Supreme Court will hear Jones Act case

Supreme Court will hear Jones Act case    The U.S. Supreme Court has granted certiorari in the admiralty case of “Stewart v. Dutra Construction Co.” The high court will rule on the legal standard for determining whether a special-purpose watercraft, such as a dredge, is a Jones Act vessel.
   In the case at hand, an engineer was injured in a collision between a dredge and a scow (a flat-bottomed boat with square ends). A lower court ruled that, since the purpose of the dredge was for construction work and not transport, the dredge was not a vessel in navigation and the engineer was not a seaman for purposes of the Jones Act.
   The Supreme Court also granted motions by the San Francisco Maritime Law Journal and the AFL-CIO’s Maritime Trades Department to file briefs as amicus curiae.