352
Opinion of the Court
substantial part of his work on the vessel, you may not consider the period of time the Galileo was in drydock in Germany, because during that time period she was out of navigation. You may, however, consider the time spent sailing to and from Germany for the conversion. Also, on this first element of being a seaman, seamen do not include land-based workers." App. 210.
The parties stipulated to the District Court's second requirement for Jones Act coverage—that Latsis' duties contributed to the accomplishment of the missions of the Chandris vessels. Id., at 211. Latsis did not object to the seaman status jury instructions in their entirety, but only contested that portion of the charge which explicitly took from the jury's consideration the period of time that the Galileo was in dry-dock. The jury returned a verdict in favor of Chandris solely on the issue of Latsis' status as a seaman under the Jones Act. Id., at 213.
Respondent appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which vacated the judgment and remanded the case for a new trial. 20 F. 3d 45 (1994). The court emphasized that its longstanding test for seaman status under the Jones Act required " 'a more or less permanent connection with the ship,' " Salgado v. M. J. Rudolph Corp., 514 F. 2d 750, 755 (CA2 1975), a connection that need not be limited to time spent on the vessel but could also be established by the nature of the work performed. The court thought that the alternate formulation employed by the District Court (permanent assignment to the vessel or performance of a substantial part of his work on the vessel), which was derived from Offshore Co. v. Robison, 266 F. 2d 769, 779 (CA5 1959), improperly framed the issue for the jury primarily, if not solely, in terms of Latsis' temporal relationship to the vessel. With that understanding of what the language of the Robison test implied, the court concluded that the District Court's seaman status jury instructions constituted plain error under established Circuit precedent. The court then
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