Maritime and Admiralty Law: Jurisdiction, Seamen, Cargo, and Vessel Liability

Summary. How admiralty jurisdiction works, who counts as a seaman and what they recover, who covers everyone else, and the vessel-specific remedies nobody else has.

Part I: A separate system

Admiralty is not a specialty within American law. It is an older body of law that the Constitution absorbed rather than created, and it retains features that exist nowhere else: a court can arrest a ship as though the ship itself were the defendant; a shipowner can file an action to cap its own liability at the value of the vessel; an injured worker can recover living expenses and medical care from an employer without proving fault of any kind; and a cargo claim can be limited to a few hundred dollars per package regardless of the loss.

The jurisdictional grant appears at 28 U.S.C. § 1333: federal district courts have original and exclusive jurisdiction of any civil case of admiralty or maritime jurisdiction — "saving to suitors in all cases all other remedies to which they are otherwise entitled."

That saving clause does enormous work. Because most maritime claims are also common law claims, a plaintiff may generally bring them in state court, or on the federal court's law side with a jury, rather than in admiralty. What is saved is the remedy, not the substantive law: maritime law still governs the merits.

Why anyone would choose one over the other:

• Admiralty offers no jury, distinctive procedures (arrest, attachment, limitation), and a judge experienced in the field.
• The saving clause route offers a jury, which for a personal injury plaintiff is usually decisive.

Part II: When is a case maritime?

For torts, the test is location plus connection: the tort must occur on navigable waters (or be caused by a vessel on navigable waters), and the incident must have a potentially disruptive effect on maritime commerce and arise from activity with a substantial relationship to traditional maritime activity.

For contracts, the question is whether the contract's primary objective is maritime commerce. Norfolk Southern Railway Co. v. James N. Kirby, Pty Ltd. held that a through bill of lading covering ocean and inland rail carriage is a maritime contract, because its primary objective is to accomplish the transportation of goods by sea — and applied the bill's liability limitation to the rail carrier.

Navigable waters means waters that are navigable in fact and that form, alone or with others, a continued highway over which commerce is or may be carried on with other states or foreign countries. A lake entirely within one state generally is not, which matters constantly for recreational boating cases.

Part III: The injured seaman's three remedies

An injured seaman has a remedial structure available to no other worker in the United States, and the three components have different elements, different defendants, and different damages.

1. Maintenance and cure

A no-fault obligation owed by the shipowner to a seaman who becomes ill or injured in the service of the ship — regardless of fault, regardless of causation by the employment, and regardless of whether the seaman was negligent.

• Maintenance is the daily living expense — food and lodging ashore.
• Cure is medical expenses, until maximum medical improvement.
• Unearned wages to the end of the voyage or contract period.

Ambiguities are resolved in the seaman's favor, and an employer that unreasonably withholds maintenance and cure faces compensatory damages, and where the conduct is willful and wanton, punitive damages — a rule the Supreme Court confirmed and which makes the arbitrary denial of maintenance and cure an expensive decision.

2. The Jones Act

46 U.S.C. § 30104 gives a seaman injured in the course of employment a negligence action against the employer, incorporating the railroad workers' statutory scheme — which means a featherweight causation standard: the employer is liable if its negligence played any part, however slight, in producing the injury. Comparative fault reduces but does not bar recovery.

And the Jones Act carries a jury right.

Who is a seaman? The statute does not define it, and Chandris, Inc. v. Latsis supplies the test: the employee's duties must contribute to the function of the vessel or to the accomplishment of its mission, and the employee must have a connection to a vessel in navigation (or an identifiable fleet) that is substantial in both duration and nature. As a rule of thumb, an employee spending less than about 30 percent of their time in service of a vessel ordinarily does not qualify.

Seaman status is the threshold question in nearly every maritime injury case, because it determines whether the worker has the Jones Act's remedies or the Longshore Act's, and the two are mutually exclusive.

3. Unseaworthiness

A general maritime law claim against the vessel owner for breach of the absolute, non-delegable warranty that the vessel and its appurtenances are reasonably fit for their intended purpose.

It is not a negligence claim. The owner's care is irrelevant; the question is the condition of the vessel, its gear, its equipment, and — importantly — its crew, which can be unseaworthy if insufficient in number or competence.

But the damages are limited. The Dutra Group v. Batterton held that punitive damages are not available on an unseaworthiness claim, reasoning from the historical scope of the remedy and from Congress's decision in the Jones Act to limit recovery to pecuniary loss.

So the practical map is: maintenance and cure for no-fault support and, in bad-faith cases, punitive exposure; the Jones Act for negligence against the employer with a jury; and unseaworthiness for vessel condition without regard to fault, with compensatory damages only.

Part IV: Everyone else on the waterfront

Workers who are not seamen are covered by the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act, a federal workers' compensation scheme.

Coverage under 33 U.S.C. § 903 requires status — engaged in maritime employment, including longshoring, ship repair, shipbuilding, and shipbreaking — and situs, an injury occurring on navigable waters or on adjoining piers, wharves, terminals, and areas customarily used for loading, unloading, repairing, or building a vessel.

Exclusivity. 33 U.S.C. § 905 makes the employer's liability exclusive — no tort suit against the employer.

But subsection (b) preserves a claim against the vessel for negligence, and it is the workhorse of longshore litigation: a covered worker may sue the vessel in negligence, subject to duties defined by case law (a turnover duty, a duty over areas the vessel actively controls, and a duty to intervene in limited circumstances), with the employer's compensation lien attaching to the recovery.

Extensions cover defense base workers, outer continental shelf workers, and certain others.

Part V: Death

On the high seas, the Death on the High Seas Act supplies the remedy for deaths beyond a specified distance from shore, limiting recovery to pecuniary loss for the benefit of specified survivors.

In territorial waters, Moragne v. States Marine Lines, Inc. created a general maritime wrongful death action, overruling a nineteenth-century rule that had produced the anomaly of a remedy for injury but none for death.

The interaction of these regimes with the Jones Act and with state wrongful death statutes is genuinely intricate, and the available damages differ depending on the decedent's status, the location, and which statute applies. Establish status and location first; the damages follow from them.

Part VI: Limitation of liability

A shipowner may file an action to limit its liability to the value of the vessel and its pending freight — a nineteenth-century statute designed to encourage shipping investment, and one that produces results modern observers find startling.

The mechanics:

• The owner files a limitation action, generally within six months of written notice of a claim.
• The court enjoins all other proceedings and requires all claimants to file in the limitation action — a concursus.
• The owner deposits security equal to the vessel's post-casualty value plus pending freight.
• Limitation is denied if 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 tension with the saving clause is constant: claimants want a jury in their chosen forum, the owner wants a single non-jury proceeding. Courts resolve it through stipulations — a single claimant, or multiple claimants who stipulate to the adequacy of the fund and the owner's right to litigate limitation in admiralty, may proceed elsewhere.

For a small-vessel owner, the practical point is the six-month clock. A written notice of claim starts it, and missing it forfeits the protection.

Part VII: Liens and arrest

A maritime lien attaches to the vessel itself, follows it into the hands of a purchaser, and is enforced by an in rem action in which the vessel is arrested.

Liens arise from: seamen's wages (the most favored), salvage, general average, tort claims, necessaries provided to the vessel (fuel, supplies, repairs, wharfage, stevedoring), and preferred ship mortgages.

Priority is not chronological. Later liens frequently outrank earlier ones — the "inverse order" principle reflecting that the later provider preserved the vessel for everyone. Seamen's wages and salvage rank very high; preferred mortgages rank below most maritime liens but above general creditors.

Arrest and attachment are governed by the Supplemental Rules for Admiralty or Maritime Claims: Rule C arrest to enforce a maritime lien, and Rule B attachment of a defendant's property where the defendant is not found in the district — a powerful device that reaches property, and in some circumstances funds, of a foreign defendant.

The practical consequences:

• A purchaser buys the vessel subject to existing liens, which is why a lien search and appropriate protections matter in every vessel sale.
• A vessel can be arrested and sold, extinguishing liens in a judicial sale and giving the buyer clean title.
• Arrest is enormously coercive — a detained vessel earns nothing — and it produces settlements quickly.

Part VIII: Cargo

Carriage of goods by sea to or from the United States in foreign trade is governed by a federal statute implementing an international convention, and it applies from tackle to tackle — loading to discharge.

The core allocation:

• The carrier must exercise due diligence to make the ship seaworthy and to properly man, equip, and supply it, and must properly and carefully load, handle, stow, carry, keep, care for, and discharge the goods.
• The carrier is excepted from liability for an enumerated list including perils of the sea, act of God, act of war, inherent vice of the goods, insufficiency of packing, latent defects not discoverable by due diligence, and — notably — error in navigation or management of the ship.
• The package limitation caps liability at a stated amount per package or customary freight unit, unless the shipper declares a higher value and pays a higher rate.
• Notice of loss or damage must generally be given at delivery or within three days for concealed damage.
• Suit must be brought within one year of delivery or the date the goods should have been delivered. This is the deadline that kills cargo claims.

What "package" means has generated decades of litigation, particularly for containers: is the container the package, or is each carton inside it?

And Kirby matters here too, holding that limitations in a through bill of lading extend to downstream carriers — the function of a Himalaya clause, which extends the carrier's defenses and limitations to agents, servants, and independent contractors including stevedores and inland carriers.

Part IX: Vessels, charters, and insurance

Charter parties come in three principal forms, and the form allocates everything:

• Voyage charter — the owner provides the vessel and crew for a specified voyage, paid freight; the owner operates.
• Time charter — the charterer directs the vessel's employment for a period, paying hire; the owner still crews and navigates.
• Bareboat or demise charter — the charterer takes possession, mans, and operates the vessel, and is treated as the owner pro hac vice for most purposes, including liability.

Recurring charter disputes: laytime and demurrage; safe port and safe berth warranties; off-hire; seaworthiness at delivery; and redelivery condition.

Marine insurance is its own world: hull and machinery; protection and indemnity through mutual clubs; cargo insurance; and, distinctively, the doctrine of uberrimae fidei — utmost good faith — under which a material misrepresentation or nondisclosure in the application can void the policy, a rule far stricter than ordinary insurance law. See First-Party Insurance Claims and Bad Faith.

Salvage and general average are two ancient doctrines that still operate. Salvage rewards the voluntary successful rescue of maritime property from peril, with the award set by factors including the danger, the value saved, the skill and effort, and the risk to the salvor. General average requires all interests in a maritime adventure — ship, cargo, freight — to contribute proportionally to an extraordinary sacrifice or expenditure voluntarily made for the common safety.

And a note on products claims. Air & Liquid Systems Corp. v. DeVries held that in the maritime tort context a manufacturer has a duty to warn where its product requires incorporation of a dangerous part, the manufacturer knows the integrated product is likely to be dangerous for its intended uses, and there is no reason to expect the user will realize the danger — a rule that has shaped asbestos litigation against equipment manufacturers.

Part X: Five cases

The deckhand hurt on a moored barge

A worker is injured cleaning a barge tied to a dock. Is he a seaman?

The whole case turns on this. If he is a seaman, he has the Jones Act, unseaworthiness, and maintenance and cure, and a jury. If he is not, he has the Longshore Act's compensation and a negligence claim against the vessel under 33 U.S.C. § 905.

Apply Chandris: do his duties contribute to the function of the vessel or the accomplishment of its mission, and does he have a connection to a vessel in navigation (or an identifiable fleet under common ownership or control) substantial in duration and nature?

The evidence that decides it: time records showing the percentage of work aboard vessels versus ashore; the fleet's ownership and control; whether he was assigned to a particular vessel or dispatched wherever needed; whether the barge was "in navigation" or withdrawn for major repair; and what he actually did aboard.

The rule of thumb is roughly 30 percent of working time in service of a vessel or fleet, but it is a guideline, not a statute, and the "nature" prong matters independently — a worker who is aboard constantly but performs purely land-based tasks may still fail.

Practical advice for the plaintiff: plead in the alternative and preserve both theories, because status is decided later and the two schemes are mutually exclusive.

The cargo claim discovered in month fourteen

A shipment of machinery arrives damaged. The consignee documents everything, negotiates with the carrier for a year, and then sues.

It is too late. The carriage statute imposes a one-year limitation from delivery or the date the goods should have been delivered, and negotiations do not toll it absent a written extension.

What should have happened:

1. Notice at delivery — a notation on the delivery receipt, or written notice within three days for damage not apparent on inspection.
2. A joint survey with the carrier's surveyor, immediately, before the goods move.
3. Photographs of the packaging, the container seal, the stow, and the damage.
4. Preserve the goods and the packaging until the claim resolves.
5. A written claim to the carrier promptly.
6. A written extension agreement if the one-year deadline approaches — carriers grant them routinely and it must be in writing.
7. Suit filed within the year if no extension.

And check the package limitation. Liability may be capped per package or customary freight unit unless a higher value was declared and a higher rate paid. For high-value cargo, declaring value or buying cargo insurance is far cheaper than litigating the cap.

Finally, identify every potential defendant. Kirby means a through bill's limitations may protect the inland carrier too, through a Himalaya clause — so a claim against the railroad may be capped by the ocean bill.

The recreational boat collision

Two boats collide on a large lake, and one operator is badly hurt.

The first question is whether the lake is navigable in fact and forms a continued highway for interstate or foreign commerce. If it is not, this is an ordinary state-law negligence case and none of the maritime apparatus applies.

If it is navigable, maritime law governs, which changes several things: comparative fault applies in its maritime form; the shipowner's limitation statute is available even to a small pleasure vessel, and the six-month clock runs from written notice of claim; and the saving to suitors clause lets the plaintiff choose state court and a jury.

The limitation point surprises people. A recreational boat owner sued for a serious injury may file a limitation action and cap exposure at the value of the boat after the casualty — which may be very little. Whether limitation is granted turns on privity or knowledge, which for an owner-operator present at the helm is usually fatal to the petition, and for an absent owner may not be.

Practical advice for a boat owner: carry adequate liability coverage, and if a claim is threatened in writing, calendar the six months and get counsel.

The seaman denied maintenance

A seaman with a back injury is told by the employer's adjuster that his treating physician's recommendation is "not necessary" and payments stop.

This is the one place in maritime law where punitive damages are alive, and employers underestimate it.

The obligation: maintenance (daily living expenses ashore), cure (medical treatment until maximum medical improvement), and unearned wages — no fault required, ambiguities resolved in the seaman's favor.

What the seaman should do:

1. Demand in writing, attaching the treating physician's recommendation and the actual living expenses with receipts.
2. Document the rate — real rent, real food costs, not a stale contractual figure.
3. Ask on what basis payment was terminated, and for the report relied on.
4. Note that a mere conflict of medical opinion does not justify termination; the seaman's treating physician's opinion is entitled to weight and doubts are resolved in the seaman's favor.
5. Keep every communication. A record of unreasonable, willful refusal is what supports punitive damages.

And for the employer: terminating maintenance and cure on a paper review, without examining the seaman and without a considered basis, is an expensive decision. Investigate, document, and where a genuine dispute exists, say so in writing and continue paying pending resolution.

The vessel bought with liens attached

A buyer purchases a used tug through a private sale and, three months later, the tug is arrested by a fuel supplier owed $180,000 from before the sale.

Maritime liens follow the vessel. They are not extinguished by a private sale, they do not depend on recording in most cases, and the new owner's innocence is irrelevant.

What the buyer should have done:

• Searched for recorded instruments — preferred mortgages, notices of claim of lien — in the federal vessel documentation records.
• Recognized that most maritime liens are unrecorded, which makes the search necessary but not sufficient.
• Obtained an affidavit from the seller identifying all suppliers, repairers, wharfingers, and crew for a substantial period, with a warranty and an indemnity.
• Required payoff letters from known suppliers and crew.
• Escrowed a portion of the price for a period against undisclosed liens.
• Considered a judicial sale. A vessel sold by court order in an admiralty proceeding conveys clean title free of liens — which is precisely why distressed vessels are frequently sold that way.

Now: the buyer's remedies are against the seller on the warranty and indemnity, if there is one, and the practical need is to post security to release the vessel so it can earn while the dispute proceeds.

Part XI: Passengers, ferries, and cruise ships

Passenger claims are maritime claims, and the contract of carriage — the ticket — controls far more than passengers expect.

The standard of care owed to a passenger is reasonable care under the circumstances, not the heightened common-carrier duty applied in some other contexts. A shipowner is generally liable only where it had actual or constructive notice of a dangerous condition, which is why notice evidence — prior incidents, inspection logs, maintenance records — is the heart of most cases.

The ticket terms are enforceable and severe:

• Notice provisions, commonly requiring written notice of a claim within six months.
• Suit limitations, commonly one year — shorter than the general maritime three-year period.
• Forum selection clauses requiring suit in a specified court, generally enforced.
• Class action waivers and arbitration clauses, in some carriage contracts.
• Limitations on liability, subject to statutory constraints for personal injury.

The passenger who reads the ticket after being injured has usually already lost the deadline. Anyone injured aboard should assume six months and act accordingly.

Medical care aboard raises its own questions: a ship's physician is typically an independent contractor by contract, and whether the carrier is liable for shipboard medical negligence has produced divergent decisions.

Deaths at sea implicate the high-seas death statute where the incident occurs beyond the statutory distance from shore, limiting recovery to pecuniary loss for specified survivors — which can drastically reduce recovery in a death case compared with a state wrongful death statute, and which is a frequent and unwelcome surprise to families.

Practical advice for passengers: report every incident to the ship's medical or security staff and get a written incident report; photograph the condition; get names of witnesses; and note that the vessel's own recordings are the best evidence and are routinely overwritten — a preservation letter should go out within days.

Part XII: Environmental and regulatory exposure

Beyond private claims, vessel operations carry a substantial regulatory overlay with severe penalties.

Oil spills. A comprehensive federal statute imposes strict liability on responsible parties for removal costs and damages from discharges of oil into navigable waters, with limits that are lost for gross negligence, willful misconduct, or violation of applicable regulations. Immediate reporting is mandatory, and failure to report is itself an offense.

Discharges generally are governed by the Clean Water Act's prohibition at 33 U.S.C. § 1311, together with vessel-specific discharge standards covering ballast water, greywater, bilge water, and hull coatings.

Record-keeping offenses. A recurring pattern in maritime enforcement is prosecution not for the discharge itself — which may have occurred outside U.S. waters — but for false entries in the oil record book presented to authorities in a U.S. port. These prosecutions are frequent, they reach individual officers as well as companies, and the penalties are severe.

Safety and inspection. Vessel documentation, certificates of inspection, manning requirements, licensing of officers, drug and alcohol testing after a serious marine incident, and casualty reporting obligations that run on very short timelines.

Marine casualty investigations. After a serious incident, expect a Coast Guard investigation and, in major cases, a federal safety board investigation. Statements given in these proceedings are used in civil litigation, testing is mandatory after a serious marine incident, and the vessel's own records — logs, voyage data recorder, engine data — become central.

Practical advice for an operator after a casualty:

1. Report as required, immediately. Failure to report is a separate offense.
2. Preserve everything — logs, electronic data, recordings, maintenance records — and issue a written preservation instruction the same day.
3. Conduct testing where required.
4. Get counsel involved before statements are given, for the company and, where interests may diverge, separately for individual crew members.
5. Calendar the six-month limitation clock if a written claim arrives.

Part XIII: Practical notes

1. Establish status first. Seaman, longshore worker, passenger, or neither. Everything follows from it.
2. Watch the deadlines. Three years for Jones Act and general maritime personal injury claims; one year for cargo; six months for a limitation action; and short notice periods in passenger tickets — frequently six months' notice and one year to sue, and generally enforceable.
3. Preserve the vessel evidence immediately. Logs, voyage data, maintenance records, crew statements, and the equipment involved. Vessels move, crews disperse, and evidence goes to sea.
4. Consider arrest early where security matters, and search for liens before buying any vessel.
5. Read the bill of lading and the charter party. The allocation is contractual, and the clauses — Himalaya, forum selection, arbitration, package limitation — usually decide the case.
6. Choose the forum deliberately. The saving clause means the jury question is a strategic choice, not a given.

Part XIV: Why maritime law looks the way it does

The features that seem archaic all solve a problem that still exists: the defendant, the evidence, and the asset are all mobile, and frequently foreign.

In rem arrest exists because the shipowner may be a single-purpose company registered in a jurisdiction with no assets, managed from a third country, chartering to a fourth. A supplier owed money for fuel has no realistic in personam remedy — but the ship itself is present, valuable, and cannot leave once arrested. The lien and the arrest convert an unenforceable claim into a solvent one.

Limitation of liability exists because nineteenth-century investors would not fund shipping if a single voyage could bankrupt them. It is a subsidy, openly, and it survives because international competitors have similar regimes and because the alternative allocation would fall somewhere else.

Maintenance and cure exists because a sailor injured far from home had no realistic access to any other remedy, and because a shipowner who could abandon an injured crew member in a foreign port would do so. It is ancient, it is no-fault, and it is generous by design.

The package limitation and the error-in-navigation exception exist because the alternative — a carrier fully liable for all cargo on a vessel — produces either uninsurable exposure or freight rates that internalize the full value of every shipment. The regime allocates the risk to the party that knows the value of the goods, and gives that party a way to buy out of the limit by declaring value.

The saving to suitors clause exists because the framers wanted a uniform national maritime law without abolishing the common law remedies claimants already had. The resulting choice — admiralty without a jury, or the law side with one — is an accident of that compromise that plaintiffs' lawyers have used ever since.

Why this matters practically. Each doctrine is defended by an interest and constrained by an exception, and the exceptions are where cases are won: privity or knowledge defeats limitation; declaring value defeats the package limitation; willful denial defeats the no-fault character of maintenance and cure by adding punitive exposure; and the saving clause defeats the non-jury character of admiralty. Learn the exception before the rule, because the rule is rarely where the argument is.

Part XV: The deadline table

More maritime claims are lost to the calendar than to the merits. These are the periods that matter, and every one should be verified against the governing contract and statute in the particular case.

Four cautions about this table.

Contract terms override defaults. A passenger ticket, a bill of lading, a charter party, or a service contract can shorten the period, and courts generally enforce reasonable shortened periods in maritime contracts. Read the document before relying on any period here.

Laches, not just limitations. General maritime claims are subject to laches — unreasonable delay causing prejudice — which can bar a claim inside the analogous statutory period, and which can excuse one outside it.

Foreign carriage may be governed by a different convention with a different period, depending on the trade and the contract's terms.

And the practical rule: in maritime matters, treat every claim as though the shortest plausible period applies, get counsel involved within days rather than months, and send preservation letters immediately — because vessels move, crews disperse, voyage data is overwritten, and cargo is disposed of long before an ordinary litigation timeline would begin.

Part XVI: Where maritime law meets everything else

Maritime law rarely arrives alone, and four intersections recur.

With state law. The saving to suitors clause lets most maritime claims be tried in state court, but maritime law still governs the substance — which produces the recurring question of whether a state rule may supplement it. The general answer is that state law may fill gaps but may not contradict a settled maritime rule or disturb the uniformity of maritime law. State wrongful death and survival statutes, state punitive damages caps, and state comparative fault rules all raise the question.

With workers' compensation. A worker may fall under the Longshore Act, a state compensation scheme, or neither, and coverage disputes are common in the "twilight zone" of workers who move between vessel and shore. The choice is not always the claimant's, and the schemes have different benefits, different procedures, and different exclusivity consequences. See Workplace Injury Response and Workers' Compensation Checklist.

With insurance. Marine insurance operates under uberrimae fidei, the duty of utmost good faith, under which a material misrepresentation or nondisclosure in the application can void the policy even if innocent — a rule far stricter than the ordinary insurance law described in First-Party Insurance Claims and Bad Faith. Protection and indemnity coverage is provided through mutual clubs whose rules, calls, and "pay to be paid" provisions differ substantially from commercial liability policies.

With international law. Much of the cargo, collision, salvage, and pollution regime derives from international conventions, and the applicable rules may depend on the flag of the vessel, the ports of loading and discharge, and the contract's choice of law and forum. A forum selection or arbitration clause in a bill of lading or charter party frequently decides the case before the merits are reached, and such clauses are broadly enforced in maritime contracts.

And a practical closing point. The single most common failure in maritime matters is treating them as ordinary tort or contract cases for the first several months — filing in the wrong forum, missing a contractual one-year deadline, failing to arrest a vessel that then sails, or giving a statement in a casualty investigation without counsel. The field rewards early specialist involvement more than almost any other, precisely because the assets, the evidence, and the defendants do not stay put.

Frequently asked questions

Who is a "seaman"? Someone whose duties contribute to the vessel's function or mission and who has a substantial connection to a vessel in navigation in duration and nature — roughly 30 percent of working time as a rule of thumb.

What is maintenance and cure? No-fault daily living expenses and medical care owed by the shipowner to a seaman injured or ill in the service of the ship, until maximum medical improvement — with punitive exposure for willful denial.

Can I get a jury in a maritime case? Usually yes, through the saving to suitors clause — in state court or on the federal law side. Admiralty proceedings themselves are non-jury.

Are punitive damages available? For willful denial of maintenance and cure, yes. For unseaworthiness, no, after Dutra Group v. Batterton.

How long do I have to sue on a cargo claim? One year from delivery or the date the goods should have been delivered. This is the deadline that kills cargo claims.

What is limitation of liability? A shipowner's action to cap liability at the value of the vessel plus pending freight, filed within six months of written notice of claim, and defeated by the owner's privity or knowledge.

Related documents

• Handling a Maritime Injury or Cargo Claim
• Maritime Claim and Vessel Compliance Checklist
• Admiralty Toolkit
• First-Party Insurance Claims and Bad Faith
• Medical Malpractice
• Water Rights

This article is educational and not legal advice. Maritime law is federal, intricate, and deadline-driven, and international conventions and contract terms frequently control. Consult admiralty counsel promptly.