Court Opinion

ID: 9448077
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:22:50.422415+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:17.207013
License: Public Domain

J. JOSEPH SMITH, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I concur in the reversal of the award for future maintenance and cure, for the reasons stated in the opinion. I also agree with the opinion on assumption of risk and responsibility for the fellow seaman’s rescue attempt.
From so much of the judgment as reverses the jury award for unseaworthiness or negligence, I respectfully dissent. As the majority points out, the crow’s nest was more than thirty feet above the ship’s deck with access to the outdoor lookout post obtainable through an internal radar tower. The straight ladder ascending the radar tower faced 180° away from the platform leading out to the crow’s nest; reaching the platform entailed the rather dangerous maneuver of transferring one foot at a time from the ladder while turning the body completely around. There was before the jury sufficient evidence, both from oral testimony and from photographs, for it to visualize the platform on and from which plaintiff fell and to determine whether some railing or hand hold in addition to the structures present was reasonably necessary for the protection of a seaman passing from the ladder to the platform in the swaying mast.
I do not believe that either the Martin or the Fatovic case stands for the blanket proposition that any and all theories of negligence and/or unseaworthiness which might touch on the broad field of “naval architecture” may be properly submitted to a jury only if supported by expert testimony. Here the potential danger was fairly obvious and a jury should be perfectly competent to decide whether the handholds furnished were sufficient to discharge the owner’s duty to provide his seamen with a safe place to work. Such a determination hardly requires expert knowledge of naval architecture,1 such as may be required to determine proper construction of deadlights, or the feasibility of a stopping arrangement to prevent a boom from swinging against a kingpost. I would approve the charge on railings or other devices and affirm the award for personal injuries and past maintenance.
On Petition for Rehearing en Banc.
The petition for rehearing en banc is denied.

. It is somewhat difficult to conceive in what way the construction of railings on an indoor platform would not be “feasible” from the standpoint of naval architeeture. If such were the case, however, it would seem more sensible to have the defendant introduce such evidence.