by Christopher Hannan | Jun 18, 2019
In a rare decision applying the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (43 U.S.C. §1331 et seq.(“OCSLA”), the United States Supreme Court has clarified, re-affirmed and perhaps (given the breadth of its opinion) expanded the exclusive application of federal law on the OCS. This decision comes in the midst of a flurry of maritime/maritime-related writ grants in the current term (Newton, Batterton, Thacker, Devries, and ATHOS I) all of which we will be tracking here on Striding the Quarterdeck. This decision may upend decades of jurisprudence in the Fifth Circuit regarding contractual indemnity. (more…)
by Christopher Hannan | Nov 7, 2018
Despite perennial complaints from lower and appellate courts that the Limitation of Liability Act (“LLA,” 46 U.S.C. §§30501 et seq.) is “now hopelessly anachronistic” (Cont’l Oil Co. v. Bonanza Corp., 706 F.2d 1365, 1376 (5th Cir. 1983) and that “such a law no longer makes sense” Delta Country Ventures, Inc. v. Magana, 986 F.2d 1260, 1266–67 (9th Cir. 1993), the LLA continues to be a powerful procedural and (when successfully invoked) substantive tool for shipowners. This is despite the fact that virtually every high profile maritime casualty (at least as to limitable personal injury/property claims, as opposed to non-limitable pollution issues) raises public controversy and calls for legislative repeal/restrictions of the century-and-a-half old “relic of the clipper ship era in which it was launched”[1] – from the sinking of the TITANIC all the way to the DEEPWATER HORIZON disaster (which prompted an eventually abandoned bill to repeal the LLA), the tragic loss of the EL FARO and the recent catastrophic duckboat incident in Missouri that killed 17. (more…)
by Christopher Hannan | Oct 1, 2018
In an important decision of first impression construing the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (“OPA,” 33 U.S.C. §§2701 et seq.), the Fifth Circuit has held the owner and operator (“Nature’s Way”) of a “dominant mind” tugboat liable under OPA as the “responsible party” for a spill emanating from a non-self-propelled “dumb” tank barge in its tow, even though the barge was owned by a third party (Third Coast Towing, “TCT”). Specifically, the Fifth Circuit conducted a res nova interpretation and application of 33 U.S.C. §2702(a), which provides that a designated “responsible party” shall be strictly liable, in the first instance and even without fault, for cleanup/removal costs and damages resulting from an oil spill; and further defines “responsible party” with respect to a “vessel” as “any person owning, operating or demise chartering the vessel.” (more…)
by Christopher Hannan | Aug 3, 2018
With the eddies still spinning in the wheelwash of its landmark en banc opinion in In Re Larry Doiron, Inc., the Fifth Circuit in In re Crescent Energy Servs., L.L.C., 2018 WL 3420665 (5th Cir. July 13, 2018), — F.3d —, has quickly answered one of the application-specific questions left open by Doiron, as noted previously on Striding the Quarterdeck’s discussion of Doiron: is a contract to decommission an offshore platform a maritime contract or a contract governed by state law? Specifically, under the newly launched Doiron analysis, courts must consider two factors in determining whether a contract is maritime: (1) whether “the contract [is] one to provide services to facilitate the drilling or production of oil and gas on navigable waters”; and if so, (2) whether it “provide[s] or [whether] the parties expect that a vessel will play a substantial role in the completion of the contract.” Under the first factor, the issue of whether deconstructing a well/platform can be deemed “services to facilitate the drilling or production” of the well remained to be decided after Doiron. (more…)
by Christopher Hannan | Feb 21, 2018
Steady, helmsman! Steady. This is the sort of weather when brave hearts snap ashore, and keeled hulls split at sea. Moby Dick, Herman Melville, Chap. XL
Since the Supreme Court’s (Justice Thomas’s) landmark decision in Atlantic Sounding Co. v. Townsend, 557 U.S. 404 (2009) holding that punitive damages are available in a seaman’s general maritime law (GML) cause of action for willful failure to pay maintenance and cure, several pitched battles have been raging around the country on an issue expressly left unanswered in Townsend (see 557 U.S. at 424, n.11): whether punitive damages are recoverable by a seaman in the separate and independent GML cause of action for unseaworthiness. (more…)
