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Compensation for Houston Maritime and Jones Act Injuries
Houston Maritime & Jones Act Lawyers
If you were hurt working on the water around Houston, you are almost certainly not covered by ordinary workers' compensation.
Workers who qualify as seamen are covered instead by the Jones Act and general maritime law, which can give an injured worker three separate claims rather than one.
Those are a Jones Act negligence claim against the employer, an unseaworthiness claim against the vessel owner, and maintenance and cure, a no-fault benefit owed no matter who was at fault.
Lawsuit Legal works from our Houston office and represents crews hurt on the Houston Ship Channel, at the Port of Houston, and offshore in the Gulf.
Our Texas cases are led by personal injury attorney Don Worley, licensed by the State Bar of Texas, with more than 40,000 cases handled and over $100 million recovered for injury victims.
These claims pay the full range of damages, including pain and suffering, that comp would never cover, but the threshold question is whether you qualify as a seaman.
The maritime deadline is generally three years, and vessel owners and their insurers know this law cold, so our trial-ready attorneys build all three claims at once.
Call (888) 713-6653 for a free, confidential review of your maritime injury claim. You Win or It's Free.
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The Three Claims a Hurt Seaman Can Bring
The most important thing to understand about a maritime injury is that you are usually not limited to one remedy. A seaman's injury can support three separate claims, each aimed at a different company.[1]
1. Jones Act Negligence, Against the Employer
A claim that your employer's negligence caused the injury, under a low causation standard: the employer is liable if its negligence played any part in the harm. Unsafe conditions, short or untrained crews, defective equipment, and unsafe work orders all establish it. This claim pays the full range of damages, including pain and suffering.
2. Unseaworthiness, Against the Vessel Owner
A claim that the vessel itself was not reasonably fit for its purpose, from defective gear and unsafe equipment to an inadequate or poorly trained crew. The owner's duty to provide a seaworthy vessel is close to absolute, so you do not have to prove the owner was careless, only that the vessel or its equipment was unfit and caused your injury.
3. Maintenance and Cure, No-Fault
A benefit owed to an injured or ill seaman regardless of fault, until you reach maximum medical recovery. Maintenance covers daily living expenses while you cannot work, and cure covers medical treatment. It starts protecting you right away, and an employer that wrongfully denies or cuts it off can owe additional damages.
In maritime cases the mistake is a seaman settling the first claim someone offers. You may have three: against your employer, against the vessel owner, and the no-fault benefit on top. Leaving two of them on the table is leaving meaningful recovery on the table.
Who Counts as a Seaman
Seaman status is the threshold question, because the Jones Act and the unseaworthiness remedy are available only to seamen. It is not about a job title. It is about your connection to a vessel.
Courts generally ask two things: whether your duties contribute to the function of a vessel or the accomplishment of its mission, and whether your connection to a vessel in navigation is substantial in both its duration and its nature. A worker who spends a significant part of the time aboard a vessel or fleet, doing the vessel's work, is usually a seaman. That covers deckhands, tug and barge crews, supply-boat and crew-boat workers, dredge crews, commercial fishermen, and many offshore oil and gas workers.
Dock and shoreside workers who are not connected to a vessel are usually covered instead by a separate federal system, the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act.[2] Which law applies decides what you can recover, so we sort that out first. We take the distinction apart on our pages on seaman versus longshoreman and platform versus vessel classification.
Houston Maritime Work and Where Injuries Happen
The Houston Ship Channel runs roughly 52 miles to one of the busiest ports in the country, and the work that moves that cargo is some of the most dangerous in Texas.
The Ship Channel and inland tows. Tugs, towboats, and barges move petrochemical and bulk cargo around the clock, and deckhands and crews face line-handling, falls, and machinery injuries on brown water, the focus of our barge, tug, and dredge page.
The Port of Houston terminals. Container, bulk, and breakbulk terminals run cranes, forklifts, and heavy cargo handling, where many workers are longshoremen covered by the Longshore Act rather than the Jones Act.
Offshore and the Gulf. Crew boats, supply vessels, jack-up and platform work, and dredging in and beyond the bay raise the seaman-versus-platform question that decides which law applies and which damages are available.
Where you were working, and on what, often matters as much as how you were hurt, because it decides whether the Jones Act, the Longshore Act, or another body of law governs your claim.
Recoverable Damages in a Maritime Injury Claim
There is no honest average, because a maritime claim pays the full range of damages across as many as three overlapping remedies, far more than comp pays for the same injury. The number depends on the facts.
A maritime injury claim may recover:
- Past and future medical care, in full, plus the cure owed under maintenance and cure.
- Full lost wages and lost future earning capacity in skilled maritime work.
- Maintenance, the no-fault daily living benefit owed while you recover.
- Pain, suffering, and mental anguish, which comp does not pay at all.
- Disfigurement and permanent impairment for lasting limitations.
- Life-care costs for a catastrophic injury requiring ongoing care.
- Wrongful death and survival damages for a family that lost a crew member.
- Additional damages when maintenance and cure was wrongfully denied or delayed.
Because the remedies aim at different defendants, the full value of a maritime claim comes from building all three, not from the medical bills already paid.
Maritime Injuries We Handle
Maritime work is among the most dangerous there is, and the claims cover its full range of harm.
- Acute traumatic injuries. Falls on deck, crush and caught-in injuries, amputations, fractures, and catastrophic harm from equipment failures, fires, and vessel casualties.
- Drowning and hypothermia. Man-overboard and cold-water injuries, including fatal ones.
- Burns and explosions. Fires and blasts aboard vessels and at terminals, including those handling flammable cargo.
- Toxic and gas exposure. Chemicals, fuels, and gases aboard and dockside, including hydrogen sulfide in sour cargo and confined spaces.
- Cumulative trauma. Back, shoulder, and knee injuries built up over the physical demands of vessel work.
When an injury is fatal, surviving families have their own maritime remedies that run alongside a Texas wrongful death claim.
Why a Maritime Injury Needs a Maritime Firm
Maritime law is not ordinary injury law, and the gap shows up fast. The vessel owner and its insurer handle these claims routinely, often with investigators on the dock before the injured worker leaves the hospital, and they know exactly how seaman status, unseaworthiness, and maintenance and cure work.
A maritime case is won by matching that. We establish seaman status when the other side contests it, pursue the Jones Act, unseaworthiness, and maintenance and cure against the right defendants instead of settling one, and challenge a maintenance-and-cure denial or early cutoff rather than accepting it. We move quickly to preserve the vessel records, the crew accounts, and the maintenance logs before they change, and we bring in the marine and medical experts these cases require.
A maritime worker also has a choice many injured workers do not. Under the saving-to-suitors clause, many of these claims can be filed in state court rather than federal court, and that choice can shape the case. The early offer a maritime employer makes is usually built on knowing the worker has none of this help.
The Deadline and What to Do After a Maritime Injury
A Jones Act and general-maritime claim generally carries a three-year deadline from the date of injury, or, for an occupational illness, from when you knew or should have known it was work-related.[3] Claims involving a government or public vessel can carry much shorter notice deadlines, sometimes a fraction of that, so a maritime injury should be reviewed promptly.
- Get medical care and report the injury in writing, and keep a copy of the incident report.
- Be careful with the accident report and recorded statements. You are not required to give a recorded statement before you understand your rights.
- Do not accept a quick maintenance-and-cure cutoff. If your benefits are denied or stopped early, that itself can be challenged.
- Preserve what you can, including photos, the names of crew and witnesses, and the vessel and voyage details.
- Call a Houston maritime lawyer quickly, because shipboard evidence and crews move fast, and the law here is specialized.