District Courts Increasingly Reluctant To Grant Summary Judgment on Borrowed Servant Doctrine

Seven miles off the coast of Mobile, Alabama, a worker was injured when he fell from a pipe onto a natural gas platform while attempting to re-bolt a flange that was leaking flammable gas.  Following the incident, the worker filed for and received workers’ compensation benefits under the Longshoreman and Harbor Worker Compensation Act.  Employed by a services company, the worker subsequently brought suit against the platform owner, who contended that workers’ compensation immunity from suit extends to it given that the worker was a borrowed servant from the services company.  Given evidence in the record that the worker controlled what jobs he would perform and how to perform them, and that the platform owner did not provide the worker with any instructions, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama ruled last week that a jury should determine whether the platform owner exercised authoritative direction and control over the worker for purposes of determining whether the borrowed servant doctrine applied.

Similarly, yesterday the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana concluded that the question of whether a worker employed by a crane servicing company was a borrowed servant of a platform owner was not appropriate for summary judgment and should be submitted to the jury.  In that case, the worker sustained injuries after falling from a ladder while inspecting an enclosed life boat called a Fast Rescue Craft.  The court emphasized that the control factor was only one of nine factors that the Fifth Circuit had promulgated to determine whether a worker was a borrowed servant and that there was enough conflicting evidence on various factors to preclude summary judgment.  The court also refrained from deciding whether a lifeboat attached to an offshore platform was a vessel for purposes of the Longshoreman and Harbor Worker Compensation Act on the basis that the record before the court did not contain enough evidence of the worker’s specific location when he fell.