“Other Adjoining Area Customarily Used” Under Longshore Act
“Other Adjoining Area Customarily Used” Under Longshore Act
Malta v. Wood Group Production Services, 2015 DOLBRB LEXIS 92 (BRB, May 29, 2015)
By: Sarah Thompson
In a decision released today (but dated May 29, 2015), the Benefits Review Board reversed the Administrative Law Judge who denied benefits to the claimant maintaining that he did not satisfy the situs requirement of 33 U.S.C. 903(a) in that the production facility where he worked and located in Black Bay Field within the State of Louisiana was not an “adjoining pier, wharf, dry dock, terminal, building way, marine railway, or other adjoining area customarily used by an employer in loading, unloading … a vessel.” The plaintiff was injured at the Central Facility Platform while unloading a vessel of supplies and equipment stored at the Central Facility, shipped to the satellite platforms and used in the oil and gas production. The ALJ found that the area was not a covered situs as the Central Facility was not an “other adjoining area” under the Act reasoning that “the unloading of supplies and equipment shipped by vessel from the shore to the Central Facility and the subsequent loading of supplies and equipment from the Central Facility onto vessels to be shipped to the satellite platforms qualifies as maritime commerce.” He found the decision of the Fifth Circuit in Thibodeaux v. Grasso Prod. Mgmt., 370 F.3d 486 (5th Cir. 2004) controlling and also distinguished the operations from Coastal Prod. Servs. v. Hudson, 555 F.3d 426 (5th Cir. 2009) in that the Central Facility is not a shipping platform but a facility for housing workers and supplies for shipment to satellite facilities. The BRB reversed agreeing with the claimant and the Director that the Central Facility “functioned as an offshore dock and a collection and distribution facility used to unload and store supplies and equipment delivered from the mainland by vessels and to load materials onto other vessels for delivery to the satellite oil and gas production platforms.” That the supplies were used for the oil and gas operations is immaterial. The claimant’s job required him to load and unload vessels daily from the Central Facility which is clearly within the purview of the Act.
