Oil and Gas

SCOTUS declines maritime appeal

by Walter Pierce

Wikimedia

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal of a case that could have had far-reaching implications for the oil and gas industry. Now, the matter is settled, says an attorney for the industry.

The case, McBride Versus Estis Well Service, was effectively decided by the U.S. Fifth Circuit of Appeals in New Orleans when the appellate court ruled in favor of Estis and against the family of an oilfield worker who was killed on a barge. The family sought punitive damages alleging unseaworthiness against Estis.

As ABiz reported in October 2014:

At its basic it’s a rather simple issue: Can maritime seamen sue their employers for punitive damages?

The case took an almost direct route to the august halls of the 5th Circuit, beginning with the March 2011 death of Skye Sonnier on a barge on Bayou Sorrel in Iberville Parish. Sonnier was crushed by drilling pipes that became dislodged. Three fellow workers were injured.

Sonnier’s girlfriend, Haleigh McBride, sued Estis within a month on behalf of herself and the couple’s minor child. But she did something extraordinary: She sought punitive damages, citing unseaworthiness of the barge and rig under general maritime law. (A catwalk on the rig had been damaged by a storm the night before Sonnier’s death and was a contributing factor in the accident.) Under long-established legal precedent, seamen — Sonnier was, technically, a maritime worker because he was on a barge on water — are not entitled to punitive damages under the unseaworthiness doctrine; they’re only entitled to recover lost and future-lost wages and medical expenses.

Estis prevailed in federal district court in Lafayette, but a three-judge panel for the Fifth District reversed that ruling. Attorneys for McBride requested and got a rare en banc hearing of the full 15-judge Fifth Circuit, which reversed the earlier three-judge ruling.

Tim Basden

Had the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and reversed the Fifth Circuit's ruling it likely would have opened a floodgate of lawsuits by oil and gas workers injured on anything that floats. But Lafayette attorney Tim Basden, one of the lawyers who represented Estis before the full Fifth Circuit, says by rejecting the appeal the Supreme Court has basically settled the case:

“We are not aware of any other case on the issue of punitive damages for unseaworthiness which is pending in any other federal appellate circuit at this time,” Basden tells ABiz. “The en banc ruling of the Fifth Circuit, which held that punitive damages are not available in unseaworthiness and Jones Act cases, stands as the latest and most authoritative ruling on the issue. While the issue will come up again somewhere in the United States in the future, the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to let the Fifth Circuit ruling stand has settled the issue within the Fifth Circuit.”

Read ABiz's original story, "Deep Law," here.