That maritime law is a different species than its landlubber cousin was again made clear in a recent South Carolina federal judge’s decision to hear a lawsuit over a seaman’s death in the Indian Ocean.
Piers Van Der Walt was working aboard a ship anchored off the coast of Indonesia in 2012 when he told fellow crewmembers that a cut on his leg had become infected. He was given penicillin tablets, but his condition quickly deteriorated.
Despite having a swollen leg, fever and vomiting, Van Der Walt remained on the ship and allegedly did not receive any more medical care. He was found dead in his cabin two days after reporting the infection.
“Had the ship gotten medical attention for him, he would have survived,” said Charleston maritime lawyer Scott Bluestein.
He represents Van Der Walt’s widow, Annette Van Der Walt, in a wrongful death suit against the ship’s owner, Wayneworks Marine. The Georgia-based company takes well-heeled clients on scuba diving excursions in exotic locales.
Arguing that its ties to the Palmetto State were too tenuous, Wayneworks tried to have the case dismissed from the U.S. District Court in Anderson and transferred to its home state of Georgia.
Wayne Brown, the company’s owner, stated in an affidavit that Wayneworks has never had an office or even a bank account in South Carolina and did not advertise in the state. Also, he said the ship Van Der Walt died on had never entered S.C. waters.
But Bluestein and his client showed that at least six other South Carolinians apart from Van Der Walt worked for Wayneworks. They asserted that the company had personal contact, such as phone calls, with these employees while they were in state and had paid them more than $900,000 via direct deposits into their local bank accounts.
What’s more, the company had worked with at least 160 clients from South Carolina. And, finally, there was the fact that the Van Der Walts lived here.
Those facts in favor of Annette Van Der Walt likely would have been too flimsy to establish jurisdiction “under normal circumstances” in a land-based case, U.S. District Court Judge J. Michelle Childs wrote in her March 28 order denying Wayneworks’ motion to dismiss.
“However, this case presents the somewhat unique situation that Plaintiff’s claims arose on the high seas,” she said. “In this regard, Plaintiff’s claims do not arise in any other state whose courts might provide a more likely forum.”
Childs concluded that South Carolina’s interest in hearing a resident’s case trumped Georgia’s. She cited the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ opinion in Lee v. Walworth Valve Co., which held in 1973 that South Carolina had a “paternal interest in the recovery by one of its citizens of appropriate compensation.”
She went on to find that Wayneworks’ “contacts with South Carolina are ‘continuous and systematic’ enough under the unique circumstances presented by this case to justify the exercise of general jurisdiction over it.”
The company’s attorney, John Hughes Cooper of Mount Pleasant,said Child’s based her decision on “some small contacts” that his client had with the state. He questioned whether other plaintiffs would point to the order to prove jurisdiction based on a company’s direct deposits into employee accounts.
“Are companies going to stop doing that now because it’s one way you can be subject to a suit in another state?” he said of electronic deposits. “That seems a little counterproductive to me.”
But he added, “I don’t think the judge was wrong. I just think this was a really close case.”
Paul Gibson, a well-known maritime lawyer in North Charleston who reviewed Childs’ order, believed that her finding falls squarely within settled maritime case law.
“It recognizes the nature of injuries on the high seas and the transitory nature of maritime work,” he said.
The nine-page decision is Van Der Walt v. Wayneworks Marine, LLC (Lawyers Weekly No. 002-081-14). The full text of the opinion is available online at sclawyersweekly.com.
Follow Phillip Bantz on Twitter @SCLWBantz