The maritime law is fashioned mostly by stare decisis – case law.  I’ve spent my 40-year career trying to shape that law in favor of seamen.  I’m 70 now and there are still several areas of the law in [...]

Your Content Goes Here It is beyond question that the value of board and lodging furnished on board ship to fishermen while engaged in the vessel’s fishing operations is considered a valuable part of their earnings and, to the [...]

Several years ago on these pages the question was asked: “When Setting Rates of Maintenance for Seamen with a House and Family, Should the Entire Mortgage Payment be Taken into Account?” (Trial News, April 2014). The article discussed a [...]

(This is a true story. Names have been changed for obvious reasons.) It irritates me that so many vessel owners think they can get away with cheating their employees on small amounts of wages. The employers assume, usually correctly, [...]

It is generally assumed that seamen are not entitled to be paid maintenance when they get thrown in jail. This article suggests that this is not, and should not always be, the rule. Marco Ramirez is a professional deckhand. [...]

There are no federal law penalties for cheating commercial fishermen on their wages. I’ve devoted much of my 38-year career attempting to correct this inequity. After many thwarted efforts, I thought I’d finally found the perfect case to set [...]

I have a problem with putting a price on emotional distress and pain and suffering even though I’ve represented injured plaintiffs for my entire career. By contrast, I am very comfortable putting a price on bad behavior in the [...]

Arbitration clauses in employment contracts are increasingly being enforced by the courts, eroding the rights of workers, including seamen, to a jury trial. Yacouba Diarra is a citizen of Mali in West Africa who is in the U.S. on [...]

Your Content Goes Here “John, I need your help on a maritime case.” It was Patrick Pleas on the other end of the phone call, a legal aid lawyer from Northwest Justice Project in Wenatchee. I’d worked with Patrick [...]

The case should have settled with a phone call. I didn’t know at the time that only $1,900 was at issue in a wage claim for a commercial fisherman. Instead of settling with a phone call, the case went [...]