In Sanchez v. Smart Fabricators of Texas, LLC, 970 F.3d 550, a three-judge panel of the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal held on August 14, 2020, that seaman status under the Jones Act may apply to an injured welder on a jack-up oil rig adjacent to an inland pier. Maintaining that the plaintiff qualified as a seaman under controlling Fifth Circuit precedent but questioning that precedent in light of Supreme Court case law, the panel urged the Fifth Circuit to review the case en banc.
Smart Fabricators of Texas (“SmartFab”) fabricates steel and repairs oil and gas drilling equipment. Its employees work at its shop and yard and occasionally on jacked-up drilling rigs, often docked to inland piers. Gilbert Sanchez, a welder-fitter employed by SmartFab, never went to sea on vessels. He worked day shifts and returned home every evening. In August 2018, while working on a rig owned by Enterprise Offshore Drilling, LLC (“Enterprise”), Sanchez was injured when he tripped on a pipe welded to the deck. Sanchez was never an Enterprise employee or a member of the rig’s crew. The rig was jacked up out of the water with its legs on the seabed. It was stationary, a step away from the shoreside pier.
After his accident, Sanchez sued Enterprise and SmartFab in state court under the Jones Act, 46 U.S.C. § 30104. Enterprise and SmartFab removed the case arguing the federal court’s subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (“OCSLA”), 43 U.S.C. § 1349(b)(1). Sanchez v. Enterprise Offshore Drilling LLC, 376 F.Supp. 3d 726 (S.D. Tex 2019). Sanchez responded by dismissing his claims against Enterprise and moved to remand, arguing the Jones Act precluded removal. Id. at 728. The district court acknowledged that a defendant generally cannot remove a case brought pursuant to the Jones Act in state court. Id. at 729. However, a district court can deny remand if, after conducting a “summary-judgment-type” of inquiry, in which the court pierces the pleadings, it determines the plaintiff’s complaint “misstated or omitted discrete facts.” Id. (quoting Flagg v. Stryker Corp., 819 F.3d 132, 136-37 (5th Cir. 2016)). In conducting this “summary-judgment-type” of inquiry, the district court found that Sanchez was a shoreside worker whose duties did not take him to sea and did not regularly expose him to the perils of the sea. Id. at 733. Holding that he did not qualify as a Jones Act seaman, the district court denied his motion to remand. Subsequently, SmartFab moved for and was granted summary judgment. Sanchez v. Enterprise Offshore Drilling LLC, 2019 WL 2515307 (Jun. 18, 2019).
On appeal, Sanchez argued that he qualified as a Jones Act seaman. The three-judge panel reversed the district court, considering itself bound by previous Fifth Circuit opinions that it deemed indistinguishable. However, in a special concurrence, the entire panel maintained that Sanchez did not qualify as a Jones Act seaman under Supreme Court precedent. Identifying a divergence between the Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court on the issue, the...
