Court Opinion

ID: 9470921
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:20:36.623973+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:11.167037
License: Public Domain

PREGERSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. I do not read the cases relied upon by the majority to hold that a shipowner is insulated from liability simply because, in the words of the majority, it neither “helped to create the hazard” nor “voluntarily undertook a duty of inspection and breached it.”1 To the contrary, the Supreme Court in Scindia stated expressly that a shipowner has a duty to intervene when the stevedore’s continued use of defective ship’s gear is “so obviously improvident” that it presents an unreasonable risk of harm to longshoremen. 451 U.S. at 175-76, 101 S.Ct. at 1626-27. This duty, which the majority jettisons, arises despite the fact that “whether [the ship’s gear] could be safely used or whether it posed an unreasonable risk of harm to ... longshoremen was a matter of judgment committed to the stevedore in the first instance.” Id. Here, a reasonable jury could have found that the stevedore’s conduct exposed the longshoremen to such an unreasonable risk of harm that the duty to intervene imposed on the shipowner required it to remedy the dangerous condition. As the district court noted, the record contains ample evidence from which a reasonable jury could have concluded that some of the defendants had actual knowledge that Jones-Oregon, in violation of Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations, permitted its longshoremen to load logs within stanchions that were not rigged with safety nets or lines to prevent falls overboard. This strengthens the possibility that a reasonable jury could have found Jones-Oregon’s conduct “so obviously improvident” that the shipowner was dutybound to step in.
Moreover, a reasonable jury could have concluded that the shipowner, by not equipping the stanchions with permanent reach wires, failed to provide a workplace in which an experienced longshoreman could, by the exercise of reasonable care, carry on his work with reasonable safety. The defendants’ own expert witnesses stated that the dangers attending the loading of logs were well known in the industry. There was testimony that the bark of hemlock logs sheds easily and that special boots are not helpful. The fact that the stevedore put life lines in the water and stationed a boat nearby is further evidence that the workplace provided by the shipowner was unsafe because of the significant risk of longshoremen falling overboard.
I also believe that the district court improperly directed a verdict in favor of Japan Line, the time charterer. While it is true that Japan Line had no agent or employees on the scene at the time of the accident, this does not end the inquiry. Ja*1342pan Line, like the other defendants, had a duty to intervene if it could be charged with knowledge of the dangers associated with open stanchions. Since the district court found only that Japan Line had no involvement with the loading process, the issue of constructive knowledge is unresolved. Moreover, Japan Line may have been responsible for equipping the vessel and thus would have had a duty to make the vessel a safe place to work.
For these reasons I believe that the directed verdicts should be reversed.

. In Davis, there was evidence both that the ship’s crew had originally placed the gangway in a dangerous position and that the ship’s officer on duty “saw and appreciated the danger posed by the gangway.” 657 F.2d at 1052. The jury’s verdict of negligence could have been premised on either or both of these findings. Similarly, in Giii, the court found triable jury issues both in whether the shipowner was negligent in the manner in which it stowed the paper rolls and in whether the stevedore’s use of the breakout clamp was so unsafe that the shipowner “should have intervened to stop the loading operation until it could be done with reasonable safety.” 682 F.2d at 1075. Finally, in Bueno, we held only that a question of fact existed whether the shipowner had constructive knowledge of a dangerous condition on the vessel. None of these cases precludes the result that I would reach in the instant case.