The Unique Legal Challenges of Seeking Compensation in Maritime Law
Maritime law isn’t like being in a car crash, having a machine at work malfunction, or slipping on a wet floor. The rules are older, the questions about where to file a claim are more difficult, and the “traps” that are built into the system can significantly reduce what you are paid. Knowing those traps before you file can mean the difference between a fair settlement and a settlement payable mostly to your employer and others who got you hurt.
The first question: are you even a “seaman”?
First and foremost, whether you’re even entitled to the greatest protections of maritime law depends on whether you qualify as a seaman under the Jones Act. And it’s not a loose definition. To qualify as a seaman under the Chandris test applicable to most Jones Act cases, you must spend at least 30% of your work time in service of a vessel in navigation.
That means the vessel must be afloat, in operation, and in navigable waters. Vessels in navigation don’t include fixed platforms, but they may include those connected to the shore by a causeway. If the vessel meets the definition of in navigation, it falls under the Jones Act instead of state workers’ comp.
Beyond that, the vessel-in-navigation requirement can apply to vessels drydocked or under repair if it’s considered in service. This will depend on the extent of the repairs and how long the vessel has been inoperative. However, a vessel out of the water for winter layup probably won’t be considered operational.
The Limitation of Liability Act: a 170-year-old trap
The most harmful law for injured maritime employees is the one passed in 1851. The Limitation of Liability Act lets a shipowner set a maximum for their total damages at the value of the vessel after the accident. If a ship sinks and is worth nothing after the accident, the shipowner could potentially limit their liability to zero.
Shipowners start limitation proceedings fast, frequently before the injured workers even hire an attorney. Once that proceeding is initiated, all other claims have to be brought before a single admiralty court, and your schedule works much faster. This isn’t a risk in the future. It’s being used routinely.
An Offshore Injury Lawyer who understands how to argue a limitation proceeding, question the valuation of a vessel, and deal with the relationship between the Jones Act and the LHWCA goes a long way to shifting the results of a claim that would otherwise be artificially capped.
Maintenance and cure: the right that applies regardless of fault
One of the oldest rules in maritime law is also one of its most misinterpreted. Maintenance and cure obligates an employer to cover a seaman’s food, lodging, and medical costs following an injury – irrespective of who’s at fault. It doesn’t require fault or negligence be proven.
The employer must continue to pay until the seaman has reached “maximum medical improvement”. And if maintenance and cure aren’t paid on time, the employer can be liable for additional damages due to “willful non-payment”.
This right is independent of any negligence suit. Many injured workers don’t seek it because they’re unaware of it, and so end up paying for expenses that the law entitled them to from the time they were injured.
Where you got hurt changes what law applies
The location where an injury occurs will determine the law that shapes the response. Injuries in waters that are considered part of the state – within three nautical miles or so of shore, depending on geographic features – can trigger a combination of federal maritime law and state law. In some instances, workers or their dependents can elect to pursue state workers’ compensation benefits, where they exist if the injury or death is covered by the federal Jones Act or the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act.
Injuries over that line, on the high seas, fall under the jurisdiction of the federal Death on the High Seas Act for wrongful death claims. DOSHA allows for recovery for the “wrongful death of any person occurring on the high seas through wrongful act, neglect, or default occurring on the high seas,” with the limitations that the un-remarried spouse, dependent children, dependent parents, dependent next of kin or dependent putative spouses can obtain damages only for loss of support and nothing related to the emotional impact of the death.
The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act is another law that pulls in part of a state law to work alongside federal maritime law. Reproduced in pertinent part, OCSLA incorporates the law of the adjacent state as the law of the United States for “disputes arising out of operations conducted on the outer Continental Shelf.” It has been used to drag in the adjacent state’s workers’ compensation law – which has different burdens and types of recovery than general maritime law – creating a hybrid that doesn’t behave like either system cleanly.
The unseaworthiness doctrine adds another path
In addition to negligence, seamen may also have an unseaworthiness claim against the owner of their vessel. Unseaworthiness is a strict liability theory, so you don’t have to prove that the owner knew about the unsafe condition. If the vessel, equipment, or crew was not reasonably suitable for its intended purpose, then the owner is responsible. This standard can apply to conditions that would not rise to the level of negligence.
Maritime law is not a single law or a single set of laws. It is a layering of multiple federal statutes, ancient common-law principles, and location-specific regulations that can shift based on who you are, what you do, and exactly where the injury occurred. Filing a claim without a full understanding of that legal layer cake is not just dangerous – it’s how perfectly valid claims go unrequited.
