Jones Act
Under General Maritime Law, seamen are entitled to maintenance, or payments equivalent to the room and board they had on the vessel, and cure, or medical treatment to the point of maximum cure. Seamen are also entitled to their wages to the end of the anticipated voyage. The Jones Act is a federal statute that supplements those rights and gives a seaman the right to sue his employer for injuries or death caused by negligence. Seamen enjoy special rights in these suits such as “slight causation,” whereby even a slight cause of their injury is sufficient to establish liability as long as the other elements of recovery are met. Because maritime injuries are often serious and maritime workers well-paid, this can lead to dangerous exposure and high personal injury recoveries. This specialized area necessitates the use of a specialized firm such as Fitzhugh, Elliott & Ammerman, PC.

The courts have struggled with defining who is entitled to the special solicitude accorded seaman status. To be a seaman: (1) an employee's duties must contribute to the function of a vessel or the accomplishment of its mission; and, (2) the employee must have a connection to a vessel, or an identifiable fleet of vessels under common ownership or control, that is substantial in both nature and duration. A workers' connection to a vessel is substantial in nature if his duties are inherently vessel-related and thus “take him to sea.” The Supreme Court has adopted a rule of thumb that a workers' connection to a vessel is substantial in duration if the worker spends at least 30% of their employment on the vessel.

The duration of a worker's connection to a vessel and the nature of the worker's activities, taken together, determine whether a maritime employee is a seaman. Many different types of maritime workers have been held to be seamen, such as crane operators on crane barges or offshore oilfield workers on a mobile offshore drilling unit. Plaintiffs' attorneys typically seek the highest recovery possible, often pursuing mutually exclusive remedies ( e.g ., Jones Act & Longshore Act) at the same time. In these treacherous waters, you need an experienced maritime defense lawyers like those of Fitzhugh, Elliott & Ammerman, PC. We defend Jones Act claims across the country, including lawsuits in Texas , Louisiana , and New York for competitive rates much lower than our counterparts on the East and West coasts.

THE ABOVE IS NOT INTENDED AS LEGAL ADVICE. PLEASE CONSULT A LAWYER FOR ADVICE ON YOUR INDIVIDUAL SITUATION.