Richard T. Hawley v. Alaska Steamship Company, a Corporation

Plaintiff-appellant brought this action for damages under the Jones Act, 46 U. S.C.A. § 688, alleging that negligence of appellee was the proximate cause of injuries sustained by him while working in the hold of one of appellee’s ships. At the close of the plaintiff’s case in a trial before a jury the lower court granted defendant-appellee’s motion for a judgment of -dismissal for insufficiency of the evidence to prove the alleged causé of action. A motion for a new trial was denied and from the judgment and order of dismissal with prejudice plaintiff prosecuted this appeal.

The facts, as portrayed by appellant, appear to be these: Appellant is an American seaman, who at the time of the claimed injury was a member of the Engine Department of the M/V Square Sinnett, a ship owned by appellee which was then loading at Uganik, Kodiak Island. On the day of the accident, August 21, 1953, appellant was working, not in the Engine Department, but in the No. 1 hold of the ship, assisting other men to “stow” cases of canned salmon being lowered into the hold on a pallet board operated by a winch. Under the terms of a Firemen’s Union collective bargaining agreement, its members may be called…