Admiralty/Maritime

July 4, 2016

How Do I Qualify for Seaman Status Under the Jones Act?

offshore-gas-platform-1223799-683x1024 The Jones Act is a set of federal rules that protects American workers injured while working at sea. Also referred to as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, this law allows qualifying sailors who have been involved in accidents or become sick while performing their duties to recover compensation from their employers. So does everyone that is injured or who becomes sick while working offshore automatically qualify for benefits under the Jones Act? Not always. In the following case that stems from an oil platform injury we see how the courts evaluate the seaman status (status necessary to receive benefits) under the Jones Act.

Michael Alexander was employed by Express Energy Services Operating, L.P.’s plug and abandonment department which plugs decommissioned oil wells in various locations off the coast of Louisiana. In 2011, Michael’s foot was injured while working a project on a platform. Michael and the crew were working on the platform at the time of his injury but the crane that injured him was located on a liftboat operated for the benefit of the crew. Michael filed his action under the Jones Act (46 U.S.C. § 30104) seeking maintenance and cure benefits. Express filed a motion for summary judgment contradicting Michael’s seaman status stating that Michael was a platform-based employee who failed to satisfy the test for seaman status. A motion for summary judgment is a legal filing that states the law does prevents the other party in the lawsuit from proceeding for various reasons. In this case Express filed their summary judgment motion stating that Michael was not a seaman under the provisions of the Jones Act.

For the court to have decided against summary judgment, Michael would have had to show that there was a possibility of his employment status qualifying as a seaman and falling under the Jones Act. To qualify as a seaman an employee has to prove two things laid out by the Supreme Court in the Chandris case (515 U.S. 347 (1995). The first thing to prove is that the employee’s duties contribute to the running of the ship or vessel. The second thing to prove is that the employee performs a substantial amount of his duties on board the ship or vessel. The second part of this test is the most important to the analysis of seaman cases and is in place to separate the employees who are entitled to the protection of the Jones Act from the land-based employees who are not exposed to the same risks as employees who spend a majority of their time at sea.

June 17, 2016

Pre-Existing Injuries Complicate Maintenance and Cure Remedies Against Vessel Owners in Louisiana

by Berniard Law Firm

Jones-Act-Maritime-1024x681 Maritime law provides special remedies for seamen who are injured at sea such as maintenance and cure. These remedies may be sought from the seaman’s employer or vessel owner. Maintenance is a daily stipend for day-to-day living expenses for seamen who fall ill or are injured while in service of a vessel. See Jauch v. Nautical Servs., Inc., 470 F.3d 207, 212 (5th Cir. 2006). Cure is the payment of medical expenses. See Guevara v. Maritime Overseas Corp., 59 F.3d 1496, 1499 (5th Cir. 1995). These maritime damages are not dependent on the vessel owner’s or employer’s fault, but are treated as an implied term of any contract for maritime employment. A seaman may even recover maintenance and cure for preexisting medical conditions. This is unless the seaman knowingly or fraudulently conceals his or her condition from the vessel owner at the time he or she was employed. A recent case from the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal explains how pre-existing injuries can complicate claims for maintenance and cure.

Willie Meche was the captain of the crew boat Miss Catherine, which served as a drilling rig off the Louisiana coast. On June 20, 2008, the crew boat was under tow to a location near Cote Blanche, Louisiana. Mr. Meche claimed that he was injured while lifting a hatch to check the oil on the vessel. He alleged that stormy conditions that day caused a wave to hit his boat and throw him over a railing. Mr. Meche filed a lawsuit against his employer and owner of the vessel, Key Marine Services, as well as his supervisor, Alex Doucet. Mr. Meche sought compensation under the Jones Act and general Maritime law, including claims for maintenance and cure against both defendants.

The District Court held that the defendants wrongfully refused to pay Mr. Meche maintenance and cure. It that Mr. Meche could recover maintenance and cure from both defendants because he aggravated a preexisting spinal injury when he lifted the hatch on the vessel. While the defendants argued that Mr. Meche forfeited his right to these remedies by lying about his preexisting medical conditions on his pre-employment questionnaire, the District Court rejected this argument. It found that Mr. Meche did not intentionally conceal his medical history, and was thus entitled to maintenance and cure.

December 2, 2013

Court Throws Out Lafayette Parish Case As Plaintiff Fails To Deliver Service of Process Before Deadline

by Berniard Law Firm

It is vital to know proper court procedures at the outset of litigation or else an otherwise valid claim might be thrown out of court without ever being heard. One prime example is the need to send initial court documents to a defendant within a set deadline (sending such documents, such as a citation or summons, is known as service of process). Case in point, the Lafayette Parish Court of Appeal, in Boka v. Oller, recently upheld the dismissal of a claim without even considering the merits because service of process was delivered too late. Therefore, it is important to know the rules before bringing a lawsuit or a good claim might be lost due to a mere technicality, such as delivering papers too late. For a non-lawyer, an attorney can be instrumental in making sure proper procedures are followed so that the party has a chance to present their case in court.

In Lafayette Parish, Louisiana Code of Civil Procedure Article 1201 requires that service of the citation must be requested within a deadline of ninety days from commencement of the action. Article 1201 also notes that service of process on defendants is “essential” and “without them all proceedings are absolutely null.” The deadline for service is to ensure that defendants are aware of an action and have enough to prepare. Therefore, as a delay in service is deemed unfair to the defendant, a court may dismiss a claim if service of process is sent too late.

There are some limited exceptions to the rule, but, due to the risks involved in these exceptions, generally a party should attempt to serve process on time. For example, one exception permits late service if there is good cause for the delay. However, as the court is unlikely to accept run-of-the-mill excuses for delays, proving a good cause for failure to serve process on time can be difficult. As noted below, the court in Lafayette Parish found that there was no good cause for late service as the plaintiff knew the defendant’s address.

November 28, 2013

Appeals Court Upholds Jones Act Claim for Seaman Injured Off Gulf Coast

by Berniard Law Firm

The Jones Act is a law that provides seamen the chance to bring personal injury suits against the owners and operators of vessels they are working on in cases where the owner or operator was negligent or in some other way at fault for the injury. One of the types of damage allowable under the Jones Act is that of maintenance and cure. In maritime law, maintenance is the employee’s daily living expenses and cure is the employee’s medical bills. If an employer has to pay maintenance and cure, they will only have to pay such costs until the seaman is either fit for duty, or at a point where added medical treatment will not improve his condition. This case goes into further detail about what is necessary for a plaintiff to receive an award for maintenance and cure in a Jones Act case, and the relationship between maintenance and cure and worker’s compensation in Louisiana.

In this case, the plaintiff was performing sandblasting and plating work on an offshore rig. While performing this work, the plaintiff slept and ate aboard the M/V Howard McCall, stored equipment on the vessel, and used the vessel as a work platform on several occasions. After the initial work on the rig was done, the plaintiff was brought back to the vessel to perform sandblasting work on the vessel itself. During this period of work, the plaintiff sustained injuries while exiting the ship’s wheelhouse. The plaintiff soon began receiving payments from the Louisiana Worker’s Compensation Commission who was the employer’s insurer.

Subsequently the plaintiff filed suit against both of the owners and the operator of the vessel under the Jones Act. The plaintiff made three basic claims: 1) the owners and operator of the vessel were negligent in maintaining the safety of the vessel, 2) the vessel was unseaworthy, and 3) the owners and operators owed him costs for maintenance and cure. During the jury trial, the negligence and unseaworthiness claims were dismissed, and the remaining claim of maintenance and cure was the only claim left. The jury found in the plaintiff’s favor and awarded him awards of maintenance and cure. The defendants appealed the jury’s award.

September 27, 2013

Fifth Circuit Sides with Plaintiff in Jones Act suit for Injuries Sustained on Sea Vessel

by Berniard Law Firm

The Jones Act deals with injuries suffered by employees working on American sea-going vessels and their rights to workers’ compensation for those injuries. The Act requires employers to “maintain a reasonably safe work environment.” Another important feature of the Jones Act is that not only is the employer liable for the negligence of their employees, but also any amount of negligence on the employer’s part will result in some level of liability. In other words, in a Jones Act case, if one employee negligently injures another, both the offendin employee and their employer are liable.

The case of Martinez v. Offshore Specialty Fabricators, Inc. deals with a Jones Act claim and really brings to light how important it is to obtain quality legal representation. Mr. Martinez was a seaman employed by Offshore Specialty Fabricators as a mechanic. On May 26, 2008, he and his supervisor, Mr. Smith, went aboard a ship owned by Offshore to repair a defective winch. Both Martinez and Smith testified that the work space was very cramped and required them to bend over while swinging a sledgehammer for almost an hour when suddenly Martinez felt a pop in his neck. Smith testified that he saw Martinez visibly twitch and asked what was wrong. Martinez informed him that something was wrong with his neck, and Smith immediately told him stop working.

Shortly after the injury he told an on-board medic about soreness in his arm due to using the sledgehammer. Two days later Martinez visited another medic and told him that he was unable to move his head or jaw without shooting pain in his neck and shoulder. He was also interviewed by a claims adjuster hired by Offshore and told the adjuster that his injury was due to the cramped working conditions and hammering.

September 17, 2013

Proper Service Essential for Successful Legal Remedy

by Berniard Law Firm

Under Louisiana law, there are very specific rules about how to properly serve someone, and one of the important aspects of service that an attorney has to get right is the timing of it. Furthermore, not only does the service have to be carried out in a timely manner, but it also has to be perfected properly.

This particular Supreme Court of Louisiana case dealt with service on a state entity, and it is important for your attorney to be aware of any differences that exist with regard to service requirements depending on who the other party is. According to the applicable state law, La. R.S. 13:850, “perfecting” a service request requires that the appropriate filing fees and transmission fees have been received by the clerk of the court and that the original signed document has been received by the clerk. All of this must be received within the proper timeframe. As stated in La. R.S. 13:850, the proper timeframe for perfection in this case is seven days.

In this case, the service request was received within the required ninety-day timeframe (ninety days since the filing of the petition), and the service request was perfected five days later once the requisite documents and fee payments were received by the clerk of the court. The question then is whether or not this counts as proper request for service: Was the request for service properly received within ninety days even though perfection of the request was outside of that ninety-day timeframe?

September 14, 2013

The Role of Court-Appointed Experts in Complex Litigation

by Berniard Law Firm

In order to aid the court, a judge might occasionally appoint an expert to help with specific aspects of the case. Court-appointed experts are different from a specific party’s experts because the court-appointed experts do not favor one side or the other, but rather, help the judge with certain tasks or analyses.

A trial court-appointed expert can be especially useful in a class action lawsuit in which several people have a claim against the defendant and there is no way that the court can hear each individual person’s case. In that instance, a court-appointed expert can help properly group the members of the class action lawsuit and help bring order to an otherwise unwieldy case.

In a recent case from Orleans Parish, the appellate court had to determine when a court-appointed expert is proper and what the limits of such an expert’s duties should be. Before getting into the applicable Louisiana law and how the appellate court ultimately ruled, some knowledge of the background facts is useful: The case from Orleans Parish was a class action lawsuit in which several employees were suing over medical problems they experienced from working in a building that had serious mold damage. Over 600 individuals had claims in the suit, and in order to deal with the case in a more organized and manageable manner, the class was to be broken up into various groups. In order to help with this enormous task, the trial court stated that it wanted to appoint an expert to help group individuals according to damages. Each party was allowed to submit nominations and discuss any issues they felt might arise if such an expert was appointed. Ultimately, an expert was appointed to help with the necessary tasks, and after the case was decided at the trial court level, the State argued that the court-appointed expert had outstepped his appropriate boundaries.

August 19, 2013

Appeal Dismissed Because of Late Payment, Abandonment

by Berniard Law Firm

In a recent case, Johnson v. University Medical Center in Lafayette, the Louisiana Court of Appeal for the Third Circuit reversed a trial court decision to dismiss a plaintiff’s case for abandonment due to her failure to timely pay the costs of appeal. The plaintiff in the case, Lela Johnson, originally filed a medical malpractice action against both the University Medical Center in Lafayette and the Medical Center of Louisiana in New Orleans. The case has proceeded through courts since the original petition for damages was filed on March 15, 2006.

Both defendants, whose principal places of business correspond with the last word of their names, are operated by the State of Louisiana. After a dismissal of her original suit by the Supreme Court of Louisiana due to her failure to properly notify the defendants of the action because she had requested service of process on individuals who had not been individuals who were authorized to accept such information on behalf of the defendants, Ms. Johnson’s decided to re-file the original suit in trial court. Once again, Ms. Johnson’s service of process was held insufficient by the trial court and she moved to appeal that judgment.

Service of process is a legal term of art which essentially describes the process in which plaintiffs notify defendants of a pending suit. When the plaintiff files a complaint with a court, any defendant in the case must be given notice of the pending case and an opportunity to be heard and defend themselves against the complaint. This requirement is a basic constitutional right conferred upon everyone who has been accused of some wrongdoing and it is the accuser’s responsibility to ensure that the constitutional right of the accused is protected. The importance of service of process to our legal system and the rights of defendants makes it necessary for trial courts to dismiss actions, without regard to the merits of the plaintiff’s claims, if service of process is deficient in some way or another.

July 29, 2013

Injury at Sea and Signed Release Key Components of Lawsuit

by Berniard Law Firm

The appellate court differed with the trial court on the validity of a compromise when Louisiana company D.R.D. Towing was sued by a crew member on D.R.D.’s ship.

Mr. Randy Rudolph was a crew member of the M/V RUBY E, which was struck by another ship while he was on board. The collision threw him from his bunk, causing injuries to his back. Additionally, Mr. Rudolph lost his personal computer, cell phone, car keys and other items when the ship sank. He filed suit against D.R.D. Towing, the operator of the M/V RUBY E.

The issue for the court was whether Mr. Rudolph’s signing a release settling all claims for $3,000 a few days after the incident precluded him from collecting further money for his injuries. He argued that he understood the $3,000 was offered to compensate him for what he lost on the boat, but not to cover his future claims, including medical expenses and loss of earning potential associated with his injuries.

June 29, 2013

Louisiana Court of Appeals Affirms Judgment in Favor of Defendant Companies in Property Damage Lawsuit

by Berniard Law Firm

On February 27, 2012, a district court for the Parish of Lafayette ruled in favor of two defendants being sued by plaintiffs C.F. Kimball II and Linda R. Kimball for property damage. The first defendant, Luhr Bros. Inc. d/b/a Construction Aggregate, owns a shell yard across from the Kimballs’ property on the Vermilion River. The second defendant, Omni Marine Transportation, Inc., owns a vessel that made deliveries to the Luhr Bros. The Kimballs had asserted that both defendants had engaged in business activities that resulted in the destruction of a bulkhead belonging to and located on the Kimballs’ property. The defendants responded by saying that an exception to res judicata prevented the Kimballs from filing a lawsuit against both parties for such damages.

An exception to res judicata signifies that proceedings related to the same occurrence had already taken place and been concluded. Specifically, the defendants claimed that the parties had previously executed a Receipt, Release and Indemnity Agreement in 2002. The Kimballs acknowledged that such an agreement had been executed but claimed that the Release did not pertain to the bulkhead, which the Kimballs had only acquired in 2008. The Kimballs asserted that a Release could not be agreed to for property that was not even in existence at the time of the agreement.

The trial court ruled in favor of the defendants and dismissed the Kimballs’ lawsuit with prejudice, meaning that the Kimballs could not bring a new case on the same basis as the dismissed case. When a trial court rules in favor of the defendants on an exception of res judicata, any issue whose determination was essential to the judgment and already litigated is extinguished. Thus, the trial court found that the issue of destruction of property such as the bulkhead was essential to the proceedings that had already been litigated between the parties, that is, the proceedings that led to the production of the Receipt, Release and Indemnity Agreement.