He didn’t know how bad it was until they took his boot off
That is how he tells it — on the way to the hospital, he still didn’t grasp what the winch had done. The amputation & crush injuries took his left foot at the metatarsals, and with it the deck career a tug engineer builds a life around.
The job that day, May 5, 2023, was routine on paper: spooling a new tow wire onto the winch drum of the tug Rebekah. Nothing about how it was set up was routine. The 1-3/4 inch wire was out of spec for the drum. The winch had been altered from its original design. The guard that should have stood between a man and the machinery wasn’t there. The hydraulic equipment powering the job was undersized. And nobody had written a safety plan for the work — a step witnesses for both companies later admitted, under oath, should have happened.
Wrong wire. Altered winch. No guard. No plan. That was the whole case, and it cost a man his foot.
Two companies, each pointing at the other
The Rebekah sat between two owners. Tradewinds Towing owned her; Foss Maritime — her former owner — was taking her back, and the wire change-out was part of the handover. When the lawsuit came, something clarifying happened: Tradewinds’ own president and marine superintendent testified Foss was in charge of the job. Every Foss witness testified Tradewinds was in charge. Each company swore the other should have written the safety plan.
When both defendants point at each other, they are agreeing on the only thing that matters: someone was responsible, and it was not the man who lost his foot. Foss’s own corporate representative said it plainly — Dufrene didn’t do anything wrong.
Third-party repair records closed the loop: the winch had been repaired a year before the incident, and the repair company’s recommended fixes were never made. The vessel’s logs, which would have shown more, were — in the president’s word — lost during the transfer.
Two Limitation of Liability actions — fought and beaten
Then both companies reached for the oldest weapon in the vessel owner’s arsenal: the Limitation of Liability Act of 1851, a statute written for the age of sail, invoked in federal court to cap what a maimed seaman can recover — sometimes to the value of the vessel itself. Two defendants, two limitation petitions, and a freeze on the state-court case we had built.
We fought both proceedings in the Western District of Washington: motions to lift the stay, a stipulation strategy that protected the claim, a bifurcation fight that decoupled damages, and a temporary injunction that blocked the companies from chartering the vessel out before our experts could inspect it. The limitation actions were meant to end the case. Instead the case moved forward, with the winch inspected and the record built.
The companies also tried to move the fight to Louisiana. That failed too.
The result
At the second mediation, in November 2025, the case resolved confidentially — on terms several times what the family had told us they needed on their best day. When Foss and Tradewinds later fought each other over indemnity, Foss proved the settlement was reasonable using our own experts’ work — and the expense reimbursements that followed went to the client, not the firm.
He is rebuilding: a new prosthetic, a move south, and every intention of working again. Brian Beckcom led the case.
Stephen Dufrene — in his own words
What the evidence showed
Every fact below came from the defendants’ own witnesses and records.
- The tow wire was out of spec for the winch drum — confirmed by the captain who watched the job.
- The winch had been altered from its original design, and its warping head rotated continuously.
- Third-party repair records showed recommended fixes from a year earlier were never made.
- Witnesses for both Foss and Tradewinds admitted a job safety analysis should have been done. None was.
- Foss’s corporate representative testified the injured engineer did nothing wrong.
- Tradewinds’ president testified the vessel’s logs were lost during the transfer between companies.
What they tried, and what happened
Two federal Limitation of Liability proceedings, a venue fight, and a year of finger-pointing between two companies — and the case still resolved on the client’s terms, several times what his family needed.
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.