Opinion ID: 727303
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Resolving This Case

Text: 42 We agree with the Fifth Circuit, for similar reasons, that the duties of care described in Scindia should be applied in dual capacity cases insofar as the facts allow. To do so, a court may have to divide the employer-shipowner into a hypothetical independent employer and independent vessel owner, each separately holding the duties allocated under principles suggested in Scindia. A court may sometimes be assisted in this process by the defendant's internal employment arrangements assigning certain personnel to the vessel side of its operation. On occasion, however, the duties and work arrangements pertaining to a suing harbor worker may be so foreign to those in Scindia 's stevedoring context that Scindia 's analysis will become no more than a point of departure. Nonetheless, Scindia 's general approach, at least, can be followed and, in many cases, some or all of its express analysis may be useable. 43 The statutory language and the legislative history of the 1972 and 1984 Amendments plainly evidence Congress' intent that the worker's compensation scheme be the primary remedy for all covered workers, regardless of an employer's commercial practice in regard to vessel ownership. See 33 U.S.C. § 905(a) (exclusiveness of employer's liability); 1984 U.S.C.C.A.N. at 2740 (In the Committee's view, the Longshore Act should be the primary source of compensation for covered workers who are disabled or who may die as a result of a job-related injury or disease.) (emphasis supplied); H.R.Rep. No. 92-1441, 92d Cong., 2d Sess., reprinted in 1972 U.S.C.C.A.N. 4698, 4705 ([T]he bill provides in the case of a longshoreman who is employed directly by the vessel there will be no action for damages if the injury was caused by the negligence of persons engaged in performing longshoring services.... The Committee's intent is that the same principles should apply in determining liability of the vessel which employs its own longshoremen ... as apply when an independent contractor employs such persons.) (emphasis supplied). The 1972 Amendments carefully balanced the concerns of employers, vessels, and covered workers. We are not disposed to upset that balance by expanding the liability of employers that act simultaneously as vessel owners, when the statute does not call for such a reading and the Supreme Court has cautioned against it. 44 As already observed, Scindia will sometimes afford less direct guidance on those duties owed to harbor workers than it does on those owed to longshore workers. Courts will need to decide, on a case-specific basis, whether the harbor worker's employment arrangement sufficiently resembles that in Scindia to make particular specifics germane. 45 Here, the employment arrangement is sufficiently analogous to make Scindia a useful guide. The Scindia Court reasoned that once longshore workers came aboard and began carrying out their cargo duties under a stevedore's supervision, the vessel itself had no general duty to exercise reasonable care to inspect for unsafe workplace conditions; rather, it could rely on the longshore worker's employer to do so. See Scindia, 451 U.S. at 172, 101 S.Ct. at 1624-25. Here, A-K hired harbor workers through the local carpenters' union and, as their employer, supervised them as they tended the barges, handling the lines and carrying out construction activities thereon. Both types of activities--construction and scowmen's work--were assigned to them and were performed for A-K qua employer. Workers like Morehead received their daily instructions from A-K's carpenter-foremen, while A-K's project safety manager met periodically with them to discuss site-specific safety issues. Therefore, Scindia 's principle of limited liability of the vessel sensibly and logically applies, because the employees effectively assumed control of the barges working under A-K in its capacity as their employer. A-K qua shipowner had no separate captain and crew assigned to the barge. The allegedly negligent conditions (the open hatch and the absence of warnings) were not attributable to the errors of separate maritime agents acting specifically for the vessel. Rather the alleged acts of negligence were those of fellow harbor workers acting within the scope of their daily employment for the employer. Cf. 33 U.S.C. § 905(b) (prohibiting liability of an employer-vessel owner for acts caused by the negligence of persons engaged in providing stevedoring services to the vessel). 46 Morehead does not assert any breach of the Scindia turnover duty (e.g., that A-K, as vessel owner, turned over the barge to the harbor workers knowing or with the duty to have known, of some defect in the barge that later caused injury). Morehead argues only that we should deem that A-K as vessel violated duties it owed him because, at the time he was injured, A-K as vessel (rather than A-K as employer) is asserted to have had active control over or actual knowledge of the open hatch. Cf. Howlett, 512 U.S. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2063 (noting appellant confined arguments to breach of turnover duty to warn); Elberg, 967 F.2d at 1150 (noting appellant confined arguments to breach of duty to intervene). Equating employment for worker's compensation purposes solely with construction activity, he asserts that no construction purpose, hence no employment purpose, was being pursued at the time of his injury. He draws support from the district court's findings that the barges were set alongside the pier and were not carrying construction equipment. Morehead emphasizes that A-K had instructed Breault to open the hatch to air the barge out so that A-K could exercise what Morehead argues was a vessel function--having a marine surveyor examine the barge before returning it to the owner. He further claims that A-K's safety manager or other carpenter foremen knew or should have known that the open hatch was a potentially hazardous condition. Resting on purported agency principles, Morehead asks us to assign these employees' acts to A-K in its vessel capacity, on the theory that A-K in its vessel rather than employer capacity had control over or knowledge of the open hatch and the failure to warn about it. 47 A-K responds that Breault was performing employment duties when he opened the hatch and when he threw the line to Morehead before the accident. Like Morehead, Breault had been hired both for carpenter and scowman duties. As typical in the case of harbor workers, as distinct from land-based carpenters, the men were expected as part of their employment duties to lend a hand with supporting maritime chores as well as to pursue their particular construction trade. A-K maintains that its active control over or knowledge about the open hatch into which Morehead fell is therefore attributable to it as employer, not as vessel since the hatch was opened (presumably by Breault) and the line thrown in the course of harbor worker duties which both men were regularly hired to perform. 48 We agree with A-K that, for present purposes, the barges tended by its carpenters/scowmen were operated within A-K's control and knowledge qua employer. The barges, which were Breault and Morehead's workplace, can be analogized to the areas of a vessel taken over by longshore workers in the Scindia setting. Under the principles of that case, the stevedore--or, in a dual capacity case, the employer in a stevedore capacity--is ordinarily liable for the safety of the workplace and for any injuries that occur. The vessel, or the employer in its vessel capacity, is not implicated except in the unusual circumstance that the vessel itself continues to exercise active control over the work area. 49 We recognize that a competing analysis is possible, which, however, we reject. A court could make an attempt to ascribe Breault's and Morehead's specific activities relative to Morehead's injury either to their employer or to the vessel, depending on how the court chose to classify the objectives that those activities were thought to serve. One could inquire whether the hatch was opened to help the vessel (i.e., to air it in preparation for returning it to the owner) rather than in furtherance of some construction activity. If so, the defendant qua vessel might be held liable for any negligence. Such an analysis, however, would involve courts in slippery semantical debate. Is an accident while tying up a barge at a construction site in furtherance of a construction objective or a vessel objective? If both objectives are being served, which predominates? And how does one square the fact that the employees here were hired by the employer for scowmen not just carpenter duties? Harbor workers are, after all, by definition, employees whose paid duties include maritime components. 50 As noted, the statute makes the employer's worker's compensation liability exclusive and in place of all other liability.... 33 U.S.C. § 905(a). The legislative history and the Court's precedents since 1972 make worker's compensation the primary remedy for an injured employee. The exception in section 905(b) for third-party negligence, narrowed in 1984, 16 explicitly requires a finding of vessel fault. We would be disregarding Congressional intent and might even be returning in the direction of the Sieracki doctrine which did not require such a showing, see supra n. 6, if we were to attribute some of the regular duties that a harbor worker is employed to perform to the vessel, because of their speculative seaman-like character, and only the residue to the employer. This approach would greatly expand a defendant's liability qua vessel in a work arrangement not too different from that in Scindia, i.e., one where the employees have effectively taken over the vessel to carry out their employment duties under their employer's supervision. A similar expansion of liability would follow from too easily assigning any knowledge acquired by A-K employees in the regular course of employment (such as the carpenter foremen or worksite safety manager) to A-K in a vessel capacity. Neither the statute nor case law supports such an approach, which, on the present facts, would leave this worker's compensation statute as a strange hybrid combining mandated compensation coverage with a widespread license for covered employees to sue because of the negligence of their supervisors and fellow employees within the workplace. 51 One of the essential purposes of the 1972 and 1984 Amendments was to provide employees and employers with a greater degree of certainty as to the coverage in effect. The legislative history of the 1984 Amendments documents this concern: 52 [T]he situation in which a worker may be covered at one time, and not covered at another, depending on the nature of the work which the worker is performing at the time of the injury must be avoided since such a result would be enormously destabilizing, and would thus defeat one of the essential purposes of these amendments. 53 1984 U.S.C.C.A.N. at 2736-2737. A functional interpretation, hinging the type of liability on the nature and purpose of the duties being performed by covered employees at any given time, would increase uncertainty and the frequency of disputes over the scope of coverage. As Morehead's and Breault's employment contemplated that they would alternate frequently between construction and linehandling, a single, overall classification of their duties is most appropriate for determining the types of remedies available. Cf. Gay, 915 F.2d at 1011 ([T]o deny Gay [the employee] a cause of action in the morning but to grant him one in the afternoon is to make his rights under the Act as random and indiscriminate as the sea herself. This sort of incertitude is precisely what Congress attempted to eliminate from the LHWCA in both its 1972 and 1984 amendments.) (footnote omitted); cf. Chandris, --- U.S. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 2187 (In evaluating the employment-related connection of a maritime worker to a vessel in navigation, courts should not employ 'a snapshot test for seaman status, inspecting only the situation as it exists at the instant of injury'.... [A] worker may not oscillate back and forth between Jones Act coverage and other remedies depending on the activity in which the worker was engaged while injured.) (citations omitted). 54 Cases will, of course, arise from time to time involving an injury that was negligently caused by someone acting as the agent of the vessel owner rather than of the employer. 17 Here, however, we see nothing requiring the district court to find that Breault, in leaving open the hatch, acted in any capacity other than as Morehead's fellow employee pursuing assigned harbor worker duties rather than as A-K's agent in its distinct shipowner's capacity. Morehead and Breault were hired to perform both construction and scowmen duties. A carpenter-supervisor instructed Breault to open the hatch. A-K's project safety manager generally oversaw the safety of work operations. Morehead has not shown why, in these circumstances, A-K in its distinct capacity as owner of the vessel rather than as his employer, may have breached a duty of care to protect him against the open hatch. 55 We conclude that the district court correctly viewed the open hatch as a condition temporarily created by A-K as employer, and affirm the district court's judgment in favor of A-K. 56 So ordered. 57