A seaman on a commercial fishing vessel out on the Gulf of Mexico accidentally sliced up his hands with hooks and fish gills. The vessel’s captain arranged to have a second vessel meet them at sea and ferry the seaman back to shore so he could get medical attention. The middle-of-the-night rendezvous on the high seas was a success but did not come soon enough to save all of the seaman’s fingers; due to infection, many had to be amputated. These dramatic events were all caught on film because, as serendipity would have it, a production company was filming a reality TV show on the fishing vessel as these events unfolded. The seaman sued the vessel’s owner and the production company, among other parties, for his injuries under federal maritime law.
The viability of the seaman’s lawsuit against the production company requires us to address the following questions: (1) Is the production company liable under the Jones Act (46 U.S.C. § 30104) because it “borrowed” the crew members as “employees” by filming them doing their jobs and by occasionally asking them to repeat what they are doing for the camera and explain it, and (2) Is the production company liable under maritime tort law because (a) it had a “special relationship” with the crew members it was filming sufficient to give rise to a duty to rescue them, (b) it voluntarily assumed a duty to rescue but effectuated that rescue with gross negligence, worsened the crewman’s position or caused the crewman to detrimentally rely on its rescue efforts, or (c) it acted negligently in “taking charge” of a “helpless” person within the meaning of Restatement First and Second of Torts, section 324? We conclude that the answer to these questions is “no,” and affirm the trial court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the production company.
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