Cite as: 515 U. S. 347 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
the vessel (Swanson v. Marra Bros., 328 U. S. 1, 4), to whom Congress extended the protection of the Jones Act."
We believe it is important to avoid " 'engrafting upon the statutory classification of a "seaman" a judicial gloss so protean, elusive, or arbitrary as to permit a worker to walk into and out of coverage in the course of his regular duties.' " Barrett v. Chevron, U. S. A., Inc., 781 F. 2d 1067, 1075 (CA5 1986) (en banc) (quoting Longmire v. Sea Drilling Corp., 610 F. 2d 1342, 1347, n. 6 (CA5 1980)). In evaluating the employment-related connection of a maritime worker to a vessel in navigation, courts should not employ "a 'snapshot' test for seaman status, inspecting only the situation as it exists at the instant of injury; a more enduring relationship is contemplated in the jurisprudence." Easley, supra, at 5. Thus, a worker may not oscillate back and forth between Jones Act coverage and other remedies depending on the activity in which the worker was engaged while injured. Reeves v. Mobile Dredging & Pumping Co., 26 F. 3d 1247, 1256 (CA3 1994). Unlike Justice Stevens, see post, at 383, we do not believe that any maritime worker on a ship at sea as part of his employment is automatically a member of the crew of the vessel within the meaning of the statutory terms. Our rejection of the voyage test is also consistent with the interests of employers and maritime workers alike in being able to predict who will be covered by the Jones Act (and, perhaps more importantly for purposes of the employers' workers' compensation obligations, who will be covered by the LHWCA) before a particular workday begins.
To say that our cases have recognized a distinction between land-based and sea-based maritime workers that precludes application of a voyage test for seaman status, however, is not to say that a maritime employee must work only on board a vessel to qualify as a seaman under the Jones Act. In Southwest Marine, Inc. v. Gizoni, 502 U. S. 81 (1991), decided only a few months after Wilander, we concluded that a worker's status as a ship repairman, one of the enumerated
363
Page: Index Previous 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007