A tugboat engineer can proceed with his negligence claims against the owner of the boat for back injuries he sustained while trying to secure a barge.

In Williams v. Dann Marine Towing LC, the Superior Court of Delaware on Thursday denied the boat owner’s motion for summary judgment in the worker’s claims that the boat captain’s actions contributed to his injury and rendered the boat “unseaworthy.”

Bruce Williams worked as an engineer on tugboat M/V Palm Coast, owned by Dann Marine Towing LC, towing a barge from Baltimore to Port Mahon, Delaware. On May 20, 2015, while trying to dock the jet fuel barge, he sustained a back injury while throwing mooring lines.

Mr. Williams filed a complaint against Dann Marine claiming that the tugboat and barge were not seaworthy, and that the company was negligent and breached its warranty of seaworthiness. He argued that the relief captain often improperly docked the barge too far from the docks, which required Mr. Williams to throw the heavy line unreasonably far.

Dann Marine argued that Mr. Williams’ allegations rested on a single negligent act and argued that his own unsafe actions were the sole cause of his injury.

The court held that there was a genuine issue of material fact regarding the seaworthiness of the barge given his assertion that it had an unreasonably heavy mooring line and the fact that seaworthiness also includes the actions of a ship’s crew.

Mr. Williams argued that the relief captain relied on too few men to toss the morning lines and incompetently docked the barge using improper procedures every time. While a single improper docking would not have created an issue of unseaworthiness, the court held that Mr. Williams provided sufficient evidence that the relief captain improperly docked the barge regularly and that his actions the day of Mr. Williams’ injury was “not an isolated act.”

The court also found that his actions — the alleged unseaworthiness — played a substantial part in bringing about Mr. Williams’ injury. The court held that a jury will need to address the causes of Mr. Williams’ injury, holding that he met his burden to proceed by providing evidence to support an inference that the relief captain’s docking procedures made the boat unseaworthy and that the unreasonably heavy mooring line also could have contributed to its alleged unseaworthiness.