Court Opinion

ID: 9478476
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:50:00.575685+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:26.971582
License: Public Domain

EDITH H. JONES, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. The majority have, in my view, not only decided this case incorrectly but have inexplicably gone out of their way to overrule a prior controlling opinion of this court. They have thus confused an area of law that our earlier opinion Pizzitolo v. Electro-Coal Transfer Corp., 812 F.2d 977 (5th Cir.1987), sought to clarify.
The issue here is whether a would-be offshore construction worker, who spent the bulk of his employment with the defendants repairing barges after Louisiana offshore drilling declined, can transform himself into a seaman. By so doing, he can avail himself of a Jones Act remedy for his injury rather than that explicitly provided to shipbuilders and ship repairmen under the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act (LHWCA). In Pizzitolo, we acknowledged, and the majority purport to *353agree, that ship repairers and harbor workers covered exclusively under the LHWCA may not take advantage of the Jones Act seaman’s remedy. Coverage by these statutes is mutually exclusive. Pizzitolo, 812 F.2d at 979; see also Balfer v. Mayronne Mud & Chemical Co., 762 F.2d 432 (5th Cir.1985); Bouvier v. Krenz, 702 F.2d 89 (5th Cir.1983).
The majority, however, go on to “refuse to extend [Pizzitolo ] beyond its holding.” Their euphemism is transparent. They contend that the Robison1 analysis must be applied to determine whether a plaintiff is covered by the LHWCA rather than the Jones Act or maritime law. Pizzitolo clearly disagrees:
Because coverage under the Jones Act and the LHWCA is mutually exclusive, this argument [that Robison must be applied] assumes that Pizzitolo is not covered by the LHWCA. For reasons that follow, we conclude that this premise cannot stand; Pizzitolo is covered by the LHWCA and is not a member of the crew of a vessel.
812 F.2d at 979. The majority may claim to be harmonizing Pizzitolo with Robison; if so, they have struck the wrong chord.
The majority read the applicable statute differently than Pizzitolo, for they contend that the 1972 amendments to the LHWCA “did not implicate the distinction between harbor workers and seamen.” They go on to say, “Neither the text nor the history of the 1972 amendment to the LHWCA require this circuit to reconsider its application of the Robison test to determine the status of workers who might arguably be either seamen or shore-bound.” Pizzitolo, however, described the 1972 amendment as
expressly providing] coverage for employees engaged in certain occupations including longshoremen, shipbuilders, ship repairers and ship-breakers_ Congress could hardly have made it clearer that it intended to afford complete coverage to employees engaged in the occupations enumerated in the Act so long as the location of the injury met the situs test_ Given the explicit coverage of workmen engaged in the enumerated occupations, we reject the notion that Congress could have intended to exclude them from the benefits of the LHWCA as members of the crew of a vessel.
812 F.2d at 982-83 (emphasis added).
Finally, the majority conclude that Pizzi-tolo may only be applied where as a matter of law, whether by summary judgment or judgment n.o.v., a plaintiff cannot prove himself a seaman according to the Robison test. Pizzitolo said precisely the opposite:
In sum, we hold that because longshoremen, shipbuilders and ship repairers are engaged in occupations enumerated in the LHWCA, they are unqualifiedly covered by that Act if they meet the Act’s situs requirements; coverage of these workmen by the LHWCA renders them ineligible for consideration as seamen or members of the crew of a vessel entitled to claim the benefits of the Jones Act.
The conflict between the majority’s holding and the rationale of Pizzitolo could hardly be more pronounced. As a matter of circuit law, their approach is incorrect, indeed extraordinary. One panel of our court is not authorized to construe another panel’s opinion in a way deliberately eschewed by the prior panel. If a panel majority seriously disagrees with a prior decision or finds it in irreconcilable conflict with other circuit authority, the panel must urge en banc reconsideration. Fed.R.App.Proc. 35. See, e.g., Johnson v. Moral, 843 F.2d 846 (5th Cir.), reh’g en banc granted, 843 F.2d 849 (1988). Not to follow this established procedure breaches the integrity of our circuit’s law.
The majority decline to request an en banc ruling based on their conclusion that Pizzitolo conflicts with earlier decisions of our court and, as a rogue precedent, cannot be followed. I disagree with this characterization for two reasons. First, Pizzitolo has not been perceived by subsequent panels of our court as creating an intra-circuit conflict, and it has been followed and ap*354plied in at least three published opinions.2 Second, although some pre-Pizzitolo cases, cited by the majority, applied Robison to distinguish between workers covered by LHWCA and seamen, none of those cases undertook to analyze Robison’s potential shortcomings for this task, and most of them reached a result consistent with Piz-zitolo.
If, despite Pizzitolo, we were free to address de novo the proper method for distinguishing workers covered by the LHWCA from seamen, I would disagree with the result reached by the majority. Robison is overinclusive as regards harbor-based workers. Barrett v. Chevron U.S.A., Inc., 781 F.2d 1067, 1072-74 (5th Cir.1986) (en banc). The majority’s reliance upon the magistrate’s fact-findings in light of Robison demonstrates this problem. They acknowledge that Legros “did work on the barges while they were moored, but they were being prepared to travel elsewhere on navigable waters.... Legros’ work refitting and occasionally moving the barges contributed to their functioning, while his various maintenance tasks clearly contributed to the barges’ ‘operation or welfare.’ ” The record indicates that Leg-ros’s precise work included removing and installing equipment, chipping, painting, swabbing the decks and occasionally piloting the barges around the docks. Such duties may satisfy the Robison test for a maritime worker who is not a harbor-worker, but they may also be performed by a shore-based shipbuilder or ship repairer, like Legros, who never set foot on a voyage while employed by the defendants. Because Legros performed all the jobs enumerated by the majority while the barges were moored; because he never embarked on them for a voyage; and because he ate or slept on the vessels fortuitously as they were tied up at the docks (after he had driven too far from home on a given day to return conveniently), he, like Pizzitolo, is basically a harbor-worker as defined by the LHWCA.
Pizzitolo, echoing the command of Congress, forbids transforming a shipbuilder, ship repairer or ship-breaker into a seaman by selectively characterizing his duties. It was not Pizzitolo but Congress which determined that harbor workers should receive a different mode of workmen’s compensation than seamen. It does not fulfill Congressional intent to hold, with the majority, that only if one does not fulfill the Robison test of seaman status is he relegated to the LHWCA. The objectives of Pizzitolo and Congress are accomplished by considering first whether the employee is a harbor-based employee covered by the LHWCA. See Williams v. Weber Management Services, Inc., 839 F.2d 1039, 1040 (5th Cir.1987). If the harbor-based activities are interspersed with duties away from the harbor, however, the seagoing duties may be sufficient to present an issue of fact as to which compensation scheme applies. The effect of Pizzitolo is not to force seamen into the compensation program provided for harbor-workers, but to prevent harbor-workers from always asserting seamen’s status. By the same token, Pizzitolo protects the right of harbor-workers to the LHWCA compensation scheme specifically afforded by Congress.
Analyzing whether Legros was a seagoing or harbor-based worker, as Pizzitolo requires, the result is at odds with the majority’s conclusion that he is a “seaman.” Legros described himself in his testimony as basically a repairman and supervisor. He acknowledged that although he piloted boats or barges for Panther on occasion, such occasions occurred very irregularly and were not part of his permanent job. Most of the time, he was inspecting and repairing, and all but one or two of the barges he worked on were tied at the dock. His time and gasoline records reflect considerable onshore effort simply travelling among the Louisiana coastal towns where Panther barges required repair or specialized fitting.
In sum, the majority have no warrant to confine to its facts, in effect to overrule, a prior opinion of our court. Applying Pizzi-tolo in this case, as we must do, I would reject Legros’s claims to be a seaman and *355would remit him to LHWCA compensation coverage, which is-- unquestionably available.
I therefore respectfully dissent.

. Offshore Co. v. Robison, 266 F.2d 769 (5th Cir.1959).

. Thibodeaux v. Torch, Inc., 858 F.2d 1048 (5th Cir.1988); Williams v. Weber Management Services, Inc., 839 F.2d 1039, 1040 (5th Cir.1987); Leonard v. Dixie Well Service & Supply, Inc., 828 F.2d 291 (5th Cir.1987).
Our court stated in Leonard:
Following the Pizzitolo analysis, the traditional tests for seaman status become 'unnecessary' only when the 'employee is engaged in an occupation expressly enumerated in the [Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation] Act.’
828 F.2d at 296 (emphasis added).