A tray of frozen fish, and the boots that weren’t there
The freezer deck of the factory vessel M/V Excellence moves more than a hundred tons of fish a day, in trays workers pull by hand — about fifty pounds each, cold, slick, gripped through company-issued gloves with no grip left, in company-issued rubber boots with no safety toe. In January 2023, in the Bering Sea, one of those trays slipped from shoulder height and landed on a processor’s left foot.
Phoenix Processor admitted in discovery that no steel-toed boots were available aboard. Our biomechanical expert 3D-printed a human foot and dropped the tray on it in the lab: with proper safety-toe boots, the injury doesn’t happen. After the incident — like the fleet-wide memo after every preventable injury — Phoenix began issuing foot guards and steel-toed boots.
Nine days at sea with a broken foot
The injury was a fracture-dislocation — a foot broken and forced out of joint. The vessel was 92 miles from the nearest clinic. It kept fishing for roughly nine days.
Aboard, the crewman with a two-page first-aid certificate offered to force the dislocated joint back into place himself. The client refused — correctly: the International Medical Guide for Ships says never reduce a suspected fracture-dislocation at sea, and calls a crush injury a reason to evacuate. When he finally reached the clinic in Dutch Harbor, the medical staff put it in writing: his condition was not suitable for a remote community with limited care. Even the company’s drug test told the story of the delay — regulations call for one within 32 hours; his was taken nine days late.
The delay did what delays do. The fracture-dislocation became three surgeries, then a fused joint held by a titanium plate, then chronic regional pain syndrome — nerve pain so relentless it eventually required a spinal cord stimulator implanted in his back. The company’s own medical examiner conceded the CRPS diagnosis at her deposition. This year, imaging found the titanium plate broken inside his foot.
The offer
Mediation went nowhere. Two weeks before trial, Phoenix Processor served a formal Offer of Judgment: $600,000 — for a man with a fused, re-broken foot, lifelong nerve pain, a device in his spine, and a back injury from years of walking wrong.
We picked a jury instead.
The verdict
Over two weeks in a Seattle courtroom, Vuk Vujasinovic and Job Tennant built the case from Phoenix’s own record: the discovery admission on the boots, the vessel’s own medical log, the Coast Guard casualty report, the company’s own freezer-deck emails. The defense’s hand-picked medical expert admitted on the stand’s edge that the injury was work-caused and that the nine-day delay happened ’because they were out fishing.’
On June 16, 2025, the jury returned $4,081,047 for the injured seaman — more than six and a half times the company’s offer. And the jury went one further: it found he had not reached maximum medical improvement, which means Phoenix Processor’s obligation to pay his maintenance and cure continued even after the verdict. The company paid rather than appeal.
What the evidence showed
Every fact below came from Phoenix Processor’s own witnesses, documents, and experts.
- Phoenix admitted in discovery that no steel-toed boots were available aboard the vessel.
- After the injury, the company began issuing foot guards and safety-toe boots — confirmed by its own witnesses.
- The vessel kept fishing roughly nine days before putting an injured man ashore; his federally required drug test was taken nine days late.
- The onboard ’medic’ held a two-page first-aid certificate and proposed reducing a fracture-dislocation at sea — against the International Medical Guide for Ships.
- The defense medical examiner conceded the CRPS diagnosis and admitted the delay happened ’because they were out fishing.’
The offer, and the answer
More than six and a half times the company’s formal offer — plus a finding that maintenance and cure keeps being owed. The company paid rather than appeal.
More from the record
Every case is different. Prior results depend on the facts of the individual case and do not guarantee a similar outcome.