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 [...]

Many years ago in these pages the question was asked: “Are Surveillance Films Discoverable?” (Trial News July/Aug. 2000). The majority position of course was and is ‘yes’, but only after the plaintiff has been pinned down at deposition about what [...]

After 12 years in the merchant marine – while going to school between ships – I changed careers in 1982, switching from merchant seaman to lawyer. I’ve represented all types of seamen in wage and injury claims ever since. [...]

Maintenance and cure (including unearned wages) is payable only to the point of maximum cure. Farrell v. United States, 336 U.S. 511 (1949) That’s black-letter law, right? Maybe not. In Warren v. United States, 1949 A.M.C. 170, 75 F.Supp. [...]

Some insurance adjusters don’t start paying maintenance to injured seamen until the day after the seaman gets off the vessel, claiming that the seaman was paid wages for that day, as well as free room and board. Similarly, maintenance [...]

Fishermen are notorious liars — from the size and quantity of fish caught to what was promised in payment for catching those fish. That’s part of the reason Congress passed 46 U.S.C. 10601 in 1988. Written employment contracts are [...]

Your Content Goes Here Cases where the amount of daily maintenance is at issue traditionally have involved unmarried seamen — often itinerant — living in a cheap apartment or a flophouse hotel, usually near the docks or the airport. [...]

Injury benefits under the Jones Act and the general maritime law, and under state-based systems of workers’ compensation, are mutually exclusive for the most part. There are a few exceptions, however. In 1988 the Alaska Legislature extended workers’ compensation [...]

Trial courts have been hopelessly divided over how–or whether–to apply the summary judgment standard of Rule 56 to motions by injured seamen to reinstate maintenance and cure benefits after being cut off by their employer. The Washington Supreme Court [...]

During better than 30 years of practicing maritime law, this practitioner has advised seamen that their entitlement to maintenance and cure depended upon whether a need for medical attention “manifested” while they were in the employ of the vessel [...]

Unlike blue water seamen on foreign voyages, fishermen and processors have no remedy under federal maritime law that includes wage penalties. 46 U.S.C. sec. 10313(g) (daily double wage penalty does not apply to fishing vessels). Some courts have borrowed [...]

I called the insurance adjuster. “My client got hurt while working for your insured. I need your authorization for payment so he can see a doctor.” “We won’t authorize medical treatment,” she responded, “until you show me a medical [...]

In contracts of employment for fishermen and processors, vessel owners typically include language that requires employees to report injuries immediately. Many contracts go on to state that failure to report injuries within seven days will result in denial of the [...]

I. MAINTENANCE A. Per Diem Rates of Maintenance 1. Fishermen and Other Non-Union Seaman Most fishing companies put a rate of maintenance, paid to seamen in case of injury, in the employment contract--typically $20 or $25 per day. Courts [...]

A creative fad is afoot amongst marine insurance adjusters that reduces the compensation paid insured seamen who have to travel to medical appointments. For this year, 2010, some adjusters are paying only 16.5 cents per mile traveled, based upon [...]

The U.S. Supreme Court overruled the Ninth Circuit and several other federal circuit courts, holding that punitive damages may be awarded “for the willful and wanton disregard of the maintenance and cure obligation”. Atlantic Sounding v. Townsend , 557 U.S. [...]

(The case of Gruver v. Lesman , 2007 AMC 1559, 489 F.3d 978 (9th Cir. 2007), on remand.) From the time Jeff Gruver first walked into my office more than three years before, I figured his case was only worth about [...]

Earlier in these pages (Trial News, May 2008), this practitioner suggested that it was not proper to deduct $10/day in child support from an injured seaman who received only $20/day in maintenance to pay for all his living expenses. [...]

Looking For A Lawyer In The West Indies By John Merriam and Gordon Webb (This is a true story. Some names have been changed.) “My mother was seriously hurt on a cruise in the Caribbean last March. Her doctor [...]

Only a few days after 9 lives were lost when the Aleutian Enterprise sank, Arctic Alaska was still playing fast and loose with Coast Guard safety regulations aboard another boat in the Bering Sea. Working at the time in [...]

All maritime practitioners know that a seaman’s right to maintenance and cure only lasts until “maximum cure” — as good as the seaman is going to get following the injury or illness manifested while in the employ of the [...]