Background: An employee filed a petition for damages against his employers under the Jones Act. The employers and their insurer responded by filing a motion for summary judgment seeking a judgment that the employee's sole remedy was under the Longshoreman & Harbor Workers' Compensation Act. Thus, the employers and their insurer stated the employee's claims under the Jones Act should be dismissed.

The employee then filed his own motion for summary judgment seeking a declaration that he was a Jones Act seaman. The trial court, recognizing that this case was not going to a jury, discovery was complete, and there was no dispute on what job duties the employee performed, determined that the employee was a Jones Act seaman.

The trial court designated his judgment regarding the employee's status as final. They raised two assignments of error.

Issue: Whether the trial court properly determined that the employee was a Jones Act seaman.

Held:
The Supreme Court in Chandris, Inc. v Latsis, 515 U.S. 347, stated that there are two essential requirements for seaman status. First, an employee's duties must contribute to the function of the vessel or to the accomplishment of its mission. Second, a seaman must have a connection to a vessel in navigation that is substantial in terms of both its duration and its nature.

The testimony from one of the appellants clearly established that the first requisite of the Chandris test was met. Cavazzo contributed to the function of the vessel and to the accomplishment of its mission.

To determine the second part of the Chandris test, this Court needed to find if the employee was connected to a vessel fleet or vessels in navigation. If so, this Court then needed to determine whether the employee's connection was substantial in both its duration and its nature.

The appellants conceded that the employee was connected to a fleet of vessel. The two tugboats were under the control of the employee's employer, Material Handling. Therefore, they constituted an identifiable fleet of vessels that the employee worked with daily.

Next, the Court determined that the employee's connection to the fleet was substantial in terms of both its duration and nature. The employee testified that he spent seventy percent of his time at work loading barges, while the remaining thirty percent he did maintenance. There was only one reasonable view of this evidence, which was the employee worked approximately seventy percent of the time on vessels under the jurisdiction of the Jones Act. The Court held that such an amount of time working was substantial.

Comments:

The first requirement under Chandris is quite broad. All who work at sea in the service of a ship are eligible for seaman status.

Steve Gordon
http://www.offshoreinjuries.com