Touchet v. Estis Well Service, LLC

(1) Whether seamen may recover punitive damages for their employer's willful and wanton breach of the general maritime law duty to provide a seaworthy vessel, as held by the Washington Supreme Court and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 9th and 11th Circuits; or whether punitive damages are categorically unavailable in an action for unseaworthiness, as held by the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 1st, 5th, and 6th Circuits and the Texas Supreme Court; and (2) whether the Jones Act, 46 U.S.C. § 30104, "prohibits the recovery of punitive damages in action under that statute," a question explicitly left open by the Supreme Court in Atlantic Sounding Co., Inc. v. Townsend.