Lara v. Harveys Iowa Management Co., Inc.

• Decision Date: 08 August 2000
• Docket Number: No. 1-98-CV-90058.,1-98-CV-90058.
• Citation: 109 F.Supp.2d 1031
• Parties: Susan LARA, Plaintiff, v. HARVEYS IOWA MANAGEMENT CO., INC., and/or Harveys Casino, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Iowa

109 F.Supp.2d 1031

Susan LARA, Plaintiff, v. HARVEYS IOWA MANAGEMENT CO., INC., and/or Harveys Casino, Defendant.

No. 1-98-CV-90058.

United States District Court, S.D. Iowa, Western Division.

August 8, 2000.

Howard M. Cohen, Birmingham, MI, for Plaintiff.

Thomas M. Locher, Omaha, NE, for Defendant.

ORDER

PRATT, District Judge.

This matter comes on Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment ("Motion") filed on May 16, 2000. Plaintiff filed her response on June 12, 2000, and a reply was filed by the Defendant on June 16, 2000. The Court held oral argument on this Motion on July 13, 2000 at the United States Courthouse in Des Moines, Iowa. The matter is fully submitted.

I. Facts

The Court will set out the facts in this case in a light most favorable to Plaintiff as the non-moving party. See Harlston v. McDonnell Douglas Corp., 37 F.3d 379, 382 (8th Cir.1994). During the time period relevant to this lawsuit, Plaintiff Susan Lara ("Lara") was a cocktail server and bartender on board the M/V Kanesville Queen ("Kanesville Queen"), a riverboat casino owned by Defendant Harveys Iowa Management Co., Inc., and/or Harveys Casino ("the casino"). On or about February 22, 1998 while working on board the Kanesville Queen, Plaintiff injured her arms, shoulders, and neck when her foot fell into an open floor drain behind the bar. On November 20, 1998, Lara filed the instant lawsuit against the casino seeking damages under both the Jones Act, 46 U.S.C.App. § 688,¹ and general admiralty and maritime law. On July 6, 2000, Lara filed a Second Amended Complaint (hereinafter "the Complaint") to plead an alternative claim under the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act, 33 U.S.C. § 905(b). The basis for the casino's Motion is that Lara did not face the "perils of the sea" and thus was not a "seaman" for purposes of the Jones Act. Lara contends there is sufficient evidence for a jury to find her a "seaman" within the meaning of the Act. And as requested in her Complaint, she wants a jury to try all the issues in this lawsuit. The Court finds there exists a genuine issue of material fact going to Lara's status as "seaman." Since the Jones Act provides a federal negligence cause of action for injured seamen, and because the resolution of negligence claims are almost always matters for the jury to decide, the Court will not grant the Defendant's Motion. As additional facts become necessary to its analysis, the Court will set them out accordingly.

II. Summary judgment standard

Rule 56 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides that summary judgment "shall be rendered forthwith if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law." Fed. R.Civ.P. 56(c). An issue is "genuine" if the evidence is sufficient to persuade a reasonable jury to return a verdict for the nonmoving party. See Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986). In the context of a Jones Act claim, "the question of who is a ... `seaman,' is better characterized as a mixed question of law and fact." McDermott Int'l v. Wilander, 498 U.S. 337, 356, 111 S.Ct. 807, 112 L.Ed.2d 866 (1991). The term "seaman" is a statutory term, and its interpretation is a question of law. Id. "The inquiry into seaman status is of necessity fact specific; it will depend on the nature of the vessel and employee's precise relation to it." Id. If a reasonable jury, applying the proper legal standard, could differ as to whether Lara was a "seaman," it is a question for the jury. See id. Put another way, "summary judgment ... is mandated where the facts and the law will reasonably support only one conclusion." Id. (citing Anderson, 477 U.S. at 248, 106 S.Ct. 2505).

III. Jones Act standards

In relevant part, the Jones Act provides a federal negligence cause of action to "[a]ny seaman who shall suffer personal injury in the course of his employment." 46 U.S.C.App. § 688(a). The term "seaman" was left undefined in the statute. After years of grappling with the definition of the statutory term "seaman," see Chandris, Inc. v. Latsis, 515 U.S. 347, 357-368, 115 S.Ct. 2172, 132 L.Ed.2d 314 (1995) (discussing doctrinal development); McDermott Int'l v. Wilander, 498 U.S. 337, 341-53, 111 S.Ct. 807, 112 L.Ed.2d 866 (1991) (same), the Supreme Court finally settled on two "essential requirements" for seaman status: "First, an employee's duties must contribut[e] to the function of the vessel or to the accomplishment of its mission. Second, and most important for our purposes here, a seaman must have a connection to a vessel in navigation ... that is substantial in terms of both its duration and its nature." Harbor Tug and Barge Co. v. Papai, 520 U.S. 548, 554, 117 S.Ct. 1535, 137 L.Ed.2d 800 (1997) (citing Chandris, 515 U.S. at 368, 115 S.Ct. 2172). "The fundamental purpose of this substantial connection requirement," explained the Court in Chandris,

is to give full effect to the remedial scheme created by Congress and to separate the sea-based maritime employees who are entitled to Jones Act protection from those land-based workers who have only a transitory or sporadic connection to a vessel in navigation, and therefore whose employment does not regularly expose them to the perils of the sea. [Citing an admiralty treatise,] "[i]f it can be shown that the employee performed a significant part of his work on board the vessel on which he was injured, with at least some degree of regularity and continuity, the test for seaman status will be satisfied."

Chandris, 515 U.S. at 368-69, 115 S.Ct. 2172 (citation omitted). "The duration of a worker's connection to a vessel and the nature of the worker's activities," continued the Court, "determine whether a maritime employee is a seaman because the ultimate inquiry is whether the worker in question is a member of the vessel's crew or simply a land-based employee who happens to be working on the vessel at a given time." Id. at 370, 115 S.Ct. 2172.

Citing language from the Supreme Court's most recent Jones Act case, the Defendant points out that inquiry into seaman status must focus on whether the employee's duties "take him to sea," Harbor Tug, 520 U.S. at 555, 117 S.Ct. 1535, and therefore expose him to the "perils of the sea," id. at 560, 117 S.Ct. 1535. Although one who is injured while "out to sea" will most likely qualify for recovery against the ship's owner under the Jones Act, see, e.g., Chandris, 515 U.S. at 377, 115 S.Ct. 2172 (Stevens, J., concurring) (although he would leave "more ambiguous, shore-based cases" for another day, in his judgment, "an employee who is injured at sea in the course of his employment is always a `seaman'"), it does not necessarily follow that only sea-faring employees can enjoy Jones Act protection. The Supreme Court has made clear over the years that injury at sea is not dispositive in the determination of a worker's seaman status. See, e.g., Senko v. LaCrosse Dredging Corp., 352 U.S. 370, 372-73, 77 S.Ct. 415, 1 L.Ed.2d 404 (1957) (handyman on board a dredge held to be a "seaman;" fact the dredge was anchored to shore and that the injury occurred on land not controlling)²; O'Donnell v. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co., 318 U.S. 36, 43, 63 S.Ct. 488, 87 L.Ed. 596 ("[T]he Jones Act, in extending a right of recovery to the seaman injured while in the service of his vessel by negligence, has done no more than supplement the remedy of maintenance and cure for injuries suffered by the seaman, whether on land or sea ....") (citing Pacific S.S. Co. v. Peterson, 278 U.S. 130, 49 S.Ct. 75, 73 L.Ed. 220 (1928) (emphasis added)); see also Chandris, 515 U.S. at 360, 115 S.Ct. 2172 (recognizing crew members' rights under the Jones Act "to recover ... when injured while pursuing their maritime employment whether on board ... or on shore") (citing Swanson v. Marra Bros., 328 U.S. 1, 7-8, 66 S.Ct. 869, 90 L.Ed. 1045 (1946) (emphasis added)). In short, inquiry into whether an employee's duties "take him to sea" remains an important, but by no means sole, component of the "seaman" status inquiry.

Quite apart from a formalistic rule reserving seaman status only for those injured "at sea," the Supreme Court has cautioned that "the jury should be permitted, when determining whether a maritime employee has the requisite employment-related connection to a vessel in navigation to qualify as a member of the vessel's crew, to consider all relevant circumstances bearing on the two elements outlined above." Chandris, 515 U.S. at 369, 115 S.Ct. 2172 (emphasis added). The cases admit of no bright line rule in determining whether an injured worker is substantially connected to a vessel. This only makes sense given the "myriad circumstances in which men go upon the water." Id. at 356, 115 S.Ct. 2172. The circumstances surrounding Plaintiff's accident arguably fall in the "twilight zone" between a purely land- and sea-based injury, see Davis v. Department of Labor and Indus., 317 U.S. 249, 256, 63 S.Ct. 225, 87 L.Ed. 246 (1942) (noting a "twilight zone" facing workers as their sea-related injuries arguable fall within both state workers' compensation laws and the LHWCA). Thus, the Court is not confronted with a "discreet class[] of maritime employees, but rather with a spectrum ranging from the blue-water seaman to the land-based longshoreman." Id. (quoting Brown v. ITT Rayonier, Inc., 497 F.2d 234, 236 (5th Cir.1974)). By necessity, then, determining seaman status is a "fact specific" inquiry, McDermott, 498 U.S. at 356, 111 S.Ct. 807; Harbor Tug, 520 U.S. at 550, 117 S.Ct. 1535, that "must be given workable and practical confines," Harbor Tug, 520 U.S. at 558, 117 S.Ct. 1535.

IV. Discussion

Mindful of these legal guidelines, the Court turns now to an analysis of whether Lara was a Jones Act "seaman" on...