Admiralty & Maritime Lawyers New Orleans
Professional And Helpful Attorneys Fighting For You in Your Maritime Accident & Injury Case
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Experienced in Admiralty & Maritime Law.
Types of Accidents
Hypothermia & Drowning
Unsafe Working Conditions
Inadequate Training
Cargo Operations
Slip & Fall / Trip & Fall
Cruise Ship Injuries
Crane Accidents
Defective Equipment
Who We Serve
Dock & Shipyard Workers
Commercial Fisherman
Tugboat Crew
Boat Passengers
Recreational boating Victims
Ferry Workers
Barge Workers
Commercial Divers
What You Need to Know About Maritime Lawyers New Orleans
Maritime law, which is additionally mentioned as admiralty law, is a body of law that governs a multitude of activities that happens on the water. Admiralty law covers a spread of categories like parameters of legal job duties, marine shipping, cargo damage, stipulations of maritime injury claims, and more.
If you, or a beloved-one, are involved and works in any of maritime-related industry, then you ought to familiarize yourself with admiralty law. Maritime law exists as a set of rules and guidelines that govern issues associated with oceans, rivers, streams, and the other navigable waters. If you’ve been the victim of an accident at or near the ocean, then a maritime lawyer could also be a wise step forward, to represent your interests during a court of law.
For instance, within the US, there are five sorts of cases associated with maritime property which will be delivered to court under admiralty law, including limitation of liability, vessel arrests, property arrests, salvage cases, and petitory / possession actions.
What Does a Maritime Lawyer Do?
A maritime lawyer will represent you if you are in a boat accident, you caused boat damage, or someone is injured. If you’re the victim of any of these, a maritime lawyer can help you too. Your Maritime Lawyer New Orleans can represent you in your settlement negotiations or in court.
Why Do I Need To Hire a Maritime Lawyer
Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for incidents to happen that put the lives of maritime workers in danger, causing serious injuries that range from broken bones to damaged backs to brain trauma. When situations like this occur, it’s vastly important that no time is wasted in getting a knowledgeable maritime attorney to take a look into your case.
For most workers throughout the state, compensation is often sought under state workers’ compensation laws.
These, however, don’t reach maritime employees. Instead, these sorts of claims need to be pursued under the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act (LHWCA) or the Jones Act.
Work on oil rigs and sea vessels pose a specific level of danger. Every day countless men and women report back to their jobs trusting that their employers will provide a secure workplace. When accidents happen, these individuals need protection
and compensation for any suffering caused by the negligence of their employers. Maritime lawyers are specially trained to assist people who have been injured or relatives and loved ones killed at sea.
There are many benefits of working with a Maritime Lawyers New Orleans on a maritime injury case. one among the advantages is we have extensive knowledge of the laws governing your case.
Your case is governed by one among three laws, counting on your specific job and where the injury occurred:
Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act (LHWCA)
Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA)
Jones Act, also referred to as the Merchant Marine Act
When you meet with one of our many skilled admiralty & maritime lawyers in New Orleans, he or she is going to analyze the circumstances of your injury to work out if it’s covered by any of those three laws. We know what workers are covered by
these laws, what we need for,to build a case, the sorts of compensation available, and the time frame we have to file a case.
Perhaps the foremost important reason you would like an admiralty attorney is that employers and insurance companies have teams of lawyers
representing them. Their goal is to eliminate your claim as cheaply as possible. The sole manner to level the playing field all together with your employer or the insurance firm is to possess an experienced attorney on your side, representing your interests.
As an injured employee, you’re new the methods, Interpreting these laws on your own is extremely difficult, particularly once you are suffering a severe injury, whereas your employer, his insurer, and their attorneys come across these cases on a daily basis. It’s critical to the result of your claim that you simply have a team that often handles admiralty law claims.
Hire an Attorney Who Specializes in Maritime Law
What Should I Expect When Working with a Maritime Lawyers New Orleans
If you caused damage on the water, a Maritime Lawyer New Orleans could be ready to assist you reduce your payments in damages or come to a settlement agreement more easily.
If you’ve been injured or the damage wasn’t your fault, an attorney will fight to win you the highest possible settlement.
It’s possible to stay out of court with the case and easily negotiate
a settlement if there’s agreement about who is guilty.
If, however, you disagree about the person at guilty, you’ll need to take your case to court and let the judge decide.
Admiralty & Maritime Lawyers New Orleans is the simplest resource for handling these cases due to the experience and knowledge we have surrounding the laws of the water
What Types of Cases does Maritime Lawyers New Orleans Handle?
Maritime lawyers often work with injuries or wrongful death to passengers, dock workers, and seamen. These injuries are often sustained due to:
- Burns from fires and explosions
- Drownings or near-drownings
- Falls overboard
- Broken bones caused by falls from defective ladders
- Slips and falls on slippery surfaces, including ships’ decks and gangways
- Conveyor belt accidents
- Accidents on ships, including tugboats and barges
- Crane accidents caused by improper use of equipment or lack of training.
Death on the High Seas Act
The Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA) protects surviving family members of seamen, crew members, cruise liner employees, passengers, and other individuals who
sustain fatal injuries while working or traveling in the high sea.
It’s important to notice that a death claim under DOHSA must be brought by the private representative of the decedent’s estate.
Compensation for a DOHSA Claim
Maritime Lawyers New Orleans are ready to assist you to pursue the subsequent sorts of compensation during a DOHSA lawsuit:
- Lost financial support – this provides compensation for what the deceased would have earned if he or she had not died.
- Lost services– this is often compensation for not having the deceased, doing, things around the house. this is often supported by the value of hiring someone to try to do the stuff the deceased did.
- Loss of nurture, guidance, care, and instruction – this is often compensation for the loss of emotional guidance and instruction the deceased would have provided, like help with making life decisions.
- Loss of inheritance – this is often different from lost financial support because it’s compensation for the financial assets your loved one would have had if he or she didn’t die.
- Funeral expenses –you could also be entitled to reasonable funeral expenses for your beloved
Statute of Limitations for DOHSA
Similar to the Jones Act, the statute of limitations for DOHSA claims is three years, and therefore the statute begins to run on the date of your loved one’s death.
Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act
The Longshoremen and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act (LHWCA) protects
dockworkers and other land-based employees who are injured in an accident while working on a pier, bridge, or harbor. This federal law is a no-fault system, almost like the state worker’s compensation program. The LHWCA provides medical and disability benefits to injured workers involved in an integral part of maritime activity, like loading, unloading, repairing, or building a ship. The law also provides a benefit to the surviving relative of a worker who was killed during a job-related accident.
What does one need to prove in an LHWCA Claim?
LHWCA cases are somewhat almost like workers’ compensation cases because you not need to prove your injury was caused by negligence.
Our maritime lawyer simply got to establish that you meet the LHWCA’s definition of a maritime worker which
the injury occurred to in a place covered by this law.
Types of Compensation
Maritime Lawyers New Orleans are prepared to pursue all sorts of compensation you’re entitled under the LHWCA,
such as:
- Medical costs – this includes all medical costs you incur for treating your injuries, like the value of surgeries, medical testing, prescribed drugs and stays at the hospital.
- Temporary total disability – some injuries are so severe that you simply are temporarily unable to perform any work. Workers that suffer
these injuries could also be entitled to temporary total disability, which is adequate to two-thirds of your average weekly wage for as long as you’re totally disabled.
- Temporary partial disability – many maritime workers suffer injuries that temporarily force them to work a different
job because they can’t perform an equivalent job they did before the injury.
When this happens, they’ll be entitled to two-thirds of lost earning capacity.
- Permanent partial disability – this is often like temporary partial disability, except the restrictions caused by your injury are permanent. Meaning you’ve got to permanently reduce your hours or job responsibilities.
You’ll receive 66 and two-thirds percent of your average weekly wage or two-thirds of your lost earning capacity, counting on your injury.
- Vocational rehabilitation – you got to work ina different field after your injury due to your physical or mental limitations.
Vocation rehabilitation provides job placement assistance, skills testing and accommodations required for returning to your job or for getting into employment during a different field due to limitations from your injury.
Statute of Limitations
A statute of limitations is a deadline for filing a claim. If you miss the deadline, you lose your opportunity to pursue compensation.
For LHWCA claims, the statute of limitations is one year from the date of your injury. If you probably did not realize the injury
when it happened, the one-year clock won’t start running until the date you knew or are reasonably expected to have known about the injury
The Jones Act
The Jones Act, also referred to as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, is a federal law that permits seamen to file a lawsuit against an offshore employer for injuries on a vessel caused by the negligence of the employer or co-worker
In order to sue under the Jones Act, an employee must:
- Be employed on an American vessel
- Spend a minimum of 30 percent of their time on the vessel
- Contribute to the main function of the vessel
The Jones Act covers injuries that occur on any sort of boat or vessel, as long the vessel is in navigation, which suggests the vessel must be:
- Afloat
- Capable of moving
- On waters which will be navigated
- In operation
The boat doesn’t need to be within the water at the time of your injury to be covered by the Jones Act. The vessel just must be capable of moving
under its own power. this suggests the boat might be on blocks or tied at a dock.
Building a Jones Act Case
When our Maritime Lawyers New Orleans is building a case, we’ll collect evidence in aim to prove two things:
You were injured at work – in some cases, all we’d like is the accident report that was filed right after you were injured.
We can also collect pictures of your injury or photos from the scene, alongside statements from witnesses.
Your injury was partially caused by someone else’s negligence – this suggests your injury wouldn’t have occurred if not for an additional party breaching a typicals of care, which is a legal requirement to use an equivalent level of care that another individual would if he or she would during a similar sort of situation.
Unlike a personal injury case, our attorneys don’t need to prove negligence was the ruling cause for your injury, just that negligence played a task. This suggests negligence could be only one percent of the cause for your injury.
One way to prove negligence during a Jones Act case is to determine that the vessel where the injury occurred was unseaworthy. An unseaworthy vessel is one that doesn’t provide a worker with safe equipment to engage in his or her work or a secure place to work. this suggests our maritime attorneys only got to show that where the worker was working was unsafe, rather than proving the whole vessel was unsafe.
Compensation Under the Jones Act
Maritime Lawyers New Orleans will pursue all sorts of compensation you’re entitled under the Jones Act, which could include:
- Medical expenses – if you’ve got a legitimate claim, you’ll recover compensation for past, current, and future medical expenses for treating your injury.
- Lost earnings – we could also be capable to assist you recover compensation for earnings you lost while you were unable to work. If your injury causes permanent limitations, it is possible you could obtain compensation for future lost earnings and lost benefits, like contributions to a pension plan or vacation time.
- Pain and suffering – this is often compensation for the physical pain you experience, alongside emotional anguish, like depression. the quantity you receive is going to be supported by the severity of your injuries and other factors.
- Lost enjoyment of life – if our maritime lawyers find that your injury hurts your ability to participate in leisure activities you enjoy previous to injury, you may be ready to obtain compensation. This includes hobbies and other recreational activities.
- Punitive damages – this is often reserved for situations where we are ready to prove your employer willfully and recklessly violated the quality of care when your injury occurred.
Deadline for Filing Claims
There is a three-year statute of limitations for lawsuits filed under the Jones Act. The three-year clock starts to run on the date of your injury. If we will prove you probably did not discover the injury right when it happened, we may have three years from the date you discovered the injury to file a lawsuit.
Hire Attorneys Who Knows the Danger of Working Offshore
What is Maintenance and Cure?
Maintenance and cure may be a sort of workers’ compensation under the Jones Act that gives benefits to injured seamen until they’re ready to work again:
Maintenance -is money paid to an injured seaman to cover for daily living expenses for every day he or she is unable to work. While employers typically plan to pay minimal amounts, often as low as $15-to-$40 per day, the courts have ruled that maintenance must be the injured seamen’s actual expenses.
Cure- is that the offshore employer’s obligation to pay all the injured seaman’s medical costs until he or she has reached maximum medical improvement (MMI) — the point at where a doctor determines that further medical treatment won’t improve the injured worker’s condition.
If your employer fails to pay maintenance and cure, Maritime Lawyer New Orleans can help. Our maritime attorneys will take your claim to court to help you obtain the benefits you deserve.
What is the Doctrine of Unseaworthiness?
Under general admiralty law, a shipowner is required to take care of a vessel that’s seaworthy. In short, a ship or other vessel must be safe to move goods, crew members, and passengers. Especially, a shipowner has a duty to provide adequate safety measures.
There must even be enough crew members to securely handle their assigned tasks. A shipowner whose vessel is deemed to be unseaworthy is often held responsible for injuries to workers and passengers alike.
Claims that fall into the doctrine of unseaworthiness are the foremost common basis for maritime lawsuits.
Working With a New Orleans Maritime Lawyers
The most important thing for you to do if you’re injured on the work is to seek out a lawyer with admiralty law experience. You don’t want to undertake and fight this battle alone. Success in maritime law cases requires experience and specialized knowledge. Once you’ve got that lawyer to work with, he or she is going to want to ascertain that you did have filed an accident report regarding the incident that caused your injury and a report detailing the treatment you received after the accident
If you’re considering filing a maritime claim, it’s imperative that you have any documents reviewed by a professional maritime attorney to assess the impact these could potentially have on your claim.
Only experienced maritime lawyers are going to be ready to confirm all of the critical items are addressed:
- Status of the worker at the time of the injury
- Status of the vessel at the time of the injury
- The qualifications of the worker bringing the claim
- The time-frame during which the claim must be made
- The vessel’s seaworthiness
- The training of the crew members
- Factors that contributed to the injury
With this information and anything, additional you can provide, your maritime lawyer will begin to decide the way to proceed. Your lawyer also will decide which laws to use to form your claim. With the expertise of your lawyer, you’ll be certain to make sure that your claim is filed before statutes of limitation run out and you’ve got no options left.
The only way is to hire an experienced maritime attorney.