Boston Ship Repair, LLC v. Starr Indemnity & Liability Co.

997 F. Supp. 2d 118, 2014 A.M.C. 1426, 2014 WL 644731
CourtDistrict Court, D. Massachusetts
DecidedFebruary 20, 2014
DocketCivil Action No. 12-11098-WGY
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 997 F. Supp. 2d 118 (Boston Ship Repair, LLC v. Starr Indemnity & Liability Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Massachusetts primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Boston Ship Repair, LLC v. Starr Indemnity & Liability Co., 997 F. Supp. 2d 118, 2014 A.M.C. 1426, 2014 WL 644731 (D. Mass. 2014).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

YOUNG, District Judge.

I. INTRODUCTION

On September 6, 2013, after a four-day bench trial in admiralty,1 this Court entered from the bench its findings of fact and tentative rulings of law regarding Boston Ship Repair, LLC’s (“Boston Ship Repair”) action for damages resulting from a flooding incident on the USNS RED CLOUD (the “RED CLOUD”). See Trial Tr. vol. 4, Sept. 6, 2013, ECF No. 109. During this September hearing, the Court tentatively ruled that the “appropriate admiralty rule, where there is liability creating fault, is to assess comparative culpability.” Id. at 16:18-20. ' The Court held that Boston Ship Repair, a ship repair facility that contracted to perform overhaul work to the RED CLOUD, is entitled to damages from North Point Marine & Industrial, Inc. (“North Point”), the subcontractor that performed the repair and replacement of certain of the RED CLOUD’s motor-operated valves, and that North Point in turn is entitled to contribution from the RED CLOUD’s owner, Ocean Ships, Inc. (“Ocean Ships”). Id. at 16:24-17:3; see also id. at 4:4-11. The Court assessed North Point’s comparative culpability to be 25 percent and Ocean Ship’s comparative culpability to be 75 percent. Id. at 17:3-5. Reserving the right further to amend its tentative rulings of law, the Court then invited the parties to submit post-trial briefs regarding the ap[121]*121plication of admiralty law to this case. Id. at 17:14-23. Having received these briefs and reflected on the arguments contained therein, the Court enters here its final rulings of law. This memorandum wholly adopts and does not further revise the Court’s findings of fact entered from the bench on September 6, 2013.

IL RULINGS OF LAW

A. The Source of Each Party’s Liability

Before proceeding to the ultimate question of what admiralty law applies to this case, the Court ought clarify the legal basis for each party’s liability.

1. North Point’s Liability

As the Court has ruled, North Point was subject to a duty of workmanlike performance2 in rendering its services to Boston Ship Repair. Id. at 8:8-11. In this context, the Court found that while in the RED CLOUD’s engine spaces, North Point employee Matthew Slaven recognized that valve BW-V-1 was a motor-operated valve and tagged it for removal accordingly. Id. at 11-12:15. When he realized later on that BW-V-1 was not called out as a motor-operated valve on the list he had been given, however, he did not report this omission from the list to his supervisor, Philip Trapasso. Id. at 11:19—23.

In the course of entering these findings at the September hearing, the Court remarked from the bench that Mr. Slaven’s actions were “negligent,” id. at 11:23, and constituted a “failure of workmanlike performance,” id. at 12:8. Upon reflection, the Court realizes that these characterizations may have created an impression that there are multiple grounds for North Point’s liability. In the interest of clarity, the Court now rules that Mr. Slaven’s actions constituted a breach of the implied warranty of workmanlike performance, and it appears that no party contests this ruling. The Court refrains from ruling on whether Mr. Slaven’s actions also constituted negligence.

2. Ocean Ships’s Liability

The Court also has ruled that Ocean Ships breached its contractual obligations by preparing documents for Boston Ship Repair and its subcontractors that erroneously failed to list valve BW-V-1 as a motor-operated valve. Id. at 8:11-9:13. In its oral remarks, the Court referred to this breach as “negligent,” id. at 9:1, but this or any other reference to Ocean Ships in the context of negligence was a misstatement. The Court dismissed North Point’s tort claims against Ocean Ships in its earlier order entered on July 19, 2013. Order ¶ 3, ECF No. 93.

More importantly, Ocean Ships contests that it is at all liable to North Point. First, Ocean Ships disagrees with the interpretation of its contractual duty offered by the Court at the September hearing. The language at issue is contained in paragraph 5.5 of the parties’ work order regarding sea valve inspection, which notes the following specification: “Ship’s force to lock out/tag out and make safe all equipment pertaining to this work item.” Starr Indemnity & North Point’s Answer & Affirmative Defenses, Ex. 1, Item No. 0950—Sea Valves Inspection—ABS—USCG 0950-1, ECF No. 6-1. Ocean Ships argues that this language “should be read as [122]*122a whole and not considered independent of the entire agreement.” Ocean Ships Br. 8. This purportedly leads to a construction where “the requirement to ‘make safe the equipment’ only arises when the ship’s force ‘locks out/tags out.’ ” Id. at 9. Ocean Ships thus contends that “there is no freestanding requirement that the ship’s force ‘make safe the equipment.’ ” Id. at 10.

As the Court has explained, however, it gives the words in paragraph 5.5 their ordinary and normal meaning and consequently, “[i]t is the ship’s force who are contractually obligated to make safe all equipment pertaining to this work item.” Trial Tr. vol. 4, 9:20-22. In other words, there is a freestanding requirement— which is not contingent on the ship’s force locking out or tagging out the specified valves — that the ship’s force “make safe the equipment.” The Court therefore is not persuaded to revise its original interpretation of Ocean Ships’s contractual duty.

Ocean Ships’s second argument is that it “cannot be found negligent in this matter because [Ocean Ships] was not on notice prior to the incident that [valve BW-V-1] was omitted from the agreement with North Point.” Ocean Ships Br. 7. Ocean Ships asserts that its duty of care for a “defective condition ... not unique to the maritime context,” id. at 7, is only triggered “when it has actual or constructive notice of [that condition],” id. at 7-8. This argument is immaterial, however, as it is premised on the Court having ruled that Ocean Ships was negligent. As explained above, the Court misspoke when it referred to Ocean Ships’s contractual breach as negligent.

Moreover, if the Court applies Ocean Ships’s notice argument to the matter of breach of contract, the Court’s ruling on that issue also remains the same. It is true that Oceans Ships was unaware of the omission of valve BW-V-1. The Court acknowledged as much when it found that the omission was “inadvertent.” Trial Tr. vol. 4, 8:22. The Court also noted that the contract at issue “is an extraordinarily complex and extensive document and inadvertent errors are expected to occur and in the contract documents are indeed provided for.” Id. at 8:18-20. In interpreting the phrase “[s]hip’s force to lock out/tag out,” the Court gave credence to the fact “that the ship’s force is most familiar with the valves in the interior of the vessel and the actual operation of the ship.” Id. at 9:16-18. According to industry practice, the burden was on Ocean Ships to provide an accurate list of all the motor-operated valves to be logged out or tagged out. It is not sufficient for Ocean Ships to claim that it needed to be actively notified of an omission of a valve from the list.

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Bluebook (online)
997 F. Supp. 2d 118, 2014 A.M.C. 1426, 2014 WL 644731, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/boston-ship-repair-llc-v-starr-indemnity-liability-co-mad-2014.