If you are a dock, harbor, or shipyard worker, your LHWCA benefits pay your medical bills and a slice of your wages, but they stop well short of what the injury actually cost you, no pain and suffering, and only a capped share of lost earnings. The most valuable thing you can learn after a…
A denial letter from a Defense Base Act insurer is written to sound final. It is not. The DBA was built to compensate civilians hurt working overseas for U.S. government contractors, and it hands you something most injured workers never realize they have: a legal presumption that your injury is covered, a layered appeal process…
Not every injury from overseas contract work is visible. For many civilian contractors, the lasting wound is psychological, and the law that protects them recognizes it. But a Defense Base Act PTSD claim is also one of the hardest to get paid, because what you cannot see, an insurer will dispute. Knowing how these claims…
After a serious injury on a fishing boat, the first question is almost always about money: what is my case worth, and how will I provide for my family? The figures online swing from a few hundred thousand dollars to several million, and that spread is not noise. It reflects how much the value of…
Commercial fishing is the most dangerous job in America, and the law treats the people who do it accordingly. If you crew a fishing vessel and you are hurt, your rights are almost certainly far broader than a land-based worker’s, but only if you understand the status that unlocks them. In short: Almost all commercial…
If you were hurt working overseas for a U.S. government contractor, the first thing to know is that a federal law almost certainly covers you, no matter your job title or your nationality. The Defense Base Act is the workers’ compensation system built for civilians who support U.S. operations abroad, and its protections are broader…
Offshore wind is one of the fastest-growing industries in U.S. waters, and the law governing injuries to its workers is still taking shape. If you were hurt building, servicing, or transporting components for a wind farm, the single most important question is whether you count as the crew of a vessel or a worker on…
If you load ships, repair vessels, or work on a dock or in a shipyard and you get hurt, one threshold question decides almost everything about your recovery: are you covered by federal law or by your state’s workers’ compensation system? For most maritime workers who are not seamen, the federal answer is the better…
When a maritime worker dies far out at sea, a single line on a chart, three nautical miles from shore, can decide which law governs the family’s claim and how much their loss is worth under it. Few rules in maritime law have such uneven consequences. In short: The Death on the High Seas Act…
Losing a family member to a maritime accident is devastating, and the legal questions that follow can feel overwhelming at the worst possible time. One of the first is also one of the most practical: who in the family is actually allowed to bring a claim? In short: A maritime wrongful death claim is filed…
