Case: 20-30277 Document: 00515880063 Page: 1 Date Filed: 05/28/2021
United States Court of Appeals
for the Fifth Circuit
United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
FILED
May 28, 2021
No. 20-30277 Lyle W. Cayce
Clerk
In re: In the Matter of the Complaint of GATX Third
Aircraft Corporation, as owner of the M/V Miss Sylvia,
and Brynmark Marine Services, Incorporated and
Double J. Marine, L.L.C. as bareboat charters/owners
pro hac vice and operators of the M/V Miss Sylvia, for
Exoneration from or Limitation of Liability
Gatx Third Aircraft Corporation, as owner of the M/V
Miss Sylvia; Brynmark Marine Services, Incorporated,
as owner pro hac vice of the M/V Miss Sylvia; Double J.
Marine, L.L.C., as owner pro hac vice of the M/V Miss
Sylvia,
Petitioners—Appellees,
versus
Roosevelt Collins; Cary Payne; Jerome Davis
Claimants—Appellants.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Louisiana
USDC No. 2:16-CV-13095
Case: 20-30277 Document: 00515880063 Page: 2 Date Filed: 05/28/2021
No. 20-30277
Before Jones, Costa, and Duncan, Circuit Judges.
Per Curiam:*
On February 16, 2016, while navigating the waters of the Mississippi
River in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, the M/V MISS SYLVIA struck the
M/V ATLANTIC GRACE. GATX Third Aircraft Corporation, Brynmark
Marine Services, Inc., and Double J. Marine, LLC (collectively
“Shipowners”) are the owners/operators of the MISS SYLVIA. Roosevelt
Collins, Cary Payne, and Jerome Davis (“Claimants”) were contract workers
employed by Savard Labor & Marine Personnel, LLC, and working on the
ATLANTIC GRACE on the day of the accident.
On July 21, the Shipowners filed a Complaint for Exoneration From
or Limitation of Liability (“Limitation Action”). On July 27, the district
court issued notice requiring all persons with a claim related to the limitation
action to step forward before September 23, 2016, or suffer default. Notices
were duly filed and published in accord with federal admiralty Supplemental
Rule F and local court rules. Several claimants came forward timely.
In the course of litigating the Limitation Action, attorneys for the
Shipowners engaged in discovery, including the preparation of witness lists
and depositions of laborers who had been on board the ATLANTIC GRACE.
In autumn 2018, following two years of litigation, the parties to the
Limitation Action settled all claims globally. On September 28, the district
court entered its dismissal order. On November 21, the parties to the
*
Pursuant to 5th Circuit Rule 47.5, the court has determined that this
opinion should not be published and is not precedent except under the limited
circumstances set forth in 5th Circuit Rule 47.5.4.
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Limitation Action moved jointly for an order of dismissal, which the court
granted and entered on November 26, 2018.
Not until February of 2019 did the Claimants file lawsuits asserting
personal injury claims against the Shipowners. Collins v. Double J. Marine,
LLC, No. 19-1415, 2019 WL 3081630 (E.D. La. July 15, 2019); Payne v.
Double J. Marine, LLC, No. 19-1417, 2019 WL 3081698 (E.D. La. July 15,
2019). They contended they were known claimants in the Limitation Action
and therefore entitled to direct notice pursuant to Supplemental Rule F(4) of
the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The district court rejected this
argument, and two panels of the Fifth Circuit affirmed. Collins v. Double J.
Marine, L.L.C., 802 F. App’x 843, 844 (5th Cir. 2020); Payne v. Double J.
Marine, L.L.C., 828 F. App’x 222, 223 (5th Cir. 2020).
On November 25, 2019, the Claimants filed a Motion for Relief from
Final Judgment Pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b) in the
Limitation Action, which is the subject of this appeal. They attached a
deposition taken February 20, 2018, to a memorandum in support of their
motion in an attempt to show the Shipowners had been aware of their claims.
The district court denied the motion, holding it was filed after the one-
year limitation for Rule 60(b)(1) and (3) motions, and alternatively, it
faltered on the merits for those as well as under Rule 60(b)(6) because the
evidence presented was “neither new nor compelling.” The Claimants
timely appealed.
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DISCUSSION
This Court reviews the district court’s denial of Rule 60(b) motions
for abuse of discretion. McCorvey v. Hill, 385 F.3d 846, 848 (5th Cir. 2004).
A district court “abuses its discretion . . . if its ruling is based on an
‘erroneous view of the law or on a clearly erroneous assessment of the
evidence.’” Baker Hughes Process & Pipeline Servs., L.L.C. v. UE
Compression, L.L.C., 938 F.3d 661, 666 (5th Cir. 2019) (citing Cooter & Gell
v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U.S. 384, 405, 110 S. Ct. 2447, 2461 (1990)). The
disposition of Rule 60(b) motions, however, is heavily discretionary, and
such “proceedings are subject to only limited and deferential appellate
review.” Gonzalez v. Crosby, 545 U.S. 524, 535, 125 S. Ct. 2641, 2650–51
(2005) (citing Browder v. Dir., Dept. of Corrs., 434 U.S. 257, 263, n.7, 98 S. Ct.
556, 560 (1978)).
The Shipowners argue initially that the Claimants have no standing to
file a Rule 60(b) motion, because they were not parties to the underlying
Limitation Action. Nevertheless, but for their delay, the Claimants could
have been parties to the action. Importantly, they have a close connection to
the underlying case and interests that are strongly affected by it. Dunlop v.
Pan Am. World Airways, Inc., 672 F.2d 1044, 1052 (2d Cir. 1982) (finding that
some parties are “sufficiently connected and identified with” an underlying
suit “to entitle them to standing to invoke” Rule 60(b)). In this unusual
situation, although the Claimants were not parties to the Limitation Action,
we conclude they have standing to file the Rule 60(b) motion.
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Next, the parties dispute whether the 60(b) motion was filed within
the one-year period required by two here-relevant provisions of the rule.
Rule 60(b) provides six reasons for which a “court may relieve a party or its
legal representative from a final judgment, order, or proceeding.” FED. R.
CIV. P. 60(b). Rule 60(b) has a “specific 1-year deadline for asserting three
of the most open-ended grounds of relief”—subsections (1), (2), and (3).
Gonzalez, 545 U.S. at 535, 125 S. Ct. at 2649. The Claimants’ motions
invoked subsections (1) and (3) and also subsection (6). 1 Although,
Rule 60(b)(6) is not subject to the one-year limitation, the Supreme Court
has “required a movant seeking relief under Rule 60(b)(6) to show
‘extraordinary circumstances’ justifying the reopening of a final judgment.”
Id. (citing Ackermann v. United States, 340 U.S. 193, 199, 71 S. Ct. 209, 212
(1950)). The arguments divide over whether the court’s September 2018
dismissal order or its November 2018 confirmation of that order marked the
beginning of the relevant one-year period. If the former date is decisive, the
Claimants’ November 2019 Rule 60(b) motion was in part or whole untimely
filed.
We may, however, assume without deciding that the Rule 60(b)
motion was timely, because the Claimants’ arguments fail on the merits.
They have either already been adjudicated or they present no extraordinary
1
Those reasons are (1) “mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect;”
(3) “fraud (whether previously called intrinsic or extrinsic), misrepresentation, or
misconduct by an opposing party;” and the catch-all (6) “any other reason that justifies
relief.” FED. R. CIV. P. 60(b).
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circumstances sufficient to satisfy the criteria of any of the Rule’s
subsections.
First, this court previously decided that the Claimants were not
known to the Shipowners for purposes of being personally informed of the
Limitation Action. In their earlier separate suits against the Shipowners,
Claimants contended they were known all along and entitled to personal
notice from the Shipowners. They offered as evidence a witness list compiled
during the same collection of discovery and litigation materials that produced
the deposition the Claimants offer in this case. All of the materials were
generated some time after the initial notice of claim deadline had lapsed and
indeed after the district court’s Default Order in the Limitation Action (May
2017). In those cases, the court noted that a prospective claimant is not a
known claimant, and merely proffering witness lists was not sufficient to show
they were the latter. Collins, 802 F. App’x. at 844 (“This witness description
offers no hint that Collins himself had made any claim regarding the accident.
It thus cannot ground Collins’s assertion that he was a known claimant
deserving direct notice of the Limitation Action.”).
The same theory—that the Shipowners knew for purposes of
accountability under Rule F(4) that Collins, Payne, and Davis were
prospective claimants—underlies the present motion. The evidence for all
three Claimants and for each of the grounds they assert for Rule 60(b) relief
consists of deposition testimony similarly developed long after the district
court’s Default Order was entered. Vague as it is with respect to these
Claimants, the two individuals’ testimony fails to establish that the
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Shipowners previously knew or should have known of Claimants’ alleged
injuries. The deposition testimony, which we have reviewed, is logically
indistinguishable from the evidence that failed to convince this court before
that the Shipowners were legally obliged to provide personal notice.
Accordingly, Claimants’ motion fails because they have not shown
mistake or excusable neglect that would warrant disturbing a final judgment. 2
The depositions display no inkling that the Shipowners perpetrated fraud,
misrepresentation, or misconduct in not providing individual notice of the
Limitation Action. Finally, the Claimants have not shown the kind of
extraordinary circumstances that justify a Rule 60(b)(6) motion.
For the foregoing reasons, the court’s order denying relief is
AFFIRMED.
2
11 CHARLES ALAN WRIGHT & ARTHUR R. MILLER, FEDERAL PRACTICE AND
PROCEDURE § 2858 (3d ed. 2012) (“Insufficient showings for relief also include when the
party or attorney did not act diligently to discover the purported mistake.”).
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