McGuffie v. Transworld Drilling Co.

• Decision Date: 09 December 1985
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 84-2224.
• Citation: 625 F. Supp. 369
• Parties: Wanza Smith McGuffie, wife of/and Danny Paul McGUFFIE v. TRANSWORLD DRILLING COMPANY.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Louisiana

625 F. Supp. 369

Wanza Smith McGuffie, wife of/and Danny Paul McGUFFIE v. TRANSWORLD DRILLING COMPANY.

Civ. A. No. 84-2224.

United States District Court, W.D. Louisiana, Lafayette-Opelousas Division.

December 9, 1985.

Abadie, Harang & Coluin, Peter J. Abadie, Jr., New Orleans, La., for plaintiffs.

Deutsch, Kerrigan & Stiles, Howard L. Murphy, Christopher Tompkins, New Orleans, La., for defendant.

RULING ON POST TRIAL MOTION

W. EUGENE DAVIS, Circuit Judge, sitting by designation.

The defendant, Transworld Drilling Company (Transworld), filed a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict and alternatively for new trial following entry of a judgment on a verdict awarding compensatory and punitive damages against it. The only serious question presented in these motions is whether the punitive damage award should be allowed to stand. Because the award is bottomed solely on the reckless or wanton act of defendant's foreman or toolpusher, committed without knowledge or approval of officials of Transworld, I conclude that the judgment must be modified to delete the punitive damage award.

I.

Viewing the evidence in a light most favorable to the plaintiff, the jury was entitled to accept the following version of the facts:

Plaintiff Danny Paul McGuffie's action under the Jones Act and general maritime law arose out of his employment as a roughneck aboard the jackup drilling rig TRANSWORLD NO. 59. Plaintiff's seaman status was conceded by the defendant.

The TRANSWORLD NO. 59 and her crew were engaged in drilling an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico on June 7, 1984, the date of the accident. Mr. McGuffie began his work shift around noon on the day of his injury. His crew continued the work of running pipe in the hole that the previous crew had started. The pipe that was to be run in the hole was stored in racks on a level of the rig approximately twenty feet below the rig floor where plaintiff worked and where the pipe was stabbed into the hole to be lowered into the well. The particular operation that caused the accident related to the transfer of the pipe from the pipe rack level of the rig up to the drill floor. This transfer was accomplished by tying one end of a line to a length of pipe; the opposite end of the line was made fast to a mechanical hoist and when power was applied to the hoist, the pipe was pulled up a ramp onto the rig floor. When the pipe reached the rig floor, plaintiff and his fellow crewmembers stabbed the pipe into the hole and then the pipe was lowered into the well.

Shortly after plaintiff began his work shift that day, plaintiff and his fellow crewmembers saw that joints of pipe were frequently hanging up on the ramp, which caused difficulty in pulling the pipe up from the pipe rack to the drill floor. Closer inspection revealed that a portion of the metal ramp was broken and the bottom of the length of pipe was hanging up on the rough edges of the fractured metal. At times when a length of pipe hung up and the hoist continued to pull on it, the pipe would suddenly jerk free and catapult upwards onto the rig floor. When the bottom end of the pipe cleared the top of the ramp, the joint of pipe would swing out of control around the work area of the rig floor. This sent plaintiff and his fellow workers scurrying for cover behind or under some heavy object to protect them from the swinging pipe. After this occurred two or three times, the driller, plaintiff's immediate supervisor, called Mr. Joe Sadler, the toolpusher and foreman of the Transworld personnel aboard the rig, and asked for a welder to repair the broken ramp. The toolpusher refused to halt the job and allow the ramp to be repaired on grounds that it required too much time at this particularly critical phase of the operations. During that afternoon, the driller repeated his request two or three times and the toolpusher consistently refused the requests to repair the broken ramp. The plaintiff and his fellow crewmembers continued this operation until approximately 6:30 p.m. when plaintiff was struck by a joint of pipe after it catapulted, out of control, on the rig floor.

Mr. Sadler, as toolpusher, was the supervisor in direct charge of the TRANSWORLD 59 and all Transworld employees aboard the rig. No evidence was adduced indicating that Mr. Sadler had any authority or responsibility beyond the operations aboard the TRANSWORLD 59 and the employees assigned to the rig.

At the close of the evidence, I was persuaded that the jury was entitled to conclude from the testimony that Mr. Sadler was reckless and wanton in declining to repair the ramp and avoid the extreme hazard created by this defect. I did not focus on the total absence of evidence of knowledge by corporate officers or policymakers that Mr. Sadler would respond as he did to the dangerous conditions aboard the vessel.

Defendant's motion for directed verdict was denied and the jury, in response to special interrogatories, found the defendant negligent, the vessel unseaworthy and no contributory fault on the part of the plaintiff. The jury fixed plaintiff's compensatory damages at $693,520 (plus $15,000 to Mrs. McGuffie) and assessed $500,000 in punitive damages against defendant.

II.

We now turn to the issue at hand: Can the isolated negligent conduct of a foreman committed without the knowledge or approval of the employer serve as a predicate to impose punitive damages against the employer? We look to the general maritime law for a solution.

The Complaint of Merry Shipping Co., 650 F.2d 622 (5th Cir.1981), the seminal case in this circuit which permitted recovery of punitive damages under the general maritime law, did not face the question which confronts us today. Several courts have faced this problem, however, and except for a single Ninth Circuit case, all the cases we discovered, which were decided under the general maritime law, are in accord. They hold that the principal or master cannot be cast for punitive damages for the willful or reckless act of the agent or employee unless the act was committed with the approval or knowledge of the principal.

This issue was first presented to the Supreme Court in an admiralty case in The Amiable Nancy, 16 U.S. (3 Wheat) 546, 4 L.Ed. 456 (1818). In this case, the plaintiff's ship was boarded and plundered by the crew of a vessel owned by the defendants. The court considered whether the defendants were responsible for punitive damages for the malicious acts of its crew committed without the approval or knowledge of the defendant. The Court stated:

Upon the facts disclosed in the evidence, this must be pronounced a case of gross and wanton outrage, without any just provocation or excuse. Under such circumstances, the honor of the country and the duty of the court equally require that a just compensation should be made to the unoffending neutrals, for all the injuries and losses actually sustained by them. And if this were a suit against the original wrong doers, it might be proper to go yet further, and visit upon them in the shape of exemplary damages, the proper punishment which belongs to such lawless misconduct. But it is to be considered, that this is a suit against the owners of the privateer, upon whom the law has, from motives of policy, devolved a responsibility for the conduct of the officers and crew employed by them, and yet, from the nature of the service, they can scarcely ever be able to secure to themselves an adequate indemnity in cases of loss. They are innocent of the demerit of this transaction, having neither directed it nor countenanced it, nor participated in it in the slightest degree. Under

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