It is a long-held rule of maritime law that a principal cannot be held liable for the independent acts of an independent contractor. That is to say, in a principal-agent relationship, a principal can be liable for the actions of an agent if the agent acts under the control of the principal, but the principal cannot be held liable for acts of an independent third party.
Often, this is easy to determine. For instance, suppose a ship docks at port. The ship’s crew leaves the ship while a cleaning service boards the ship to clean. The cleaning service is not owned by the ship owner and is only an independent contractor. The ship’s operator provides specific instructions to the cleaning crew not to wax the deck because it will become slippery and dangerous. Regardless, a member of the cleaning service waxes the deck. Later, crew members return and one seriously injures himself due to the waxing. In such a circumstance, the ship operator cannot be held responsible because it, as principal, is not responsible for the independent act, waxing the deck, of an independent agent, the cleaning service. While the injured party may have a claim against the owner of the cleaning service, he has no such claim against the ship operator because the cleaning service is not legally an agent of the ship operator.
However, there are times when it is difficult to determine whether, in a maritime context, there is a principal-agent relationship with respect to the ship operator and an independent contractor. An example of this is the recent case of Barry v. Shell Oil Company from the District Court of Alaska.
Barry Case
Blane Barry worked aboard a ship. Jens Boel Fischer, a crane technician, requested that Barry help Fischer lift a crane cable spool onto the deck of a large ship as part of them cleaning up the deck of a ship. As a result, Barry suffered spinal injuries.
Barry, in a deposition, claimed that Fischer asked him to help so he helped, presuming that Fischer was an employee of ARCTIA, the ship’s operator. However, Fischer was in fact an employee of a sub-contractor, not ARCTIA. Consequently, the defendant claimed that it was not liable for the actions of a subcontractor’s employee.
Barry claimed that because Fischer was under the control of ARCTIA, as a subcontractor performing work aboard the ship, then Barry can sue for his injuries.
The Court noted that the determination of whether Fischer was an agent, legally, of ARCTIA rested on the specific facts of the case. In that case, Fischer did not ask Barry to help clean the deck based on an order from ARCTIA; instead, Fischer acted on his own free will.
Another point is how ARCTIA’s captain dealt with subcontractors. While ARCTIA’s captain had final say on all matters related to the ship, there was no evidence that ARCTIA had actual involvement with Fischer’s position as a subcontractor. Simply having final say on ship matters did not suffice to create a principal-agent relationship under maritime law.
Injured in a maritime accident? Contact the Kolodny law firm, experienced maritime lawyers.
Alan Kolodny is committed to representing injured clients in Texas and throughout the United States. Alan earned his B.A. from Rice University and his J.D. from Southern Methodist University.
He focuses his practice on representing plaintiffs in personal injury cases involving the following matters: maritime and offshore accidents, including those under the Jones Act; automobile and 18-wheeler truck accidents; and industrial site accidents, work-related accidents, and claims for injured railroad workers under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act.
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