Gabriles v. Chevron USA., Inc.

Gabriles v. Chevron USA., Inc., 2014 WL 2567101 (W.D. La. June 6, 2014).

By: Jillian Talley

Edited By: Molly MacKenzie

James Gabriles (hereinafter “Plaintiff”) is a Texas resident who filed the present action in the Fourteenth Judicial District Court in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, against twenty-one defendants. These defendants include nine Jones Act employers, including three Louisiana corporations, and twelve oil companies, none of which were domiciled in Louisiana. Plaintiff alleges that his lymphoma was caused by exposure to benzene and benzene containing products during his employment as a seaman between 1961 and 2003. Plaintiff filed claims under the Jones Act, 46 U.S.C. § 30104, and under general maritime law pursuant to the “saving to suitors” clause of 28 U.S.C. § 1333.In March 2014, Phillips and ExxonMobil filed a Notice of Removal in the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, Lafayette Division, and the Plaintiff moved to remand the case to state court. Plaintiff argued that neither his Jones Act claims nor his “saving to suitors” clause general maritime claims were removable. In response, defendants argued that Plaintiff’s admiralty claims could be removed pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1441(b), as amended in 2011. Furthermore, defendants Union Carbide, Chevron, Gulf, and Huntsman argued that Plaintiff’s Jones Act claim was improperly and/or fraudulently pleaded.Prior to 2012, admiralty claims could only be removed when an independent jurisdictional basis beyond a court’s maritime jurisdiction existed in a given case, such as diversity of citizenship. In In re Dutile, 935 F.2d 61 (5th Cir. 1991), the Fifth Circuit relied on the pre-amendment language of 28 U.S.C. § 1441(b) in holding that because maritime claims are not “founded on a claim or right arising under the Constitution, treaties or laws of the United States,” these claims were subject to the in-state-defendant bar to removal found in section 1441(b) as it was phrased then. Consequently, admiralty claims could be removed to federal court “only by non-forum defendants and only where there [wa]s complete diversity of citizenship.” Dutile, at 63.The 2011 amendment of 28 U.S.C. § 1441(b) removed some of the aforementioned language relied upon by the Dutile court in restricting the removal of maritime claims. The defendants requesting removal claimed that this change in the statute’s language “render[ed] the Dutile rule obsolete,” citing decisions by other district courts in the Fifth Circuit that had ruled that way. While the Fifth Circuit has not directly addressed the status of the Dutile rule, it has stated that the changes made by the 2011 amendment provide a mere “clarification” of 28 U.S.C. § 1441(b) as it was previously written. Barker v. Hercules Offshore, 713 F.3d 208 (5th Cir. 2013). In that case, the court relied on language from the Dutile decision stating that “cases invoking admiralty jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1333 may require complete diversity prior to removal.” Barker, 713 F.3d at 221-22. The court thus held that the statute as amended continued to require complete diversity in order for an admiralty case to be removable.While the removing defendants in the instant case argued that the 2011 amendment to the statute changed the long-standing rule that “saving to suitors” clause admiralty cases brought in state court were not removable in the absence of an independent jurisdictional basis, the court disagreed. Instead, the court deferred to the reasoning in Perrier v. Shell Oil Co., 2014 WL 2155258 (E.D. La. May 22, 2014), where the District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana found that “Dutile is not the source of the diversity requirement for removing maritime cases, at least not those validly brought at law pursuant to the saving to suitors clause,” which was the case for Gabriles’ claim. The court continued by maintaining that even if the Dutile rule had applied in the instant case, the Plaintiff’s general maritime claims were not removable under the same reasoning applied in Freeman v. Phillips 66 Co., 2014 WL 1379786 (E.D. La. Apr. 8, 2014). The Freeman court reasoned that despite the 2011 modifications to section 1441, the statute is still applicable where a nonremovable claim is joined with a claim “arising under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States” or with a claim “within the jurisdiction conferred by section 1331.” 28 U.S.C. 1441(c) (2013); 28 U.S.C. 1441(c) (2006). Therefore, section 1441, in both its pre-amendment and amended forms, applies only when an otherwise removable claim falls within federal question jurisdiction. Section 1441 thus does not apply in this case, because admiralty jurisdiction is the only basis for removal of the Plaintiff’s general maritime claims.Additionally, defendants Union Carbide, Chevron, Gulf, and Huntsman argue that Plaintiff’s Jones Act claim against them was improperly and/or fraudulently pled. Unless the defendant can show fraudulent joinder, a properly pleaded Jones Act claim cannot be removed. It is only proper for a court to deny a motion to remand on the basis of a fraudulently pleaded Jones Act claim when, after resolving both any contested questions offact and any ambiguities in substantive law in the plaintiff’s favor, the court determines that the plaintiff has no reasonable chance to establish his/her employer’s liability under the Jones Act. The defendant has the burden of proving that a Jones Act claim has been fraudulently pleaded.Defendants argued that, in his petition, Plaintiff failed to offer specific details supporting his assertion that he was ever employed by any of the four defendants. Each of the defendants claimed that they could not locate any employment records showing that Plaintiff was their employee at any time. These defendants asserted that Plaintiff’s failure to prove he was ever in their employment indicated that he would also fail to prove that any significant portion of his alleged work occurred on a vessel, as required for a plaintiff to have seaman status allowing him to bring a Jones Act claim.Plaintiff responded to the defendants’ claim by providing affidavits and U.S. Coast Guard records which showed that he was employed as a seaman by Union Carbide, Gulf, and Texaco, Inc. Each of these companies is tied in some way to the four defendants questioning Plaintiff’s Jones Act claims. Chevron is the successor in interest to Gulf, it is “public knowledge” that Texaco, Inc. registered the sale of Texaco Chemical Company to Huntsman, and information on Texaco’s website acknowledges its relationship with Chevron resulting from their 2002 merger. The court thus found the defendants’ arguments to be an “unpersuasive attempt to shift the burden in the ‘summary judgment-like’ proceeding” to the Plaintiff. The court found that the defendants failed to satisfy their burden of showing that the Plaintiff had no reasonable chance of establishing a Jones Act claim against them, meaning that the Plaintiff’s Jones Act claims were not removable.Because the court held that both the Plaintiff’s general maritime claims and his Jones Act claims were nonremovable, the Plaintiff’s motion to remand was granted.