Stier v. Reading & Bates Corp.

• Decision Date: 08 April 1999
• Docket Number: No. 96-1165,96-1165
• Citation: 992 S.W.2d 423
• Parties: 42 Tex. Sup. Ct. J. 493 Hans-Henning STIER, Petitioner, v. READING & BATES CORPORATION and Reading & Bates Drilling Company, Respondents.
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

Page 423

992 S.W.2d 423

42 Tex. Sup. Ct. J. 493

Hans-Henning STIER, Petitioner, v. READING & BATES CORPORATION and Reading & Bates Drilling Company, Respondents.

No. 96-1165.

Supreme Court of Texas.

Argued Sept. 9, 1998.

Decided April 8, 1999.

Robert D. Green, Michael L. Davis, Houston, for Petitioner.

John Pearson, James J. Sentner, Jr., Orin H. Lewis, Giorgio Caflisch, Houston, for Respondents.

Justice OWEN delivered the opinion of the Court in which Chief Justice PHILLIPS, Justice HECHT, Justice ENOCH and Justice ABBOTT join.

A citizen of Germany who resided in Brazil was injured while working on a mobile offshore drilling vessel that was berthed at a terminal in Trinidad. He sued his employer, whose principal offices were in Texas, asserting claims under the Jones Act, general maritime law, the substantive laws of Texas, and the laws of Trinidad. The trial court granted summary judgment for his employer on the basis that all claims were preempted by federal law. The court of appeals affirmed. --- S.W.2d ----, 1996 WL 490625. We affirm the judgment of the court of appeals regarding the claims based on Texas law because those claims are preempted by section 688(b) of the Jones Act, 46 U.S.C. app. § 688(b). We reverse the judgment of the court of appeals in part and remand the claims arising under Trinidad law to the trial court because those claims are not preempted by federal law.

I

At the time of his injury, Hans-Henning Stier was a citizen of Germany who resided in Brazil. He was not a citizen or resident alien of the United States. Stier was employed by Reading & Bates Drilling Co., a Texas-based company, as a worker in its offshore drilling business and had been employed by that company for more than seventeen years. Over the years of his employment, Reading & Bates periodically brought Stier to the United States for training, and Stier had frequent contact with his employer's Houston office by mail and telephone. Stier maintained bank accounts in Texas or Florida. However, his work assignments from Reading & Bates have always been in locales other than the United States or its territorial waters.

During the four years prior to his injury, Stier worked as a mechanic on a mobile drilling rig that was an American flag vessel operating in the territorial waters of Trinidad. When Stier's injury occurred, the rig was docked in Trinidad awaiting another assignment. Stier was dismantling and reassembling the crown block on the deck of the rig when he was hit in the head by a hook on a sling operated by other employees of Reading & Bates. Stier was taken by air ambulance to Florida where he was hospitalized for those injuries, and he subsequently received treatment from Houston physicians and hospitals.

Stier sued Reading & Bates Drilling Co. and its parent company Reading & Bates Corporation in state district court in Houston, Texas, where both companies maintain their principal offices. As there is no need to distinguish between these two corporate entities for purposes of this opinion, we will refer to them jointly as Reading & Bates. Stier asserted claims under the Jones Act and under general maritime law for negligence, unseaworthiness, and maintenance and cure as a vessel crew member. He also asserted claims based on Texas law and, in the alternative, claims under the laws of Trinidad.

Reading & Bates moved for summary judgment, contending that section 688(b) of the Jones Act, 46 U.S.C. app. § 688(b), expressly precludes any claims based on federal statutes or federal common law because Stier had remedies under the laws of Germany, Brazil, and Trinidad. Reading & Bates also contended that section 688(b) of the Jones Act preempts all of Stier's other claims based on Texas substantive law and the laws of Trinidad. The trial court granted Reading & Bates's motion. Stier did not appeal the trial court's adverse rulings regarding his federal law claims, conceding that he is foreclosed from pursuing any federal claims by section 688(b) of the Jones Act. He contends only that he is not foreclosed by section 688(b) from pursuing in a Texas court state-law remedies or remedies under Trinidad law.

The court of appeals affirmed the trial court's judgment in all respects. For the reasons we consider below, we affirm the disposition of Stier's state-law claims but reverse the dismissal of Stier's claims based on Trinidad law and remand them to the trial court.

II

Until its amendment in 1982, the Jones Act provided that the same remedies available under all statutes of the United States to railroad employees or their personal representatives were available to any seaman who suffered personal injury in the course of employment or to the personal representative of any seaman who died as a result of that personal injury. ¹ In addition to the Jones Act, seamen or their survivors have certain remedies under the Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA), 46 U.S.C. app. §§ 761-67, and general federal maritime law. Further, state law remedies that do not conflict with federal law remedies are available to seamen. See generally Miles v. Apex Marine Corp., 498 U.S. 19, 111 S.Ct. 317, 112 L.Ed.2d 275 (1990) (discussing remedies available to seamen).

Prior to 1982, section 688 of the Jones Act did not expressly draw any distinction among seamen on the basis of their citizenship or domicile and did not expressly require that the employment or the injury or death have any nexus with the United States. However, courts have not construed section 688 (now subsection 688(a)) literally and have not applied it to all foreign seamen. See Lauritzen v. Larsen, 345 U.S. 571, 577, 73 S.Ct. 921, 97 L.Ed. 1254 (1953) (observing that Congress did not intend to extend "our law and open [ ] our courts to all alien seafaring men injured anywhere in the world in service of watercraft of every foreign nation"). The availability of remedies under former section 688 (now subsection 688(a)) of the Jones Act or other American maritime law is to be determined by choice-of-law principles as articulated by the United States Supreme Court in Lauritzen and other decisions. See Lauritzen, 345 U.S. at 583-92, 73 S.Ct. 921; see, e.g., Hellenic Lines Ltd. v. Rhoditis, 398 U.S. 306, 308-10, 90 S.Ct. 1731, 26 L.Ed.2d 252 (1970).

But trial and appellate courts have not uniformly applied these choice-of-law guidelines. It appears that a seaman such as Stier would not have had a remedy based on former section 688 of the Jones Act in some federal circuits but might have stated a cause of action under decisions of the Second Circuit. Compare Chiazor v. Transworld Drilling Co., 648 F.2d 1015 (5 th Cir. June 1981), overruled on other grounds by In re Air Crash Disaster, 821 F.2d 1147 (5 th Cir.1987), Phillips v. Amoco Trinidad Oil Co., 632 F.2d 82 (9 th Cir.1980), and DeMateos v. Texaco, Inc., 562 F.2d 895, 902 & n. 3 (3d Cir.1977) (noting that the Second Circuit has "taken an expansive view on ... export of American maritime law" but declining to take so broad a view of the Jones Act), with Antypas v. Cia. Maritima San Basilio, S.A., 541 F.2d 307 (2d Cir.1976), and Moncada v. Lemuria Shipping Corp., 491 F.2d 470 (2d Cir.1974); see also Vaz Borralho v. Keydril Co., 710 F.2d 207, 210 (5 th Cir.1983) (discussing the split among the federal circuit courts on choice of law and the availability of the Jones Act to foreign seamen).

In 1982, Congress amended the Jones Act and expressly drew a distinction with regard to certain foreign, nonresident workers in the offshore drilling and exploration industry who were injured while over the continental shelf or in the territorial waters of another country. Congress amended section 688 to designate its then-existing provisions as subsection (a) and to add subsection (b), which provides:

(b) Limitation for certain aliens; applicability in lieu of other remedy

(1) No action may be maintained under subsection (a) of this section or under any other maritime law of the United States for maintenance and cure or for damages for the injury or death of a person who was not a citizen or permanent resident alien of the United States at the time of the incident giving rise to the action if the incident occurred--

(A) while that person was in the employ of an enterprise engaged in the exploration, development, or production of offshore mineral or energy resources--including but not limited to drilling, mapping, surveying, diving, pipelaying, maintaining, repairing, constructing, or transporting supplies, equipment or personnel, but not including transporting those resources by [a] vessel constructed or adapted primarily to carry oil in bulk in the cargo spaces; and

(B) in the territorial waters or waters overlaying the continental shelf of a nation other than the United States, its territories, or possessions. As used in this paragraph, the term "continental shelf" has the meaning stated in article I of the 1958 Convention on the Continental Shelf.

(2) The provisions of paragraph (1) of this subsection shall not be applicable if the person bringing the action establishes that no remedy was available to that person--

(A) under the laws of the nation asserting jurisdiction over the area in which the incident occurred; or

(B) under the laws of the nation in which, at the time of the incident, the person for whose injury or death a remedy is sought maintained citizenship or residency.

46 U.S.C. app. § 688(b).

Accordingly, a foreign, nonresident seaman engaged in certain aspects of offshore exploration in the territorial waters of another country may pursue claims under the Jones Act or other maritime laws of the United States, but only if he or she has no remedy under the laws of the nation in whose waters the injury occurred or under the laws of a nation in which the seaman resides or is a citizen. If a remedy exists under the laws of one of those nations, a seaman such as Stier cannot pursue claims under the Jones Act, the...