Maritime Injury

The plaintiff suffered burn injuries that resulted from a flash fire while he was cleaning an engine with the use of a flammable brake-part cleaner. The flash fire caused the plaintiff’s coveralls to, which were flammable, to ignite. Defendant asserted plaintiff’s knowledge of a prior similar flash fire evidenced his personal responsibility for the incident and his injuries.
Plaintiff asserted the management and operation of the vessel was negligent, and that the defendant’s actions resulted in the improper use of materials, including flammable suits and products, that resulted in the fire incident that caused Plaintiff’s injuries. Defendant asserted Plaintiff elected to disregard instructions provided to him weeks before the subject incident by supervisors and crew members that he should not use the flammable materials that he was using at the time of the incident.
Plaintiff asserted that he never received warnings or instructions not to use the brake-parts cleaner to perform his work. Defendants asserted three different witnesses warned or instructed plaintiff in this way. Plaintiffs, through the course of depositions, aimed to demonstrate that neither of the three witnesses, in fact, gave any such warning or instruction as one individual was not on the job at the time of the alleged warning, the other made a written statement contrary to any such warning being given, and the third testified inconsistently as to the time and location of any warning that was provided to Plaintiff. Plaintiff also discovered that defendant, through the course of the project, manipulated or forged safety meeting sign-in sheets to erroneously portray compliance with safety standards.
At the outset of litigation, defendant contended plaintiff’s action of spraying the flammable brake-parts cleaner on a hot engine was the cause of the flash fire that resulted in his injuries. Defendant asserted that Plaintiff not only used a dangerous, flammable product to perform his work, but also did so in haste and without waiting the appropriate time for the engine to cool before performing his work. This became a topic of expert opinion after Plaintiff retained a chemical engineer who opined that the chemical components of the brake-part cleaner had a temperature flash-point that exceeded the expected surface temperature of the engine and that, instead, the cause of the flash fire was the use of that product within the confined space that plaintiff was instructed to work. Thus, Plaintiff contended, the root-cause of the flash-fire was defendant’s election to supply the crew with the highly flammable product without instruction or warning regarding the use of the product in confined spaces, and asserted that an equally effective and non-flammable alternative was available for purchase, had been purchased by the defendant in the past, and should have been purchased for this crew.
The legal claims brought by Plaintiff included claims of unseaworthiness of the vessel and its equipment, and general negligence under the Jones Act.