Slight Negligence in Jones Act Claims

Negligence is the neglect of a person or entity to reasonably avoid hurting others. For example, you are rear-ended by another driver who was talking on their cell phone. This neglect to drive safely is negligence. More on point, if you slip on a deck that could have been designed or constructed to make it less slippery, that too is negligence. This negligence is "ordinary" negligence. In ordinary negligence there is an ordinary standard of care or the requirement that a person or entity exercise an ordinary degree of care to avoid injuring others.

Slight Negligence requires a person or entity to exercise a high degree of care to avoid injuring others. This means that almost any injury is there fault and not the fault of the worker. Slight negligence has been held to include injuries from ship motion, high seas, slippery decks, inadequate head room, low ceilings, absence of anti-slip strips on stairs, failure to provide adequate training, failure to assign adequate manpower to a specific task and there are many, many others.

Slight Negligence almost means No-Fault. Case law makes it clear that some negligence must be present in order to obtain personal injury damages but as a practical matter, almost every case has some degree of fault on the part of the ship owner or their agents.

Workers should not attempt to determine whether there claim qualifies as slight negligence. This is a legal determination and the worker should immediately contact an attorney for help in answering questions about the duty of the ship owner or the company, if a ship is not involved.

A good example of a court decision on Slight Negligence is found in Yelverton v Mobile Laboratories, Inc. (1985, SD Miss) 608 F Supp 400, affd (CA5 Miss) 782 F2d 555 which states:

"A seaman has right to recover damages from his employer if employer was guilty of some negligence and such negligence played any role, no matter how slight, in producing injury; although plaintiff bears burden of proof on such issue, burden is "featherweight."

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