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MARINE | Employee injury law In association with Galloway
Bridging the gap Jason Waguespack, Managing Director at leading US-based maritime law firm Galloway, explains the background leading up to an important recent decision that extends the liability of shipowners and their insurers to pilots under the Sieracki doctrine The United States affords maritime workers numerous statutory protections for employment-related injuries. The scope or basis of an individual worker’s protection depends on the worker’s employment classification. Congress attempted to cover the full spectrum of maritime workers, ranging from blue-water seaman to land-based longshoremen, by enacting a patchwork of statutes that were intended to augment the general maritime law remedies. The Jones Act, 46 U.S.C. § 30104, grants seamen a remedy against their employer for causes of action based on negligence, while the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, 33 U.S.C. § 901 (“LHWCA”), covers landbased longshoremen. Seamen have additional remedies available under general maritime law, the federal body of common law developed by the courts.
ABSOLUTE DUTY A common and expansive maritime remedy is the doctrine of unseaworthiness. The doctrine holds that a shipowner has an absolute duty to provide a seaworthy vessel to certain workers onboard the vessel. The test to determine whether a vessel is seaworthy is whether the vessel and its appurtenances are “reasonably fit for their intended use.” Mitchell v. Trawler Racer, Inc., 362 U.S. 539, 550 (1960). It is important to note that a shipowner’s liability for an unseaworthy vessel is not contingent on negligence; rather, it is a form of strict liability. It was unclear whether a longshoreman could bring an The Marine Insurer Nordic & Asia Special Edition | April 2021
unseaworthiness claim against a vessel owner for many years. The Supreme Court resolved the uncertainty when it decided Seas Shipping Co. Inc. v. Sieracki, 328 U.S. 82 (1946), which held that longshoremen could sue vessel owners for unseaworthiness and that an employer-employee relationship was not required for an injured longshoreman to recover from a vessel owner. Longshoremen filing an unseaworthiness claim under this doctrine would come to be known as a “Sieracki seaman”. Subsequently, in 1972, Congress amended the LHWCA, adding § 905(b), which in part mandated that no worker covered under the LHWCA could maintain an action for unseaworthiness against a vessel owner. This change effectively eliminated the unseaworthiness cause of action for longshoremen. Still § 905(b) allows an injured worker to bring a third-party claim against a vessel owner for negligence, but this requires the claimant to prove a vessel owner’s negligence, a more burdensome standard than the “warranty” of seaworthiness. An additional requirement of § 905(a) states that to be covered by the LHWCA, an injured maritime worker must be the employee of someone. While this is a seemingly innocuous coverage requirement, it has an outsized effect of eliminating coverage for independent contractors. While Congress attempted to provide a statutory right of recovery for all maritime workers, courts have classified some workers as neither seamen nor longshoremen.
