Court Opinion

ID: 9470988
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:22:48.820642+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:13.720153
License: Public Domain

JERRE S. WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The district court granted a summary judgment holding that Curtis Coulter was a seaman at the time of his injury. This judgment entitled him to sue Texaco under the Jones Act and general maritime law for his injury. The parties have indicated oral argument is not necessary and they wish to submit the case on the briefs. Local Rules 28.2.4, 34.8.
Coulter is an oilfield roustabout. He worked at an oil rig located on land in a marshy area in Louisiana. Because the rig was located on an island, he was brought to and from the location by boat. During his seven day tour of duty he stayed in barracks located on land in the Lafitte field where the rig was located. He was injured *470on the land while working at his assigned tasks in connection with the drilling operation.
He claims seaman status because a vessel is used by the company to aid in the drilling of the well. It brought workers and supplies, and it moored nearby the drilling rig. The evidence indicates that some of the work involving the drilling takes place on the vessel, and that Coulter worked on the vessel from time to time. There is even evidence that he was actually assigned tasks from time to time in cleaning up on the vessel and doing maintenance jobs on it, just as a roustabout would be assigned cleanup jobs and maintenance jobs around a drilling rig.
It is not my contention that Coulter lacks the status of seaman. My contention is that it was error to grant a summary judgment on these facts. We have spoken many times on these matters. It is well established that summary judgment on seaman status is rarely proper, and even marginal cases should go to the jury. Bouvier v. Krenz, 702 F.2d 89, 90 (5th Cir.1983).
In using the test set out in Offshore Co. v. Robison, 266 F.2d 769, 779 (5th Cir.1959), the majority of the Court in upholding the summary judgment is guilty of an approach which was the subject of specific disapproval in the Bouvier case. In that case we said:
All of these formulations (of the Offshore test) express basically the same idea, and are not to be applied mechanically, but rather used as a guide in weighing the total circumstances of an individual’s employment to determine whether they had sufficient nexus with the navigation of vessels and the perils attendant thereon to implicate the concerns of the Jones Act. See Davis v. Hill Engineering, Inc., 549 F.2d 314 (5th Cir.1977); Brown v. ITT, Rayonier, Inc., 497 F.2d 234 (5th Cir.1974). (702 F.2d at 90).
This weighing of the total circumstances is for the jury in all but the most obvious and certain case. With the injury on land of an oilfield roustabout working at the rig on land, the conclusion must be that there is need to submit the issue of his claimed seaman status to the jury. Relying wholly upon the fact that he sometimes works on a vessel which is used in aid of the land-based drilling operation is a denial of the proper role of the jury in these cases. The vessel was simply an adjunct to a land-based drilling operation to which he was assigned, and the fact that he was used from time to time on the vessel did not change the real possibility that his basic status was that of a land-based oilfield roustabout.
It is the failure of the proper submission of this issue to a jury which compels me to dissent.