Court Opinion

ID: 9474555
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:01:20.819151+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:10.563109
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Chief Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
The majority’s discussion of jurisdiction leaves me with considerable doubt, but assuming the § 905(b) action against Diamond M was properly before the district court, no cause of action was proven. I respectfully dissent from that part of the majority opinion that affirms the resulting judgment of $1,031,015.
The unseaworthiness-indemnity circle created by Sieracki/Ryan subjected an employer who provided LHWCA coverage to both compensation payments and tort remedies. According to Scindia, in 1972 Congress “radically changed this scheme of things,” and in doing so, provided a § 905(b) statutory right of action against a vessel for negligence. At the time of Richendollar’s accident, the statutory right of action was limited thus:
If [plaintiff] was employed by the vessel to provide ship building or repair services, no such action shall be permitted if *589the injury was caused by the negligence of persons engaged in providing shipbuilding or repair services to the vessel. The majority relies on Pichoff from this
circuit and Smith from the second Circuit to affirm a right of tort recovery against Diamond M, an employer who has already paid Richendollar $86,024 in LHWCA coverage. Both Pichoff and Smith are distinguishable in theory and in fact. The majority violates the exclusive remedy provision of the LHWCA when it fails to observe those distinctions here. The statutory remedy created under § 905(b) is a third party remedy. A principal purpose of the 1972 LHWCA amendments was to control tort recoveries against employers who provided compensation protection. That purpose is thwarted in this case.
Smith allowed a third party remedy against a vessel in a case in which the shipowner-employer also undertook to provide repair services with its own employees. In Smith, the president of the company that owned the vessel and employed the drowned diver was personally in charge of the repair operation which resulted in the diver’s death. The Second Circuit observed, “[T]he key issue is whether the shipowner’s employees who were at fault committed the negligent act in their capacity as agents of the vessel on the one hand or as employees performing ... repair services on the other.” The appellate court reversed the trial court’s determination that all persons present at the scene of the fatal dive were engaged in the “single mission” of repair service. This reversal was based on the fact that the company president was in charge of the repairs and equally in charge of the vessel’s normal operations. The failure of the vessel to provide the diver a safe place to work was not “at any time delegated to employees acting primarily as repairmen.”
Based on Smith, this circuit in Pichoff affirmed a trial court finding that the vessel owner’s general manager of all New Orleans yard operations was acting to further the corporate concern as vessel charterer when he ordered Pichoff to hurry his inspection work. Thus, the court observed it was rational and defensible to conclude that the general manager’s negligence was at least partly in his capacity as representative of the vessel owner and separate in identity from his capacity as supervisor of the repair work that injured Pichoff.
Neither Smith nor Pichoff apply here. Harrelson, the person in charge of the small group of employees that included Richendollar, was no more than a fellow servant. He was engaged in precisely the same limited single venture: “rigging up” the DON E. McMAHON. Employees of Diamond M were working on a structure standing on blocks on dry land. While the thing they were working on was classed as a vessel for some purposes, it was, as the majority observed, not capable of navigation; therefore Harrelson could not have been in charge of its navigation. More significantly, Harrelson was not in charge of any operation of the DON E. McMAHON other than the “rigging up,” nor was he representing Diamond M in any other capacity. He was employed by Diamond M solely to make the DON E. McMAHON functional. He was, indeed, set to accomplish a single mission, and Richendollar was engaged in that exact mission.
The sine qua non of § 905(b) statutory liability for vessel negligence is the presence of a vessel which admiralty regards as a separate entity distinct from its owner. Here, no such third entity existed. No president, no general manager acted for the DON E. McMAHON in ordering or permitting Richendollar to perform his work in an unsafe manner or at an unsafe place. No vessel negligence occurred. Harrelson’s fault was the fault of a fellow shipbuilder or rigger-upper, if you will. Such negligence cannot be imputed to Diamond M under § 905(b).