Following up on its landmark 2014 decision in Coffin v. Blessey Marine Servs., Inc., 771 F.3d 276 (5th Cir. 2014) which concerned the applicability to tankerman of the seaman exclusion to the overtime wage provisions of the...more
A pair of recent Fifth Circuit cases, In Re Larry Doiron, Inc., 849 F.3d 602 (5th Cir. Feb. 23, 2017, rev’d Mar. 7, 2017) and Richard v. Anadarko Petroleum Corp., No. 16-30216 — F.3d —-, 2017 WL 835187 (5th Cir. Mar. 2, 2017)...more
In a sweeping move that has been widely and vociferously praised by supporters and passionately decried by opponents, the Customs and Border Patrol Agency (CBP) on the second-to-last day of the Obama administration’s tenure,...more
Following on this week’s series regarding the new batch of four USCG-BSEE MOUs, this post will discuss the fourth, concerning safety systems.
Perhaps one of the most confounding and critical areas of overlap between the...more
Following on this week’s series regarding the new batch of four USCG-BSEE MOUs, this post will discuss the third, concerning incident reporting.
Hand in glove with the civil penalties and SEMS/SMS MOUs (the latter to be...more
Following on this week’s series regarding the new batch of four USCG-BSEE MOUs, this post will discuss the second, concerning oil spill planning, preparedness and response.
The second of the January 17, 2017 MOUs...more
For the past few years, this blog has attempted to chart the fraught and developing regulatory overlap between the United States Coast Guard (USCG) and Bureau of Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) in the fallout from the...more
In a dramatic reversal of a prior and equally dramatic, watershed administrative decision of the Interior Bureau of Land Appeals (IBLA) upholding the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement’s (BSEE) regulatory...more
The past eighteen to twenty-four months have seen a tectonic shift of focus (as well as a plethora of industry-generated white papers) by virtually every governmental regulatory entity, NGO, and industry group in the maritime...more
In an eminently reasonable, but apparently (surprisingly) res nova decision, the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal has clarified that the maritime collateral source rule does not allow for recovery of medical...more
In 2006, the Fifth Circuit issued a landmark controversial opinion in Texaco Exploration & Production, Inc. v. AmClyde Engineered Products Co., 448 F.3d 760, 770 (5th Cir.) amended on reh’g, 453 F.3d 652 (5th Cir. 2006). The...more
The United States Coast Guard Rear Admiral Paul Thomas recently penned an article for the Marine News magazine, February 2016 edition, highlighting the Coast Guard’s “priorities” for 2016. The article is available at the...more
As previously reported on Striding the Quarterdeck, district courts within the federal Fifth Circuit had split over recent years as to whether the Texas and Louisiana Oilfield Anti-Indemnity Acts (TOAIA, Tex. Civ. Prac. &...more
“Constituents Of Chaos” – Administrative Appellate Decision Confirms Bureau Of Safety And Environmental Enforcement Jurisdiction Over Offshore Contractors The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is...more
The United States Coast Guard (“USCG”), continuing its “One Shelf, One Standard” approach to regulating the Outer Continental Shelf (“OCS”) recently issued a Final Rule enacting new regulations governing electrical equipment...more
4/8/2015
Continuing their post-Macondo/Deepwater Horizon symbiotic approach to regulating the offshore oil industry, the United States Coast Guard (USCG) and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) issued a joint Safety...more
In a much and long anticipated ruling, the Fifth Circuit in Coffin v. Blessey Marine Services, Inc., No. 13-20144 (5th Cir. Nov. 13, 2014), has held as a matter of law that vessel-based tankermen (specially...more
In a much anticipated ruling, the Fifth Circuit en banc has reversed the original panel ruling in Estis v. McBride Well Service, L.L.C., 731 F.3d 505 (5th Cir. 2013), which sent shockwaves through the maritime bar and...more
As previously reported here, the offshore industry has been anxiously awaiting new United States Coast Guard (USCG) regulations for large offshore supply vessels (OSVs) in the wake of the 2010 Coast Guard Authorization Act...more
The Fifth Circuit recently reversed, per curiam, a district court decision finding that a contract worker cleaning oiled beaches near Grand Isle, Louisiana, in the wake of the 2010 Macondo oil spill qualified as a...more
In two recent decisions with critical implications for maritime practitioners and litigants in particular, the United States Supreme Court has re-written the script for determining the existence of personal jurisdiction over...more
As previously reported (regarding the Naquin decision), the Fifth Circuit recently expanded the scope of Jones Act seaman status to include a shipyard worker who spent 70% of his time working aboard vessels (usually moored to...more
In yet another twist in the tortured labors of the Hercules jurisprudence regarding removal of general maritime law claims under 28 U.S.C. §1441(a), the Eastern District of Louisiana has generated a new, divergent “head” on...more
In the new world of shared regulatory oversight between the United States Coast Guard (USCG) and BSEE on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), a mundane devil-in-the-details – but nonetheless vitally important question – had...more
The three men in the tub will no longer have recourse to the federal courts’ admiralty jurisdiction, at least not in the Eastern District of Louisiana. In Martin v. Fab-Con, Inc., 2014 WL 1246073 (E.D. La. Mar. 24, 2014) – a...more