Summary judgment can seem like a punishment to the defeated party. Because of the final nature of these judgments, appellate courts review them de novo. This standard of review grants the appellate court the ability to look at the entire record in the court below. The Bates family experienced an…
Kerry Becnel was injured while working on a barge, but his relationship with the vessel is not clear cut, making it difficult to determine whether he was a seaman under the federal Jones Act. In Becnel v. Chet Morrison, Inc., No. 2010-CA-1411 (La. Ct. App. 4 Cir. 8/31/11), the Louisiana…
As part of our Constitutional right to due process, an individual is allowed to bring grievances before a court. However, certain judicial policies may be enacted to deny plaintiffs from bringing suits that have already been litigated, are being brought with the intent to harass, or are frivolous. The purpose…
The following case highlights the importance of waiting no time in bringing a cause of action that is available. In 2008, Debra Goulas worked as a bookkeeper for Sunbelt Air Conditioning Supply in Baton Rouge. Jessie Touchet, owner of Sunbelt, and Diane Jones, Goulas’s manager, accused her of stealing over…
In a recent Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, a plaintiff successfully appealed an earlier dismissal of his case for failure to properly serve all of the correct parties. After Hurricane Gustav, Mr, Preston was working on the Southern University campus removing debris, including trimming tree branches, when he…
Transferring from the deck of your boat to an offshore platform in the Gulf of Mexico to begin your day’s work should not be a terrifying experience. While the transfer involves getting into the personnel basket that transfers you onto the platform and little else, the process itself is not…
At times accidents on bodies of water are governed by a unique set of federal laws called admiralty laws. The court will thus apply admiralty law as opposed to federal or state law. This law of the water plays an important part in the administration of justice in Louisiana because…
“Plaintiff Lost at Seaman Claim” Robert Teaver may have fancied himself a man of the sea but the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit agreed with the District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana that there was no way he could establish his status as a…
Though Mr. Herbert’s primary argument was that he was outside the scope of his employment, he argued in the alternative that, even if the injury occurred within the scope of employment, the Defendants committed an intentional tort. Such a tort is the only recourse available to defeat a workers’ compensation…
The issue of injuries within the scope of employment is not always black and white. Two concepts have somewhat complicated the matter: the borrowed employee and joint employment. Under the borrowed employee doctrine, a permanent employer may loan an employee to another, temporary employer. While under the temporary’s employ, the…