Six-Year Hiatus Enough Of A Break To Require Separate Evaluation Of Duties For Jones Act Seaman Status

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana held yesterday that a pipeline coating technician who was injured aboard a vessel involved in laying pipeline underneath the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain was a “seaman” for Jones Act purposes.  The court rejected the employer’s argument that the worker was not a seaman for failing to meet the Jones Act’s temporal requirement.  In Chandris v. Latsis, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that seaman status requires 1) that the employee’s duties contribute to the function of a vessel in navigation or to the accomplishment of its mission and 2) that the connection be substantial in terms of both its nature and duration.  The Fifth Circuit’s rule of thumb is that if a worker spends less than 30% of his time in service of a vessel in navigation, he would not qualify as a Jones Act seaman.  The employer of the pipeline coating technician argued that because the employee worked for the employer on several on-land projects in 1998 and on six on-land projects between 2004 and 2006, those prior assignments needed to be included in determining seaman status.  The court disagreed and found the six-year hiatus between assignments for this employer enough of a break to require separate evaluation and concluded that only the most recent assignment should be considered in the Jones Act analysis.  The court explained that the employee worked for other employers during the six-year hiatus and that to lump all of his assignments with this particular employer together to make the seaman status determination “makes no sense and is inconsistent with the purpose of the Jones Act.”