Washington Admiralty Lawyers - Fighting for those Injured at Sea

• The Jones Act - The Jones Act gets its common name from Senator Wesley Jones and was originally passed in 1920. The statute is enormous and deals with several different aspects of shipping, regulations of ships, commerce and remedies and procedures available to those workers who are injured at sea.
  
  The injured worker aspect of the statute is what is most commonly studied and cited when someone needs to recapture lost income due to these work-time injuries, and the law lays out procedures, norms, standards and other remedies available to individual sea-workers and those who employ them in terms of safety and working environments.
  
  While the Jones Act has undergone some changes, the basic intent behind the injured worker aspect of the law is the same - to provide clear and uniform standards for sea-faring workers so that individual jurisdictions do not create changes radical enough within their own jurisdictions such that it affects the shipping industry as a whole.

• DOHSA - 'DOHSA' stands for Death On the High Seas Act, and DOHSA was also originally passed in 1920. The law was intended to provide family members and other survivors or workers killed at sea with remedies and standards, much in the same way the Jones Act serves the injured workers.
  
  DOHSA applies to deaths that occur more than three nautical miles from the shores of the United States. The deaths that fall under the jurisdiction of DOHSA are those that are the result of negligence or lack of seaworthiness on the part of those responsible for providing safe and reasonable working and traveling conditions.
  
  DOHSA sets out specific types of damages that are available to the survivors, but the law does not preclude inclusion of the Jones Act's provisions that are meant to provide remedies for those workers who are injured while working on ships. Instead, the tenets of the Jones Act can be used in some cases to supplement the provisions and claims that fall under DOHSA.

• Longshoreman and Harbor Workers Compensation Act - The LHWCA, as it's commonly known is a federal statute that governs worker injuries in a manner that's similar to how workers' compensation laws are administered. Specifically, the LHWCA is a federal program that provides wage compensation and medical benefits to individuals who were injured or who contracted an occupational disease or disorder while legally employed on a waterway and who were generally involved with the loading, unloading, repairing or building of the ship or vessel in question.
  
  In the event of death, the LHWCA provides for compensation benefits to be paid to the employee's dependents. The law also defines which workers are covered, the benefits provided to the injured worker in terms of medical care and rehabilitation and how these procedures are meant to be completed when an injury incident occurs.
  
  Finally, the LHWCA defines the financial benefits that are due to an injured worker in terms of payment amounts, payment duration and other procedures that must be followed in order for a claim to be approved.

• Boat Sinking - While there is no clear and distinct law that deals with the sinking of a boat, its legal fallout tends to resemble the aftermath of an auto accident or any other traffic incident in which injuries or fatalities result and damages are incurred by those who have been wronged. There are several different standards in place in regards to this issue, and many who have suffered have come to understand that absent a governing statute, Washington law permits the filing of a civil claim for negligence or recklessness.

Admiralty Law Claim - Washington Fishing Boat Lawyer

Seattle and Tacoma Washington Admiralty Attorney
Jones Act, Death on the High Seas, Longshoreman, Workers Compensation