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Editor: Rod Sullivan
Profession: Maritime Attorney

Category: Safety at Sea

Jacksonville attorney Bruce Bulloch recently told me the story of two New Yorkers who visited Jacksonville and were fishing from an anchored boat on the St. Johns River when a jet skier passed a little to close to them. One of the fishermen pulled up his line, cast at the passing jet skier and snagged him by the collar of his life vest, yanking him backwards off his jet ski and into the water. Then he reeled him alongside his boat, took out a knife, and gently pried the hook from the vest, and dropped him back into the water. His friend looked at him, smiled and commented, "not bad for 20 lb. test."

The fact is that jet skis and fishing boats don't mix well. Take the case of Keys Jet Ski v. Kay. Keys rented Kay a Kawasaki 650 jet ski in Key West for 30 minutes. Kay let his son Kevin use the ski and Kevin crashed into the side of the Vitamin C, a 25 foot sport fishing boat. Kevin died. Kay sued Keys for not giving him and his family adequate safety instruction before renting them the jet ski.

In defending against the suit, Keys used the Limitation Act. The Limitation Act is an oddity of the law, little known by anyone besides admiralty lawyers, and misunderstood by many who know about it. It was passed by Congress in 1851, shortly after the start of the Gold Rush, but before the Civil War. Those were the days before the widespread use of corporations and limited partnerships. The goal was to encourage people to invest in clipper ships and sailing vessels. It allowed people who invested in ships to limit their liability to the value of a "vessel" after it had an accident. If the ship sunk, the owners got away without paying anything.

The American law was so good that when the Titanic sunk in 1912, its British owners rushed into the American courts so that they could limit their liability, even though the "Royal Mail Ship" Titanic had never been to the United States. It worked. All the passengers who survived the sinking, as well as the relatives of those who didn't, got to split the value of--believe it or not---the lifeboats. They were the only part of the ship left after the Titanic went to the bottom.

Fast forward eighty years, and the Court in the Keys case was asked to decide whether the owner of a jet ski could limit his liability after the accident to the value of the jet ski. As odd as it may sound, he could. The court found that the jet ski was a "vessel" and even though Congress never anticipated that the Limitation Act would apply to such a craft, it was not for the courts to fix the problem, it was up to Congress.

So the answer is, yes, owners of jet skis who lend them to friends, or rent them to others, can limit their liability if the friends get hurt. However, tell them to stay away from anchored fishing boats, and visitors to Florida with stout casting rods.