The Ninth Circuit just issued an unpublished decision in a Jones Act case. Not precedential, and pretty sparse analysis, but it does set out the standards for surviving summary judgment motions for Jones Act seamen. The case is Ili v. American Seafoods Co., LLC and can be found here.
Facts: seaman on a fishing vessel is injured near the end of his sixteen hour shift. He claims unseaworthiness under common law and Jones Act negligence.
Issue: were there issues of disputed fact warranting a jury trial on the seaman's claims? As is the case in all civil litigation in federal courts, claims cannot be summarily decided upon disputed facts. Facts are found by juries (or judges) after a trial.
Jones Act Claim
Ili’s Jones Act claim has four elements: (1) the employer’s duty to provide a safe work environment to its seaman employee; (2) breach of that duty; (3) the employer’s awareness of the unsafe condition; and (4) a causal link, however slight, between the breach and the seaman’s injury.
The parties did not dispute that Ili was a Jones Act seaman and that we was injured after working sixteen hour shifts, seven days a week for months on end, rather seaman's employer challenged whether shift length can be a condition amounting to unseaworthiness and whether the long shift caused seaman's injury.
Employer put on evidence that fishing industry custom is 12, 14 and 16 hour shifts. Custom, citing to the great Learned Hand, does not show a LACK of negligence and the court found that such long shifts could be negligence. As such, the issue needed to be tried, not summarily disposed.
Unseaworthiness Claim
Ili’s unseaworthiness claim has four elements: (1) seaman status triggering the warranty of seaworthiness; (2) an injury arising from the condition of the ship or its crew; (3) the unseaworthiness of that condition; and (4) proximate causation between the unseaworthy condition and the injury.
The court stated that lack of adequate crew can give rise to an unseaworthiness claim. Unseaworthiness has a higher standard for claimants to show causation, but the court found that the same facts (long shift) that defeated employer's summary judgment motion on the Jones Act claim applied to the unseaworthiness claim.
Let a trial be had.
Comments