Thomas G. Carpenter v. Universal Star Shipping, S.A., a Foreign Corporation, and Sealaska Timber Corporation, a Foreign Corporation

Thomas Carpenter, a longshoreman, was injured while loading a ship. He filed suit, alleging negligence against the owner of the ship, Universal Star Shipping (“Univer sal”), and the voyage charterer, Sealaska Timber (“Sealaska”), under the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, 33 U.S.C. § 901 , et seq. The district court granted summary judgment for both defendants. We affirm.

I.

The first Defendant-appellee, Universal, owned the vessel, Pacific Victory, on which Carpenter worked as a longshoreman. The second Defendant-appellee, Sealaska, is a voyage charterer for Alaskan companies that sell their timber to foreign purchasers. Sealaska voyage chartered the Pacific Victory from Daiichi Chuo Risen Kaisha, a time charterer, and hired West Coast Ste-vedoring (“West Coast”) to load the ship. Carpenter worked as a longshoreman for West Coast, and was loading the Pacific Victory at the time of his accident.

Universal had representatives on hand during the loading of the Pacific Victory. The ship’s crew observed the loading of the Pacific Victory primarily to ensure that the logs were loaded onto the vessel correctly. If the logs were to shift during the journey, they could…