Court Opinion

ID: 9494360
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:36:18.054589+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:22.396823
License: Public Domain

BOGGS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the court’s opinion in this case, because the DOT training program was not, in any relevant sense, Diamond Jo’s agent in providing the facilities and parking lot in which Ms. Ran-nals’s accident occurred. The court acknowledges that Diamond Jo was not directly negligent, in any way, in choosing the United States DOT training program, or in subsidizing Rannals’s attendance. Under the law that applied to it, the law of Ohio, DOT also was not negligent in providing the parking lot and in not preventing the natural accumulation of snow and ice. Thus, all of the relevant parties'— omitting any mention of plaintiff Ran-nals — were acting non-negligently under any law of which they had notice. Under admiralty law, as well as ordinary tort principles, no liability should attach to the M/V Diamond Jo.
The cases primarily relied on by the court are fully distinguishable, because they involve third parties performing the “operational .activities” of the ship, a term of art under FELA and the Jones Act. See Thomas J. Sghoenbaum, 1 AdmiRalty AND MaRitime Law § 6-21 (3d ed.2001). Shipowners are under a duty to provide medical care to seamen, and if they hire someone to perform their own duties, it is reasonable to impute any negligence to them, so that they cannot avoid their liabilities by outsourcing provision of mandatory services. For the same reason, such agents should be held to the same standard of care. Empey is equally distinguishable on this ground, because the railroad was required by statute to provide housing for its off-duty employees. See Empey v. Grand Trunk Western R.R. Co., *454869 F.2d 293, 294 (6th Cir.1989). For similar reasons, the law does not allow evasion of Congressional protection by having employees carry out the “operational activities” of the employer on the premises of another. Sinkler v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 356 U.S. 326, 332, 78 S.Ct. 758, 2 L.Ed.2d 799 (1958).
With regard to training at the DOT facility, however, the situation is much different, and both law and policy counsel a different result. Diamond Jo was simply taking advantage of a DOT program provided to shipowners generally — it was not using the DOT to carry out its operational activities, nor did it have a duty to provide this training to low-level employees (a duty that carries with it the concomitant duty of non-negligent provision). Similarly, the activities of Ms. Rannals or the other trainees were not “operational” because they were not imposed as duties of employment (indeed, the accident did not even occur in the course of the training itself). The employer did not require the fire safety training any more than it might have “required” attendance at the merchant marine academy, or a Master’s license, for even higher positions on the ship than the one sought by Rannals.
Even when an employee is acting within the scope of his employment, he is not necessarily at his “workplace.” And while a Jones Act employer has extensive liability, it is not an absolute insurer for everything that may happen to an employee off of the employer’s premises. When the employee is not engaged in “operational activities,” the employer’s duty to provide a reasonably safe place to work does not reach further than the ship, the employee’s usual location of work, and the means of egress and ingress to those locations. 1 Admiralty § 6-21, at 325. Although I have been unable to identify a case that extends employer liability as far as the court has done here, a somewhat similar situation was presented by Salamon v. M/V Poling Bros. No. 11, Inc. 751 F.Supp. 343 (E.D.N.Y.1990). Salamon was the ship’s cook, and left the vessel to obtain groceries in order to prepare the evening mess. He traveled down the dock some 300 feet to the stair, where he slipped and fell. Id. at 344. Salamon’s Jones Act negligence claim survived a motion for summary judgment, but only because the cook had to use that exit to fulfill his responsibilities, the officers of the ship were familiar with dark stairway, and it was “only some 300 feet away.” The court made clear that “it would be unreasonable to impose a duty on Poling to inspect plaintiffs route all the way to the grocery store and back and to take precautions over the entire way.” Id. at 345.
Not one of the conditions deemed relevant in Salamon pertains in this case. Rannals was not fulfilling a “responsibility,” the ship had no possible notice of the conditions, and Rannals was several thousand times further away from her ship than Salamon was from his. We should not impose an “unreasonable” duty not only to inspect the entire route, but also to require the shipowner to inspect the grocery store as well (where the ship might well have “contracted” for supplies). Certainly, the distance of the “store” and any familiarity the ship’s master or owner might have with it cannot be simply irrelevant to what employer precautions are deemed “reasonable” (i.e., are cost-justified). Moreover, under the court’s theory, as between the seaman picking up supplies and his ship, the safety condition of the store would not be judged under the well-developed state law on slip-and-fall, but under the more exacting standards of the Jones Act. As in this case, such a “duty” bids fair to allow a negligence action to proceed-despite the absence of any negligence.
*455I
Our standard of review in this case is the normal one applicable to summary judgment. Gautreaux v. Scurlock Marine, Inc., 107 F.3d 331, 335 (5th Cir.1997) (en banc), makes clear that although the requirement of proximate cause is loosened for seamen, they retain the burden of producing sufficient evidence for a rational trier of fact to find in their favor under this relaxed standard. The district court in this case, as well as our opinion, accepts Gautreaux. This makes clear that all our statements about relaxing the plaintiffs burden have solely to do with the level of causation, and not with the quantum of evidence of that minimal causation that the plaintiff must produce to survive summary judgment.
As there is no evidence of direct negligence, plaintiffs claim must proceed under a theory of imputation. Two possible bases for imputing liability in these circumstances were discussed in Empey. See Consolidated Rail Corp. v. Ford Motor Co., 751 F.Supp. 674, 679 (E.D.Mich.1990) (noting that the “Sixth Circuit’s discussion of imputed liability in Empey appears to recognize two bases for such liability”). On the one hand there are Sinkler agency cases, on the other hand, there is the employer’s own non-delegable duty to provide a safe workplace. The court’s opinion discusses both theories, but without showing that Rannals has stated a claim under either. See, e.g., supra at 451, in which the court states that Diamond Jo is responsible for “the negligence of its agent, in this case, the training center[,]” but then immediately turns to a discussion of Diamond Jo’s alleged breach of its own duty to provide a safe workplace.
The Department of Transportation is not the agent of Diamond Jo Casino. “The law of agency is fully applicable in admiralty.” 1 AdmiRAlty § 5-2, at 175. As the court is fully aware, the mere fact that a contract exists between two parties does not make one the agent of the other. And although an employer may be liable for the negligence of its independent contractor under the Jones Act, it has never been suggested that the mere existence of a contractual relationship with the employer mandates indirect liability. The DOT provided a service to Rannals, subsidized in her case by Diamond Jo, but did not thereby become Diamond Jo’s agent (or that of any of the other similarly situated shipowners), because it was not performing any duties or operations of the vessel. Sinkler and its progeny do not allow an agency to be created where neither party had the intent to create one.
Although the court continually calls the DOT Diamond Jo’s agent, it fundamentally appears to rely on the duty of a FELA/ Jones Act employer to provide a safe “workplace.” This requires showing that not only was Rannals “working” but that she was at a “workplace,” which are not the same thing. As seaman Salamon was walking along the dock, one could argue he was still at his “workplace,” 751 F.Supp. at 345, but the Salamon court did not suggest that the store where he was going was equally his workplace. In Empey, where the hotel was an integral part of the defendant’s operation by providing housing, it was plausible to include it as part of the workplace. By contrast, if payment of tuition can establish the individual is working at a workplace, then a college or maritime academy where the employee is sent (or, apparently, chooses to go) would also create liability for the employer.
Even if we should consider the parking lot of the school to be a workplace, our precedents would not require abrogation of all common-law defenses of the third party to negligence under the Shenker/Empey workplace doctrine. The citation of the *456Chesapeake case, supra at 452, regards direct liability of the employer. There are two ways that the employer can breach his duty to provide a safe workplace on the premises of others. He can be on notice of an unsafe condition and fail to take reasonable care. He is stripped of his common-law defense if he breaches this duty. However, the court agrees this situation does not pertain, making Chesapeake only indirectly relevant. If instead the breach of the duty occurs through imputation, it is less clear that common-law defenses are irrelevant. Combining the two doctrines (for which the court has no obvious precedent) is unwarranted and pernicious. If the third party is in compliance with its jurisdiction’s common-law negligence rules, the ship will be unable to maintain a subsequent action against that third party. Any attempt by either the third party or the ship to monitor the third party-where operational activities are not implicated-would be prohibitively cumbersome, particularly given the requirement that the shipowner be aware of the differing standards of care prevailing wherever it does business.1
Assuming that under Empey, and favorably construing the facts, Rannals could be found to be acting within the scope of her employment, this only adds to the irony of the court’s conclusion. Apparently, if Diamond Jo had given Dawn Rannals no wages during her week in Toledo and refused to pay her tuition or travel expenses, the court would not hold Diamond Jo liable for this accident. The court punishes Diamond Jo in the name of safety for subsidizing the safety training of its employees and for its investment in the greater safety of the vessel and the employee’s fellow seamen.
Because there is no negligence by Diamond Jo, and because DOT was not the ship’s agent under Sinkler, Diamond Jo can only be liable for failure to provide a “safe workplace.” It is unreasonable to construe the school as a “workplace” and even if it were so construed, whether it is “safe” should not be assessed under the Jones Act rules, but rather by the standard of care of which the third party was aware. The court’s rule allows recovery where no party has been negligent under the law as it could be known to them. Diamond Jo is aware of the Jones Act rules on negligence, and it abided by them. DOT was aware of Ohio’s rules of negligence, and it abided by them. Had DOT actually accepted the role of an agent of a Jones Act employer, it should be deemed to be governed by FELA rules, but otherwise it should not lose the defenses on which it reasonably relied, and which Diamond Jo had no notice were inapplicable. I respectfully dissent.

. Even supposing that there were the need to create a hybrid rule of imputed liability in order to assist Jones Act plaintiffs, the court's would seem a poor one. A better alternative, one equally consistent with admiralty precedent and policies, would allow the seaman to maintain an action against his employer if the third party would be negligent under the local standards. This allows immediate recovery by the employee, without the necessity of his proceeding in an inconvenient and foreign forum, but it eventually shifts the cost to the responsible party, rather than leaving the employer "holding the bag" as absolute insurer. Further, it better balances state and federal interests involved in a choice of law. See Steelmet, Inc. v. Caribe Towing, 779 F.2d 1485, 1488 (11th Cir.1986) (stating that if "there is an admiralty-state conflict, comparative interest must be considered”). The court's rule provides an incentive for shipowners to attempt to compel all those with whom they do business to adhere to federal standards of care, in derogation of the laws of the several states.