Opinion ID: 411725
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: fox's status under the jones act

Text: 9 The main claim in this appeal is that the district court erred as a matter of substantive admiralty law in ruling, during the early stages of trial, that Fox was not a seaman for purposes of the Jones Act. We find no theory to support a claim that Fox was a Jones Act seaman at the time of his accident, and therefore find no error in the district court's ruling, under the special standard of review given Jones Act claims under Boeing Co. v. Shipman, 411 F.2d 365 (5th Cir.1969) (en banc). 1 10
11 The test in the Fifth Circuit for seaman status under the Jones Act was first established in Offshore Co. v. Robison, 266 F.2d 769, 779 (5th Cir.1959). The basic provisions are that the injured worker must have been (1) assigned permanently to a vessel or fleet of vessels, or performing substantial work thereon, and (2) performing work that resulted in a contribution toward the accomplishment of the vessel's mission. 2 12 Setting aside temporarily the question of whether Fox was connected with a vessel at all, we must still find that Fox was not a Jones Act seaman at the time of his accident. Fox fails to meet that part of the first requirement which demands being assigned permanently to the SPARs and BARs. Robison, supra. Fox's job did deal with vessels in the Rotterdam harbor, but when the rigs left the harbor, Fox neither left with those vessels nor waited for their return. Instead, Fox was free to supervise work on whatever other assignments his employer might have had for him. Fox's contention of permanent assignment to a fleet, if accepted, would extend Jones Act coverage to every employee of a maritime company, right down to the harbor workers and even the reservations clerks for a vacation cruise line. Such an interpretation is unreasonable. 13 Alternatively, Fox argues that he met the second portion of the first requirement by performing a substantial part of his work on a fleet of vessels. His deposition testimony indicates that he spent approximately 35% of his time on vessels in dry dock or on vessel-related equipment. Yet even the majority of this work was performed on structures that were not Jones Act vessels at the time of his work. Fox's principal task was onshore supervisory work of maintenance employees. We do not suggest that supervisory personnel are never covered by the Jones Act, see Lindgren v. United States, 281 U.S. 38, 50 S.Ct. 207, 74 L.Ed. 686 (1930) (ships officers covered), but his contact was brief and sporadic. Fox was working as a troubleshooter for other harbor workers. Brief, sporadic contacts with vessels are not enough; some degree of frequency and regularity of performance must be shown. Keener v. Transworld Drilling Co., 468 F.2d 729, 732 (5th Cir.1972). We conclude Fox fails to meet the first of the two requirements for a Jones Act seaman. 14 We find that he fails to meet the second requirement as well. We find Fox's work at the time of the accident not substantially related to the tasks traditionally performed by blue water seamen. Mechanics, like welders and boilermakers, do not perform the regular ocean-related work or even the support tasks of blue water seamen. The deceased employee in Thibodeaux v. J. Ray McDermott & Co., 276 F.2d 42 (5th Cir.1960) was a welder who spent four days loading cargo aboard a flat-deck unmanned barge, the McDermott Tidelands No. 5. Of a claim to Jones Act status, we stated: 15 Here the decedent fails on many scores. He was a regular shore worker. He lived, ate and slept at home. He was not attached or assigned to any particular vessel either as a member of the crew or otherwise. His customary duties were in welding and cutting on vessels under construction, conversion or outfitting. His relation to the barge McDermott No. 5 was purely transitory--both in point of work to be done and the time of its duration. He was to weld to enable proper securing of cargo for the intended ocean voyage. None of the workers engaged in loading and securing the cargo either were to, or could, make the voyage on this unmanned barge. 16