The strict-liability general maritime law doctrine that a vessel and its appurtenances must be reasonably fit for their intended purpose.
If you were hurt at sea and the bills are piling up, the first question is usually this: how long does a Jones Act case take? Here is an honest answer, stage by stage, and the one medical milestone that controls the whole timeline. In short: Most Jones Act cases resolve in roughly 1 to…
One word can decide whether an injured maritime worker has powerful rights or almost none, and that word is “vessel.” Here is exactly how the term vessel under maritime law is defined and why that definition controls so much of an offshore injury case. In short: Under maritime law, a vessel is any watercraft or…
Few questions in maritime law are misunderstood as often as this one: when can an injured seaman, or a grieving family, recover punitive damages on top of their losses? The honest answer is that maritime law treats punitive damages as a powerful but narrow remedy, available for some claims and flatly barred for others. In…
If you were hurt working on a vessel, the Jones Act is not your only path to compensation. Maritime law gives every seaman a second, and often stronger, claim: the right to a seaworthy vessel. When the ship, its equipment, or its crew is not fit for the job and that failure injures you, the…
The American offshore wind industry is being built faster than the country has boats and crews to build it safely, and that gap is showing up as injuries. Turbines rise more than 500 feet above the water, the only way onto many of them is to step from a pitching vessel, and a workforce drawn…
A fisherman goes over the rail in a heartbeat, a slip on a wet deck, a rogue wave, a line that catches a leg, and from that instant survival is measured in minutes. Federal safety researchers have studied these moments in grim detail, and what they found does more than describe a tragedy. It points…
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…
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…
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…
