Summary. Report and document immediately, establish status early, demand maintenance and cure in writing, preserve the vessel evidence the same day, and never miss the one-year cargo deadline.

For the doctrine — jurisdiction, the seaman's remedies, the Longshore Act, limitation, liens, and cargo — see Maritime and Admiralty Law. This guide is what to do.

Three sentences that decide most maritime matters:

  1. The evidence goes to sea. Preserve it within days or it is gone.
  2. Status decides everything — seaman, longshore worker, or passenger — so establish it first.
  3. The deadlines are shorter than you think, and the contract may make them shorter still.

Part One: Injury aboard

The first hours

Report it, immediately, and in writing. Tell the master, the mate on watch, or the supervisor, and ask that it be entered in the log and on an accident report.

Read the accident report before signing it. This is not a formality. The report will be the first document in every proceeding, and a report describing the incident inaccurately — or omitting the equipment failure, the condition of the deck, the missing guard, the short-handed watch — is the version the employer will use for years.

If it is wrong, say so on the form. Write your own description in your own words before signing, or decline to sign and provide a written statement the same day.

Do not minimize. "I'm fine, just sore" recorded on day one becomes the centerpiece of a defense on day four hundred. Describe what actually hurts.

Get medical attention and say what happened. The first medical record's history of injury is the most important sentence in the medical file.

Then, before the vessel sails or the crew disperses:

  • Photograph the scene, the equipment, the condition, and the surrounding area.
  • Write down names and contact information for everyone present — crew rotate off and are unreachable within weeks.
  • Note the weather, the sea state, the watch schedule, and how long you had been working.
  • Keep your own copy of the report, the log entry if you can get it, and any statement you gave.

Establishing status

Seaman, longshore worker, or neither determines the entire case, and the evidence that decides it should be gathered early.

For seaman status, assemble: time and assignment records showing the proportion of work aboard vessels; the ownership and control of the vessels worked (an identifiable fleet under common ownership or control counts); job descriptions and actual duties; whether you were assigned to a particular vessel or dispatched; and whether the vessel was "in navigation" or withdrawn for major repair.

The rule of thumb is roughly 30 percent of working time in service of a vessel or fleet, plus duties contributing to the vessel's function or mission — but it is a guideline, and the nature of the connection matters independently.

For Longshore Act coverage, the questions are status (maritime employment — longshoring, ship repair, shipbuilding, shipbreaking) and situs (navigable waters or adjoining areas customarily used for loading, unloading, repairing, or building vessels).

Plead in the alternative where status is genuinely uncertain. The schemes are mutually exclusive and status is decided later.

Maintenance and cure

If you are a seaman, this starts immediately and does not depend on fault.

Demand it in writing, with:

  • The treating physician's recommendation and the treatment plan.
  • Your actual daily living expenses — real rent or mortgage, utilities, food — with receipts, not a stale contractual rate.
  • A request for confirmation of the rate and the payment schedule.

If it stops:

  1. Ask in writing on what basis, and for the report relied on.
  2. Note that ambiguities are resolved in the seaman's favor, and that a mere conflict of medical opinion does not justify termination.
  3. Document everything. A record of unreasonable, willful refusal supports punitive damages — the one place in maritime injury law where they are clearly available.
  4. Continue treatment and keep every bill; cure continues until maximum medical improvement, not until the employer says so.

And do not sign a release for a maintenance payment. Seamen's releases are scrutinized closely, but the cleanest course is not to sign one.

Choosing the forum

The saving to suitors clause gives you a choice, and for an injured plaintiff it is usually about the jury.

  • Jones Act claim in state court — jury, generally not removable.
  • Jones Act claim in federal court on the law side — jury.
  • Admiralty on the federal court's admiralty side — no jury, but access to admiralty procedures.

Practical considerations: the jury pool; whether the general maritime claims (unseaworthiness, maintenance and cure) can be joined; removal risk; the defendant's location and assets; and whether a limitation action is likely, which can pull everything into federal court.

Decide deliberately and early, because the choice shapes discovery, the evidence, and the settlement posture.

If the shipowner files a limitation action

A petition to limit liability to the value of the vessel plus pending freight stops your case, enjoins other proceedings, and pulls every claimant into a single non-jury federal proceeding.

What to do:

  1. File your claim in the limitation action by the monition date. Missing it can bar the claim entirely.
  2. Contest the value of the vessel and the freight, which sets the fund.
  3. Attack privity or knowledge — limitation is denied where the loss occurred with the owner's privity or knowledge, which for a corporate owner means the knowledge of managing officers or supervisory personnel. The maintenance history, prior complaints, and management's awareness of the condition are the case.
  4. Seek to lift the injunction through stipulations. A single claimant, or multiple claimants who stipulate to the fund's adequacy and to the owner's right to litigate limitation in admiralty, may generally return to their chosen forum for the merits.

And note the six-month clock running against the owner from written notice of claim — an owner who files late loses the protection.

Preserving the evidence

Send a preservation letter within days, not weeks. Vessels move, crews disperse, voyage data recorders overwrite, and equipment is repaired or discarded.

Demand preservation of: deck and engine logs; the voyage data recorder and any electronic navigation data; maintenance and repair records for the equipment involved; work orders and requisitions; crew lists and rotation schedules; prior incident reports and near-miss reports; safety meeting minutes; inspection and classification society records; drug and alcohol testing records; photographs and video, including CCTV; and the physical equipment itself, unaltered.

Then move quickly on depositions of crew members who are about to rotate off or leave the company, and consider a vessel inspection before repairs.

Part Two: Cargo

At delivery

The claim is usually won or lost in the first hour.

  1. Inspect before signing. Look at the container seal number against the documents, the stow, the packaging, and the goods.
  2. Note the damage on the delivery receipt. A clean receipt is powerful evidence that the goods arrived sound.
  3. Give written notice at delivery, or within three days for damage not apparent on inspection.
  4. Photograph everything — the seal, the container interior, the stow, the packaging, and the goods, before anything is moved.
  5. Demand a joint survey with the carrier's surveyor, immediately, before the goods move or are repaired.
  6. Preserve the goods and the packaging. Do not repair, sell, or dispose of anything until the claim resolves or the carrier declines to survey.

Building the claim

Assemble: the bill of lading; the commercial invoice and packing list; the shipper's loading photographs and stowage plan; the container interchange reports; temperature records for reefer cargo; the survey report; repair or replacement quotations; and the salvage value if any.

Then identify every potential defendant: the ocean carrier, the vessel, the NVOCC or freight forwarder, the terminal, the stevedore, the inland carrier, and the warehouse.

And read the bill of lading, which will contain: the package limitation; a Himalaya clause extending the carrier's defenses to agents and downstream carriers; a forum selection or arbitration clause; and the notice and suit provisions.

The deadline

One year from delivery, or from the date the goods should have been delivered. This is the deadline that kills cargo claims, and negotiations do not toll it.

If the year is approaching and the claim is not resolved:

  • Request a written extension. Carriers grant them routinely. Get it in writing, signed, before the deadline.
  • If no extension, file suit. A suit can be stayed or dismissed later; a missed deadline cannot be cured.

Two more points: the package limitation caps recovery unless a higher value was declared and a higher freight rate paid — which is why declaring value or buying cargo insurance is nearly always cheaper than litigating the cap. And cargo insurance usually pays first, with the insurer subrogating to the claim against the carrier, which changes who is actually running the case.

Part Three: Vessels, liens, and casualties

When to arrest a vessel

Arrest is the most powerful tool in the field. A detained vessel earns nothing, and arrest produces security and settlements quickly.

Consider it when: you hold a maritime lien (unpaid seamen's wages, necessaries, salvage, tort claims, a preferred mortgage); the defendant is foreign or judgment-proof; and the vessel is in or coming to a district where you can file.

How it works: file an in rem action with a verified complaint; the court issues a warrant; the marshal or a substitute custodian arrests the vessel; the owner posts security — a bond, a letter of undertaking from a protection and indemnity club, or cash — and the vessel is released.

Move fast. Vessels sail. Track the vessel's position, have the complaint drafted before it arrives, and file the day it is in the district.

And consider Rule B attachment where the defendant is not found in the district and has property there.

Buying or selling a vessel

Maritime liens follow the vessel and are mostly unrecorded. A buyer takes subject to them.

Before buying:

  • Search recorded instruments — preferred mortgages and notices of claim of lien — in the federal documentation records.
  • Obtain a seller's affidavit listing all suppliers, repairers, wharfingers, and crew for a substantial period, with a warranty and indemnity.
  • Get payoff letters from known claimants.
  • Escrow part of the price against undisclosed liens.
  • Consider whether a judicial sale is available — a court-ordered sale in admiralty conveys clean title free of liens, which is why distressed vessels are sold that way.

After a casualty

  1. Report as required, immediately. Failure to report is a separate offense.
  2. Conduct post-incident testing where a serious marine incident triggers it.
  3. Issue a written preservation instruction the same day — logs, electronic data, recordings, maintenance records, and the equipment.
  4. Get counsel involved before statements are given, for the company and, where interests diverge, separately for individual crew.
  5. Expect a Coast Guard investigation and, in major cases, a federal safety board investigation. Statements are used in civil litigation.
  6. Calendar the six-month limitation clock if a written claim arrives.
  7. Notify insurers — hull and machinery, protection and indemnity, cargo — promptly, and be aware that marine insurance operates under a duty of utmost good faith in which nondisclosure can void coverage.

Damages in a maritime injury case

The measure differs by claim, and clients are frequently surprised in both directions.

Under maintenance and cure: daily living expenses ashore (housing, utilities, food — at actual cost, not a stale contractual rate), medical expenses until maximum medical improvement, unearned wages to the end of the voyage or contract, plus compensatory damages for wrongful failure to pay and, where the refusal is willful and wanton, punitive damages.

Under the Jones Act: past and future lost earnings and earning capacity; past and future medical expenses; pain, suffering, and mental anguish; and found — the value of room and board the seaman would have received aboard, which is a real and commonly overlooked element. Comparative fault reduces the award but does not bar it, and the plaintiff's own negligence is judged against the featherweight causation standard applied to the employer.

Under unseaworthiness: the same compensatory categories, but no punitive damages after Dutra Group v. Batterton.

In death cases: the available damages depend entirely on where the death occurred and the decedent's status. On the high seas beyond the statutory distance, recovery is limited to pecuniary loss for specified survivors — no loss of society, no grief — which can reduce a case by an order of magnitude compared with a state wrongful death statute. In territorial waters, the general maritime action from Moragne applies, with its own contested damages boundaries.

Under the Longshore Act: scheduled compensation benefits and medical care, with no pain and suffering — and the separate vessel negligence claim carrying full tort damages, subject to the employer's compensation lien.

Two practical points on proving damages.

Wage loss for mariners requires care. Earnings are irregular, include overtime, watch premiums, and found, and vary by vessel and rotation. Get several years of earnings records and the union or company wage scales, and use an economist who has done maritime cases.

Future medical care is often the largest element in a serious case and is proven by a life care plan tied to the treating physicians' recommendations. Build it early; it also drives settlement value more than any other single document.

Six scenarios

The tug engineer with a back injury and a company doctor

A tug engineer herniates a disc lifting a pump. The company sends him to its own occupational clinic, which releases him to full duty in ten days. His own physician says he needs surgery.

Two things are happening at once. The maintenance and cure obligation is running, and the Jones Act negligence claim is forming.

On maintenance and cure: the employer must pay until maximum medical improvement, and ambiguities are resolved in the seaman's favor. A company clinic's release does not end the obligation where the treating physician recommends further treatment. Demand it in writing, attach the treating physician's plan, and document the refusal — willful refusal supports punitive damages.

On the negligence claim: the causation standard is featherweight — any part, however slight. The evidence to gather now is the lifting procedure, whether mechanical assistance was available and functional, the crew complement on watch, prior complaints about the pump, and the company's own safety procedures.

And on unseaworthiness: was the vessel undermanned for the task? Crew insufficiency is a classic unseaworthiness theory, and it does not require proving anyone was negligent.

A caution: the engineer should not sign a release in exchange for continued maintenance payments, and should not let the company's clinic be his only treating source.

The longshore worker crushed by a container

A longshore worker is injured when a container shifts during discharge. The employer is the stevedore; the vessel is owned by a foreign company.

He is not a seaman. He is covered by the Longshore Act, which means compensation from the stevedore employer and — critically — a negligence claim against the vessel under 33 U.S.C. § 905.

The vessel negligence theories are defined and narrow: a turnover duty to deliver the ship and its equipment in a condition allowing an expert stevedore to work with reasonable safety, and to warn of hidden dangers; a duty regarding areas or equipment the vessel actively controls during operations; and a duty to intervene where the vessel knows of a dangerous condition and knows the stevedore is acting unreasonably about it.

What to gather: the stowage plan and lashing certificate; the loading port's securing records; the vessel's own inspection records; the pre-operations conference notes; and evidence of what the vessel's crew knew and when.

And note the compensation lien. The employer's compensation carrier will assert a lien on any recovery from the vessel, and the allocation is negotiated.

The container of electronics that arrived wet

A consignee opens a container to find water damage across half the pallets. The seal was intact.

Hour one: photograph the seal number, the closed container, the interior, the stow, and the damage before anything moves. Note the damage on the delivery receipt.

Day one: written notice to the carrier; demand a joint survey; do not move, repair, or dispose of anything.

The theory: an intact seal with wet cargo points to the container itself — a defective or leaking container is a failure of the carrier's duty to provide a cargoworthy container — or to stowage on deck in weather. The carrier will invoke perils of the sea, insufficiency of packing, and inherent vice, so the shipper's loading photographs and the packing specification matter enormously.

The economics: the package limitation may cap recovery far below the loss unless value was declared. Check whether the "package" is the container or each carton — the answer depends on how the bill of lading describes the goods, and it is worth many multiples of the legal fees.

The deadline: one year. Calendar it the day the damage is discovered.

The recreational boater sued after a wake injury

A boat owner is sued when a passenger on another vessel is injured by his wake on a large navigable river.

Two maritime features apply that his lawyer may not expect.

Limitation of liability. He may petition to limit liability to the value of the boat after the casualty — potentially a small number — but only if he files within six months of written notice of a claim, and only if the loss occurred without his privity or knowledge. If he was at the helm, privity is nearly automatic and the petition will likely fail; if a guest was operating, it may not.

Maritime law governs the merits, including its comparative fault rules, even if the case is tried in state court under the saving to suitors clause.

Practical advice: notify the insurer immediately; preserve the boat's condition and any electronics; identify witnesses on both vessels; photograph the river conditions and traffic; and calendar the six months the moment a written claim arrives.

The passenger who fell on a cruise ship

A passenger slips on a wet deck and fractures a hip. She recovers at home for eight months and then calls a lawyer.

She may already be out of time. Cruise tickets commonly require written notice within six months and suit within one year, in a specified forum, and courts generally enforce these terms.

What she should have done in the first days: reported the incident to medical or security and obtained a written incident report; photographed the condition; obtained witness names; and sent a preservation letter — the vessel's CCTV is the best evidence and is routinely overwritten within weeks.

What the case turns on: the standard is reasonable care under the circumstances, and liability generally requires actual or constructive notice of the dangerous condition. Prior incident reports, inspection logs, cleaning schedules, and maintenance records are the case.

And if the incident occurred beyond the statutory distance from shore and resulted in death, the high-seas statute limits recovery to pecuniary loss, which frequently produces a far smaller recovery than a state wrongful death statute would.

The fuel supplier owed $200,000

A bunker supplier has delivered fuel to a foreign-flag vessel and has not been paid. The owner is a single-vessel company in another jurisdiction.

In personam, this claim is nearly worthless. In rem, it is fully secured.

Necessaries — including fuel — give rise to a maritime lien on the vessel, enforceable by arrest.

The sequence:

  1. Track the vessel. Position data is commercially available.
  2. Have the verified complaint drafted before it arrives in a district where you can file.
  3. File and obtain the warrant the day the vessel is in the district; the marshal or a substitute custodian arrests it.
  4. The owner posts security — a bond, a club letter of undertaking, or cash — and the vessel is released.
  5. Litigate or settle against the security, not against an absent owner.

Two cautions. Custodia legis costs — custodian fees, insurance, and crew maintenance — accrue against the arresting party in some circumstances, so arrest is not free. And the priority of the lien matters: seamen's wages and salvage outrank necessaries, so a vessel with a large wage claim may not produce enough on sale.

Working up a maritime injury case

Maritime discovery differs from ordinary personal injury discovery in what exists and how fast it disappears.

The documents to demand, by category:

Vessel condition: deck and engine logs for the voyage and the preceding period; the maintenance management system's history for the equipment involved; work orders, requisitions, and deferred maintenance lists; classification society and Coast Guard inspection reports and outstanding deficiencies; drydock and repair records; and the vessel's certificates.

Operations: the voyage plan; the crew list and rotation; watch schedules and hours-of-rest records (which frequently show fatigue); the safety management system manual and the specific procedure for the task; job hazard analyses; pre-task briefings; and the company's own audits.

The incident: the accident report and every draft; the log entry; witness statements; photographs and video, including CCTV; the voyage data recorder download; post-incident testing results; and any internal investigation, subject to privilege fights.

History: prior incidents involving the same equipment or task; near-miss reports; crew complaints and defect reports; and safety meeting minutes.

Employment: personnel and training records; the plaintiff's assignment history across the fleet (essential for seaman status); and prior injury history.

The witnesses to prioritize: the crew members present, deposed before they rotate off or leave the company; the person who prepared the accident report; the safety manager; the port engineer; and the shoreside superintendent who knew about the equipment's condition — the last of whom is also the key witness on privity or knowledge if a limitation action is filed.

Two practical points.

Inspect the vessel early. A request to inspect and photograph the scene, with an expert, before repairs, is granted more often than lawyers expect — and after repairs it is worthless.

Use the safety management system against the operator. Modern vessel operators maintain documented procedures for nearly everything. A deviation from the company's own written procedure is the single most effective evidence in a maritime negligence case, and it is in documents the company must produce.

For the vessel operator on the other side

Most of this guide is written from the claimant's perspective. The operator's playbook is the mirror image, and it is largely about the first week.

Hour one after an incident:

  • Care for the injured person first, and document that you did. Delay in evacuation or treatment is the fact that turns a defensible case into an indefensible one.
  • Report as required. Failure to report is a separate offense with its own penalties.
  • Preserve — issue a written instruction the same day covering logs, electronic data, recordings, maintenance records, and the physical equipment. Do not repair the equipment involved until it has been documented.
  • Conduct post-incident testing where a serious marine incident requires it.
  • Notify insurers — hull, protection and indemnity, and, for cargo, the relevant underwriters — promptly.

Day one to three:

  • Investigate promptly and carefully, with counsel, and think about privilege before creating documents.
  • Take crew statements while memories are fresh and before crew rotate off.
  • Photograph everything the way a plaintiff's expert would.
  • Get counsel involved before statements are given to investigators — for the company and, where interests may diverge, separately for individual crew members.

Week one to four:

  • Pay maintenance and cure where the claimant is a seaman. Terminating on a paper review, without examining the seaman and without a considered documented basis, is the decision that converts a modest case into a punitive damages case.
  • Calendar the six-month limitation clock from the first written notice of claim. Filing late forfeits the protection entirely.
  • Evaluate limitation honestly. Its availability turns on privity or knowledge, which means the maintenance history, prior complaints, and what shoreside management knew. If management knew about the condition, the petition will likely fail and filing it may simply advertise the fact.
  • Consider early resolution in cases where liability is clear. Maritime injury cases are expensive to defend, the fee-shifting and punitive exposure on maintenance and cure is real, and the evidence generally favors the claimant on documented equipment failures.

And the structural advice: the operators who fare best in litigation are the ones whose safety management system is real — written procedures that match actual practice, hours-of-rest records that are accurate, defect reports that are closed out, and near-miss reporting that is used rather than punished. Every one of those is discoverable, and the gap between the manual and the practice is where cases are lost.

Finding the right lawyer, and what it costs

Maritime is a genuine specialty, and the difference between a maritime lawyer and a good general personal injury or commercial lawyer shows up in the first month — in the preservation letter that was not sent, the forum chosen by default, the seaman status evidence never gathered, and the one-year cargo deadline nobody flagged.

For an injured worker:

  • Look for a lawyer who tries Jones Act and Longshore cases, not one who takes them occasionally.
  • Ask how many maritime cases they have tried, in which courts, and whether they have handled a limitation action.
  • Fees are typically contingent, and the consultation is free.
  • Ask specifically what they will do in the first thirty days — the answer should include a preservation letter, a status-evidence request, and a maintenance and cure demand.
  • Longshore claimants: attorney's fees may be payable by the employer or carrier in defined circumstances, which changes the economics considerably. Ask.

For a cargo claimant:

  • The claim is frequently controlled by a subrogated insurer with its own counsel. Know who is actually running it.
  • The economics are driven by the package limitation; a lawyer should tell you in the first meeting what the realistic cap is.
  • Recovery clubs and specialized cargo recovery counsel handle volume claims efficiently, often on a percentage.

For a vessel owner or operator:

  • Your protection and indemnity club will appoint counsel and may control the defense. Read the rules on that, including any "pay to be paid" provision.
  • Where interests diverge from the club's or from individual crew members', separate counsel matters — particularly in a casualty investigation with potential criminal exposure.

For a vessel purchase or a charter dispute:

  • These are transactional and commercial matters, usually hourly, and the value is entirely front-loaded: the lien search, the affidavit and indemnity, the escrow, and the clause review cost a fraction of one arrest.

And the general point. Because the evidence disappears and the deadlines are short, the value of getting counsel involved in week one rather than month six is greater in maritime matters than in almost any other field. A free consultation in the first week is the cheapest thing available.

Settlement, and the seaman's release

Most maritime injury cases settle, and the settlement mechanics have features found nowhere else.

The seaman's release is scrutinized. Courts have long treated seamen as wards of admiralty, and a release is examined for whether it was freely given by a seaman who fully understood their rights, the nature of their injuries, and the consequences of the release, with adequate consideration and, ideally, independent advice. The burden of establishing validity falls on the party asserting it.

What that means practically:

  • A release signed at the office, without counsel, in exchange for continued maintenance payments, is vulnerable. Employers who obtain them this way frequently find them set aside.
  • Documenting the process protects both sides: independent counsel, a full medical picture, an explanation of the claims released, and a record that consideration was adequate.
  • Do not sign anything to keep maintenance flowing. Maintenance and cure is owed independently of any settlement.

Structuring the settlement. Consider: the allocation between claims (maintenance and cure, Jones Act, unseaworthiness) and its tax and lien consequences; the compensation lien where a Longshore carrier has paid benefits; Medicare's interest, which requires attention to conditional payments and, in some cases, a set-aside for future medicals; and any maritime lien asserted by counsel or providers.

On liens generally, see Personal Injury Claim Toolkit and, for the Medicare piece, Enrolling in and Appealing Medicare.

Mediation works well in these cases, particularly where a limitation action has concentrated all claimants in one proceeding and the fund must be allocated among them.

And timing. Settle after maximum medical improvement where possible, because settling before it means guessing at the largest element of the case. Where financial pressure makes waiting impossible — which is common, since an injured mariner has no income — maintenance and cure exists precisely to relieve that pressure, which is another reason the employer's obligation to pay it matters so much.

Twelve mistakes

  1. Signing an inaccurate accident report because it was handed to you on a clipboard.
  2. Minimizing the injury on day one, which becomes the defense on day four hundred.
  3. Letting the vessel sail without photographing the scene or collecting crew contact information.
  4. Not sending a preservation letter within days. Voyage data overwrites; equipment gets repaired.
  5. Failing to gather assignment and time records that establish seaman status.
  6. Accepting a termination of maintenance and cure without demanding the basis in writing.
  7. Signing a release in exchange for a maintenance payment.
  8. Choosing the forum by default instead of deciding whether the jury matters.
  9. Missing the monition date in a limitation action, which can bar the claim.
  10. Signing a clean delivery receipt for damaged cargo.
  11. Moving, repairing, or disposing of damaged cargo before a joint survey.
  12. Letting the one-year cargo deadline pass while negotiating without a written extension.

The one-page version

Injury aboard:

  • Report it, read the report before signing, correct it, keep a copy.
  • Get medical care with an accurate history. Do not minimize.
  • Photograph the scene; collect crew names before they rotate off.
  • Send a preservation letter within days.
  • Gather assignment and time records to establish status.
  • Demand maintenance and cure in writing, with the treating physician's plan and real expenses.
  • If it stops, demand the basis in writing and document everything — willful refusal supports punitive damages.
  • Choose the forum deliberately; the saving to suitors clause means a jury is available.
  • If a limitation action is filed: file by the monition date, contest the fund, attack privity or knowledge, and seek stipulations.

Cargo:

  • Inspect before signing. Note damage on the delivery receipt.
  • Written notice at delivery, or within three days for concealed damage.
  • Joint survey immediately; move nothing.
  • Photograph the seal, the stow, the packaging, the goods.
  • Read the bill of lading: package limitation, Himalaya clause, forum selection, notice and suit terms.
  • One year to sue. Get a written extension or file.

Vessels:

  • Arrest where you hold a lien and the defendant is foreign or judgment-proof; move fast, vessels sail.
  • Buying: search recorded instruments, get a seller's affidavit and indemnity, escrow, and remember liens follow the vessel.
  • After a casualty: report, test, preserve in writing the same day, counsel before statements, notify insurers, and calendar the six-month limitation clock.

Frequently asked questions

What is the very first thing to do after an injury aboard? Report it, read the accident report before signing, correct it if it is wrong, and get medical attention with an accurate history.

Am I a seaman? If your duties contribute to the vessel's function or mission and you have a substantial connection to a vessel or fleet — roughly 30 percent of working time as a guideline. Gather the time and assignment records early.

They stopped paying maintenance. What now? Demand the basis in writing, keep treating, document everything. Willful refusal supports punitive damages.

Can I get a jury? Usually yes, through the saving to suitors clause — state court or the federal law side.

How long do I have on a cargo claim? One year. Get a written extension or file suit; negotiations do not toll it.

They filed a limitation action. Is my case over? No. File your claim by the monition date, contest the fund's value, attack privity or knowledge, and seek stipulations to return to your forum.

Related documents

Educational only, not legal advice. Maritime deadlines are short and frequently shortened further by contract. Consult admiralty counsel within days, not months.