir. 1959)). We first considered the Fleet Seaman Doctrine in Reeves, 26 F.3d at 1256; and after determining that the doctrine comports well with and flows logically from Supreme Court precedent, we adopted the doctrine as the rule of law in this circuit in analyzing Jones Act cases. Id. We held that [t]he Fleet Seaman Doctrine in our view applies to an employee, one who is predominantly assigned by his employer to a navigable vessel, but who occasionally is assigned by that same employer to non-navigable vessels. It would also apply to one who is assigned to a number of navigable vessels and spends some time on shore, as in Braniff. Id. Thus, we adopted the doctrine to afford Jones Act protection to these types of employees, because stripping seaman status from such an employee, or allowing that same employee to oscillate between seaman and non-seaman status . . . would be a travesty of justice. Id. In the present case, Shade had worked as a deckhand since 1974. See app. at 468. From September 1992 until February 1994, Great Lakes employed Shade as a deckhand. See id. at 54-55, 509-10. However, beginning in March 1994, Shade worked for Bean-Weeks. See id. at 55, 510. Great Lakes did not re-employ Shade until December 1994 for the Cape May job. See id. at 472. During trial, Shade sought to introduce evidence regarding his employment history under the Fleet Seaman Doctrine in order to satisfy the substantiality requirement of the Chandris seaman status test. Over the objection of Great Lakes, the district court permitted Shade to offer two types of prior employment evidence. First, Shade introduced a general account of his work history, with Shade testifying that he had been working on the water since 1974, see id. at 468, and had been a deckhand all my life, id. at 479, 14 and with three other witnesses testifying that Shade had been a deckhand throughout his career. See id. at 617 (testimony of Thomas E. Chandler), 660-61 (testimony of Joyner), 809 (testimony of Jackson). Second, the district court admitted specific evidence regarding Shade's work history as a deckhand for Great Lakes from September 1992 until February 1994. See id. at 54-55, 468-69, 842. In its appeal, Great Lakes maintains that it is entitled to a new trial because this prior employment evidence was not relevant to the determination of Shade's seaman status and thus should not have been admitted under Fed. R. Civ. P. 402.5 We exercise an abuse of discretion standard to review a denial of a request for a new trial based on the district court's alleged error in ruling on the admissibility of evidence. Affiliated Mfrs., Inc. v. Aluminum Co. of America, 56 F.3d 521, 525 (3d Cir. 1995) (citing Lippay v. Christos, 996 F.2d 1490, 1496 (3d Cir. 1993)). However, wherethe district court's decision rests on the application of legal precepts, we exercise plenary review. Failla v. City of Passaic, 146 F.3d 149, 153 (3d Cir. 1998). We will grant Great Lakes a new trial, because we hold that the district court abused its discretion in admitting evidence regarding Shade's prior work history.6 Even though the Fleet Seaman Doctrine permits an employee to aggregate contacts with multiple vessels, it is clear that these contacts must have occurred with vessels owned or controlled by the same employer. As the Supreme Court has stated, [c]onsidering prior employments with independent employers in making the seaman status inquiry 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 _________________________________________________________________ 5. Rule 402 provides: All relevant evidence is admissible, except as otherwise provided by the Constitution of the United States, by Act of Congress, by these rules, or by other rules prescribed by the Supreme Court, pursuant to statutory authority. Evidence which is not relevant is not admissible. 6. Arguably we should exercise plenary review on the evidence issue. Of course, if we did, we would reach the same result. Thus, we do not prejudice Shade by using an abuse of discretion standard. 15 begins.'  Harbor Tug, 117 S.Ct. at 1541 (quoting Chandris, 515 U.S. at 363, 115 S.Ct. at 2187). The Court held that without such a rule [t]here would be no principled basis for limiting which prior employments are considered for determining seaman status. Id.; see also Reeves, 26 F.3d at 1257 (rejecting an attempt to introduce evidence of a prior employment with another employer under the Fleet Seaman Doctrine because the prior employment was simply unrelated to his present job). When introducing evidence concerning his general work history, Shade and the other witnesses did not state with any specificity who employed him during his work career. However, undoubtedly at least a portion of this evidence concerned employment with employers other than Great Lakes. For instance, Shade testified that he worked for Bean-Weeks during a portion of 1994; and Shade provided evidence that out of his twenty year career, he worked for Great Lakes during the Cape May job and between September 1992 and February 1994. From this evidence, it is reasonable to conclude that this general work history evidence involved other employers beyond Great Lakes. Thus, because the evidence of Shade's general work history apparently referred to employment with independent employers, this testimony clearly was irrelevant to the determination of Shade's seaman status, and the district court abused its discretion to have permitted the jury to consider it.7 The admission of evidence concerning Shade's specific work history with Great Lakes poses a more difficult question. Typically, an employee introducing evidence of connections to other vessels in an employer's fleet under the Fleet Seaman Doctrine has worked for the same employer on a continual, uninterrupted basis. See, e.g., Braniff, 280 F.2d at 525-26. Shade's connections to other vessels in Great Lakes' fleet, however, did not concern a single employment period. Instead, Shade presented _________________________________________________________________ 7. Even if Shade's employment prior to 1992 had been with Great Lakes our result would be the same, because as we hold below, such employment evidence is not admissible if the employment relationship was not continuous. 16 evidence of two distinct employment periods with Great Lakes in order to establish a substantial connection to a vessel in navigation: his final employment with Great Lakes from December 9, 1994, until December 30, 1994, and his previous employment with the company from September 1992 until February 1994. Between these two employment periods, Shade did not work for Great Lakes, and he had no connection to Great Lakes or the vessels in itsfleet. Rather, Bean-Weeks employed him. Thus, in this unusual situation, we must determine whether the Fleet Seaman Doctrine permits Shade to aggregate his prior assignments with Great Lakes and his work for the company at the Cape May job to establish a substantial connection to a vessel in navigation, even though he was not employed continuously by Great Lakes. The Supreme Court's consideration of the substantiality prong of the Chandris seaman status test in Harbor Tug, 520 U.S. 548, 117 S.Ct. 1535, provides some guidance to resolve this issue. In that case, John Papai, an employee of Harbor Tug & Barge Company, was injured while painting a tugboat. See Harbor Tug, 117 S.Ct. at 1538. During the 2-1/4 years prior to his injury, Papai received various assignments with a number of different employers, including Harbor Tug, through a central union hiring hall. See id. at 1538. In fact, during the 2-1/2 months prior to his injury, Harbor Tug had employed Papai on 12 separate occasions. See id. at 1542. In attempt to establish a substantial connection to a vessel in navigation, Papai sought to introduce evidence of his prior employments with Harbor Tug and with other employers. See id. at 1540. After rejecting the evidence relating to other employers, the Court examined Papai's specific employments with Harbor Tug. See id. at 1542. Given the fact that Papai described a number of these jobs as non-deckhand work, the Court held that it would not be reasonable to infer that the rest of his employments with Harbor Tug were of a seagoing nature. Id. Thus, the contacts would not seem to assist Papai in establishing seaman status. More importantly, the Court stated [i]n any event, these discrete engagements were separate from the one in question, which was the sort of `transitory or sporadic' connection to a vessel or group of vessels that . . . does not qualify one for seaman status. Id. 17 (citation omitted). Thus, the Court held that these prior assignments could not be used to establish seaman status because they were separate from Papai's present employment. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has addressed this question more directly in Patton-Tully Transp. Co. v. Ratliff, 797 F.2d 206 (5th Cir. 1986). In that case, Tommy Lee Ratliff worked for Patton-Tully Transportation Company from 1979 until he quit in May 1980; but he returned to the company in September 1980 and worked there until his death in March 1981. See id. at 208. Subsequently, his mother filed a claim under the Jones Act against the company, seeking to recover damages for the death of her son. See id. at 209. In evaluating Ratliff 's seaman status, the court confronted the question of whether it should consider both periods of Ratliff 's employment with PattonTully, or whether it only should consider Ratliff 's final period of employment with the company. The court held that it should focus solely on Ratliff 's final period of employment, because the four-month hiatus in Ratliff 's employment was a significant break requiring separate evaluation of his duties during the re-employment period. Id. at 210. Thus, the court upheld the exclusion of evidence of a prior employment with the same employer, because the employee had not worked for the employer on a continuous basis. See also Reeves, 26 F.3d at 1256 (The key to the Fleet Seaman Doctrine is that the seaman maintain the employment relationship with the same employer.). Excluding such evidence is consistent with the Fleet Seaman Doctrine. Although the doctrine developed as a means to protect employees from losing seaman status when on temporary non-navigable assignments or when assignments preclude attachment to one, Reeves, 26 F.3d at 1256, the doctrine specifically excludes individuals who perform seaman's work on multiple vessels, but do so as part of their employment with multiple employers. See Harbor Tug, 117 S.Ct. at 1541. The distinction developed in part because each new assignment with a different employer is distinct from the employee's prior jobs with other employers, and [n]o principled basis existed to limit which prior employments are considered for determining 18 seaman status. Id. This distinction served the purpose of permitting employers and maritime workers alike to predict the Jones Act status of an employee based on the job for which the employer hired the individual, rather than based on the prior experiences of the employee with an independent employer. Id. Applying this rationale to a situation where an employment relationship is terminated and subsequently the employer rehires the employee, the employee's posture is more akin to those excluded by the doctrine rather than those afforded protection under it. After the termination of the employment relationship, the employee severs any duties that the employee had towards the employer with respect to the performance of the former job. The employee does not have any ongoing or regular responsibilities relating to the vessels in the former employer'sfleet. Upon being rehired, the employee does not recapture that prior relationship. Instead, the employee adopts a prospective set of duties and responsibilities that may be distinct from the employee's former performance, and the connections the employee once had to any vessels in the employer'sfleet are thus separate from the employee's new status. In effect, the employment in the new position could be considered to be for an entirely different employer, and as such, evidence of the prior employment would have no relevance to the employee's later position with the employer. Thus, we hold that evidence of an employee's prior assignment with the same employer is not admissible under the Fleet Seaman Doctrine if those assignments were not part of a continuous employment relationship between the employer and employee.8 Shade severed all ties with Great Lakes and with his prior assignments with the company by working for BeanWeeks. When Shade returned to Great Lakes after _________________________________________________________________ 8. Conceivably there could be such a short interruption in an otherwise continuous employment relationship that it might be reasonable to regard the employment as practically continuous and thus to apply the Fleet Seaman Doctrine. Here, however, the interruption was not so short, and Shade worked for Bean-Weeks in the interim. These facts preclude a finding that Great Lakes' employment of Shade was practically continuous. 19 approximately ten months, his final employment only concerned the Cape May job and his duties during that dredging operation. He had no regular responsibilities that required him to move from vessel to vessel in Great Lakes' fleet; instead, he was hired for a distinct job and only could establish a connection to vessels being used at the Cape May dredging operation. Thus, because he did not maintain a continuous employment relationship with the company, the evidence of Shade's prior employment with Great Lakes was completely irrelevant to the determination of his seaman status, and the district court abused its discretion to have admitted this prior employment history into evidence. Because the district court abused its discretion to admit Shade's prior employment history into evidence,we must reverse unless we find that its admission was harmless error. Lippay, 996 F.2d at 1500. An error is harmless if it is highly probable that the error did not substantially affect the judgment. Id. The issue of seaman status was one of the central issues at trial and was the subject of a great deal of disputed evidence. The admission of Shade's prior work history was significant, because it permitted Shade to argue to the jury that he should be considered a seaman based on the status he held during his prior employment assignments and regardless of his actual status at Cape May. During closing arguments, Shade's counsel stated: [T]he Supreme Court has said that in evaluating the status of an individual, you do not look at what he was doing on the day of the injury, or even at the time of the injury. You look at Mr. Shade's history with this company Great Lakes. And if you do that, you will know that Mr. Shade has always been a seaman for Great Lakes . . . . And you also know that while he was on the beach [at Cape May] he was called out to perform functions on the sea. That is not necessary for you to find. You can find that he wasn't, and still determine he was a seaman, because, as the records will show, he has worked for Great Lakes for over four years, every time as a seaman, as a deck hand. 20 App. at 849. Because of the centrality of the issue and the extremely prejudicial use of this evidence, we cannot say that it is highly probable that the error did not affect the verdict.9 Therefore, we will reverse the judgment and remand this matter for a new trial in a matter consistent with this opinion. A True Copy: Teste: Clerk of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit _________________________________________________________________ 9. We do not preclude admission of evidence of the character leading to the reversal here if the evidence is admitted for a purpose other than to establish an employee's seaman status. Of course, in the event that such evidence is admitted, the district court should give an appropriate instruction as to its use. 21