Chandris, Inc., et al. v. Antonios Latsis (515 U.S. 347)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 14, 1995 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 515 U.S. 347 · 115 S. Ct. 2172
- Decided
- June 14, 1995
- Term
- October Term 1994
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice O'Connor
- Issue area
- Economic Activity
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice O’Connor delivered the opinion of the Court. This case asks us to clarify what “employment-related connection to a vessel in navigation,” McDermott Int’l, Inc. v. Wilander, 498 U. S. 337, 355 (1991), is necessary for a maritime worker to qualify as a seaman under the Jones Act, 46 U. S. C. App. § 688(a). In Wilander, we addressed the type of activities that a seaman must perform and held that, under the Jones Act, a seaman’s job need not be limited to transportation-related functions that directly aid in the vessel’s navigation. We now determine what relationship a worker must have to the vessel, regardless of the specific tasks the worker undertakes, in order to obtain seaman status. I In May 1989, respondent Antonios Latsis was employed by petitioner Chandris, Inc., as a salaried superintendent engineer. Latsis was responsible for maintaining and updating the electronic and communications equipment on Chandris’ fleet of vessels, which consisted of six passenger cruise ships. Each ship in the Chandris fleet carried between 12 and 14 engineers who were assigned permanently to that vessel. Latsis, on the other hand, was one of two supervising engineers based at Chandris’ Miami office; his duties ran to the entire fleet and included not only overseeing the vessels’ engineering departments, which required him to take a number of voyages, but also planning and directing…
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