Fifth Circuit Holds Contract for Plug and Abandonment Work Qualifies as “Maritime” Under the Doiron Test

This past January, the Fifth Circuit in In re: Larry Doiron, Inc., 879 F. 3d 568 (5th Cir. 2018), overruled the six-factor test it had distilled in Davis & Sons v. Gulf Oil Corp. to determine whether a contract is maritime or non-martime, and adopted a simplified two-part analysis, based on the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Norfolk Southern Railway Co. v. Kirby, 543 U.S. 14, 125 S. Ct. 385 (2004). Noting that the much-maligned Davis & Sons inquiry had led to a line of Fifth Circuit cases that were inconsistent, confusing, and difficult to apply, the Court replaced the Davis & Sons analysis with a new two-pronged test which simply asks the following: First, is the contract one to provide services to facilitate the drilling or production of oil and gas on navigable waters? Second, if the answer to the above question is “yes,” does the contract provide or do the parties expect that a vessel will play a substantial role in the completion of…

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