Coulter v. Texaco, Inc.

• Decision Date: 29 July 1997
• Docket Number: No. 97-30081,97-30081
• Citation: 117 F.3d 909
• Parties: Geraldine COULTER, wife of/and James Coulter, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. TEXACO, INC., Texaco Exploration and Production, Inc., and Rogers Louviere, Defendants-Appellees. Summary Calendar
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 909

117 F.3d 909

Geraldine COULTER, wife of/and James Coulter, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. TEXACO, INC., Texaco Exploration and Production, Inc., and Rogers Louviere, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 97-30081

Summary Calendar.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit

July 29, 1997.

Laurence E. Best, Peter S. Koeppel, Best & Koeppel, New Orleans, LA, John W. Lee, Jr., Hattiesburg, MS, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

James Robert Silverstein, Frilot, Partridge, Kohnke & Clements, New Orleans, LA, for Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

Before HIGGINBOTHAM, WIENER and BENAVIDES, Circuit Judges.

WIENER, Circuit Judge:

Plaintiffs-Appellants Geraldine and James Coulter appeal from the district court's grant of summary judgment, dismissing their action against Defendants-Appellees Texaco, Inc., Texaco Exploration and Production, Inc., and Texaco employee Rogers Louviere (collectively "Texaco"). Concluding that the district court properly held that Texaco could not be liable under Louisiana Civil Code Articles 2315, 2317 or 2322 for the injuries sustained by Mr. Coulter while he worked for an independent drilling contractor on a drilling rig located on an offshore drilling platform owned by Texaco, we affirm the district court's summary judgment.

I FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS

In June 1991, Texaco entered into a contract with James Coulter's employer, Dual Drilling Company (Dual), in which Dual agreed to provide a drilling rig ("Dual 25") and a crew to perform drilling operations on a fixed platform owned by Texaco at West Delta, Block 109, in the Gulf of Mexico ("Texaco's platform"). The contract provided that Dual, as an independent contractor, would control, direct and maintain responsibility for the performance of the details of its work, including the rigging up and rigging down of Dual 25 on Texaco's platform and any loading and unloading operations as well. The only right reserved by Texaco was to observe and inspect ("monitor") Dual's work to ensure its satisfactory completion. Defendant Rogers Louviere works for Texaco as a drilling supervisor and, during the time Coulter worked for Dual, was assigned to Dual 25 to monitor Dual's drilling operations. At the time of Coulter's accident, however, Louviere was on vacation and Keith Doucet was serving in his place as Texaco's "company man" monitoring Dual's operations.

In September 1995 Dual 25 was skidded on top of and welded to Texaco's platform. Drilling operations commenced shortly thereafter At the time Dual 25 was positioned on Texaco's platform it was equipped with two cranes. To provide more room for loading and unloading, one of the cranes was removed, and a crane belonging to Texaco, which was already present on this platform, was reassigned to Dual 25 as part of its equipment and repositioned on this rig. Prior to the removal of the second Dual crane from the drilling unit, however, that crane's pedestal had served as two of the six posts for the unit's drill collar pipe rack. Thus, although the pipe rack was supposed to be supported by six posts, only four posts remained after the removal of Dual 25's second crane.

and were scheduled to be completed in late 1996. Prior to being placed on this platform, Dual 25 had drilled from five other fixed offshore platforms owned by various entities since it was first put into service in 1980.

Coulter, a member of Dual's roustabout crew, was injured several months after the repositioning of the crane in question while unloading equipment onto Dual 25 from a supply vessel. Near the end of the crew's 12 hour shift on December 22, 1995, the Dual crew's crane operator moved a Schlumberger Anadrill tool ("MWD tool") from the drill floor to the drill collar pipe rack. Coulter and another roustabout stepped on top of the drill collars to disconnect the crane slings from the MWD tool. After the slings had been removed, Coulter prepared to step off the drill collar pipe rack. At this point, however, one of the boards separating the rows of drill collars broke, allowing a drill collar pipe to roll and injure Coulter's leg. But for the removal of the second crane and Dual's failure to replace the missing two posts or otherwise stabilize the pipe rack, the drill collar pipes would have been safely and securely contained and Coulter would not have been injured.

The Coulters sued Texaco in Louisiana state court, seeking damages for the personal injuries Mr. Coulter suffered while employed on Dual 25 when it was positioned on Texaco's platform. They asserted negligence claims under Louisiana Civil Code Article 2315 and strict liability claims under Civil Code Articles 2317 and 2322. Texaco removed the action to federal court, filed a third party complaint against Dual for contractual indemnity, and ultimately moved for summary judgment against the Coulters. The district court granted Texaco's motion for summary judgment, holding that Texaco could not be held liable for James Coulter's injuries under any of the Coulters' theories, and therefore dismissed the Coulters' claims against Texaco with prejudice. The Coulters timely filed their notice of appeal.

II DISCUSSION

A. Standard of Review and Applicability of Louisiana Law

As is well known, we review the grant of a motion for summary judgment de novo and apply the same legal standards as does the district court. ¹ Texaco's platform is located on the outer Continental Shelf off the Louisiana coast. The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) mandates that when disputes arise involving fixed structures erected on the outer Continental Shelf, applicable laws of the adjacent state will be applied to the extent not inconsistent with other federal laws and regulations. ² Indisputably, then, the personal injury law of Louisiana applies to this case, and the Coulters properly asserted their claims under Louisiana's Civil Code.

B. Negligence Claims

The Coulters assert that Texaco is liable in negligence for Mr. Coulter's injuries under Louisiana Civil Code Article 2315. As all of the parties and the district court recognize, however, a principal, such as Texaco cannot be liable for injuries resulting from the negligent acts of an independent contractor, such as Dual, unless (1) the liability arises from ultrahazardous activities performed by the contractor on behalf of the principal or (2) the principal retains operational control over the contractor's acts or expressly or impliedly authorizes those acts. ³ In this case, Dual's actions clearly did not fall in the limited ultrahazardous category; therefore, the only issue relevant to the Coulters' negligence claims is whether Texaco retained control over or authorized any of Dual's activities that resulted in Coulter's injuries.

Testing for this operational control exception first requires an examination of whether and to what extent the right to control work has been contractually reserved by the principal. ⁴ Here, as is typically the case in contractual arrangements between platform owners and independent drilling contractors, the Texaco-Dual contract broadly provides that Dual "shall control and direct the performance of the details of the work" and further specifies that Dual "shall be solely responsible for the various moves of its Drilling Unit, for mooring or unloading operations, if required, and for rigging up and rigging down operations (emphasis added)." Moreover, the fact that a principal like Texaco reserves the right to monitor its contractor's performance and stations a "company man" on the platform who observes the contractor's activities, has the right to make safety recommendations to the contractor, and is obligated to report continuing unsafe work practices or conditions to his (Texaco) superiors, does not mean that the principal controls the methods or details of the contractor's work. ⁵ In short, absent an express or implied order to the contractor to engage in an unsafe work practice leading to an injury, a principal like Texaco cannot be liable under the operational control exception. ⁶

It is uncontested that (1) Coulter was injured during the unloading of a supply vessel, and (2) the pedestal of Dual's second crane, which had previously served as posts for the drill collar pipe rack, was removed during rigging up operations. As the contract expressly vests Dual with sole responsibility for both of these operations, Texaco cannot be liable for any injuries resulting therefrom absent some other unusual circumstance.

The Coulters argue that just such an unusual circumstances was present here because Texaco engineers initially gave their consent to reposition the second Dual crane and replace it with the Texaco crane. The Coulters thus contend that this approval at least amounts to an implicit authorization of the configuration of the drill collar pipe rack with four rather than six posts. In and of itself, however, the consent of these Texaco engineers to the Dual-Texaco crane swap is insignificant because the Coulters have not pointed to any summary judgment evidence indicating that (1) Texaco knew, at the time the second Dual crane was removed, that the crane's pedestal was serving as two of the six posts for Dual 25's drill collar pipe rack, or (2) Dual was prevented by Texaco from making adjustments to the rack once the crane was moved and it should have become clear to Dual that the rack was unstable. Consequently, there is no evidence that Texaco itself either explicitly or implicitly authorized the initial destabilization, or continued unsafe use, of the drill collar pipe rack. We therefore conclude that the district court properly dismissed the Coulters' negligence claims against Texaco founded on Article 2315.

C. Strict Liability Claims: Article 2317 and Garde Liability

The Coulters assert that Texaco is liable for Mr. Coulter's injuries under Louisiana Civil Code Articles 2317 and 2322, which respectively impose a form...