Roy Crook And Sons, Inc v. Allen

778 F.2d 1037 (5th Cir. 1985)

Purchase the Printed Copy at bsmsphd.com

Nature of the Case

To access this section all you need to do is click here and register.

Facts

D drowned in the Gulf of Mexico on July 5, 1981, while attempting to bring in the anchor of the M/V Lady Patricia, a ship then owned by D. At one o'clock in the morning on July 4, 1981, the M/V Lady Patricia lay dead in the water with two men were aboard: D and a deck-hand named Ruiwess. The Lady Patricia is sixty-five feet long and has a capacity of eighty-nine gross tons. It operated under a Coast Guard Certificate of Inspection which required a crew of two ocean operators and two deck hands. At noon on July 4, another vessel, the State Ebony, used compressed air to restart The Lady Patricia's propulsion engines. The Lady Patricia, still without the power of her diesel-driven generators, was unable to hoist her anchor. The anchor was therefore left at sea, with an ice chest serving as a buoy to mark its location. At eight o'clock that evening, The Lady Patricia arrived at Ingleside, Texas. The deckhand Ruiwess quit. Vice-president Crook got James Crume to serve as the deck-hand replacement. Vice-president Crook then sent The Lady Patricia back to sea, to recover her anchor and to continue servicing the Griffith Alexander rig. Crume tried for three hours to raise the anchor. D assisted him, became entangled in the line, and was pulled overboard. Crume's efforts to reach D with a life preserver were unsuccessful. Crume tried for three hours to raise the anchor. P assisted him and became entangled in the line P filed a petition seeking exoneration from or limitation of liability. Ds appeared as claimants opposing P's motion. The court denied P's petition. After a two-day non-jury trial, the district court calculated the value of the loss to Ds at $384,204. The court then held that D had himself been seventy-five percent responsible for the accident. Ds appealed.