The Water Jobs of Galveston County
The Port of Galveston handles cargo ships, bulk carriers, and one of the busiest cruise operations in the country along Harborside Drive. Cruise ships employ large crews, and crewmembers injured aboard have maritime claims of their own. Offshore, the Gulf of Mexico energy fields are served by offshore supply vessels, crew boats, and liftboats, and Galveston sits at the edge of that traffic: OSVs running groceries, drill pipe, and crews out to platforms and drilling rigs, then back through Bolivar Roads to reload.
Each kind of work has its own way of hurting people. OSV deckhands work cargo transfers alongside platforms in seas that would keep a sensible fisherman at the dock, where a swinging load or a parted crane line does catastrophic damage. Crew boat personnel get injured in rough-water transfers and swing-rope landings. Tug crews assisting ships through the Roads work under load in strong tidal currents. Ships' crews fall on poorly maintained decks and ladders, or get hurt because a company sailed short-handed. And fatigue runs through all of it: 28-day hitches, watch schedules that ignore hours-of-rest rules, and dispatchers who treat weather windows as suggestions.
One caution about offshore work: the law treats a fixed production platform differently from a vessel. Crews of OSVs, liftboats, jack-up rigs, and drillships are generally seamen with Jones Act rights. Workers permanently assigned to a fixed platform usually are not, though they may have other claims. If you are not sure which side of the line you fall on, that is exactly the kind of question worth a phone call.
The Law: Jones Act, Unseaworthiness, Maintenance and Cure
A seaman's rights come from federal maritime law, not workers' compensation, and the difference is enormous.
The Jones Act, 46 U.S.C. § 30104, lets a seaman sue the employer for negligence, and the causation burden is the lightest in American law: the employer is liable if its negligence played any part, even the slightest, in the injury. Sending a boat out in weather it should not have worked, skipping crane inspections, running a deck crew one man short, all of it counts.
Unseaworthiness holds the vessel owner to an absolute duty to provide a vessel, gear, and crew reasonably fit for their intended purpose. A frayed swing rope, a crane with a worn brake, an inexperienced crew thrown together for a hitch: each can make a vessel unseaworthy, and the owner is liable without any showing of negligence.
Maintenance and cure entitles an injured or ill seaman to daily living expenses and medical care until maximum medical improvement, no matter who was at fault. Courts resolve doubts in the seaman's favor, and an employer who arbitrarily cuts off payments can owe punitive damages and attorney's fees.
Seaman status follows Chandris, Inc. v. Latsis: a substantial connection, in both duration and nature, to a vessel in navigation or an identifiable fleet. Roughly 30% of your working time in service of a vessel is the usual benchmark. For deaths more than three nautical miles offshore, the Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA) applies alongside the Jones Act's wrongful death remedy, and the two statutes allow different damages, which makes early legal analysis critical for families.
The Captain Wren Thomas Case
In October 2013, Captain Wren Thomas, a former U.S. Marine and master of the offshore supply vessel C-Retriever, was kidnapped by Nigerian pirates after his employer ignored his warnings about the danger. He survived captivity and came home to a company that had treated his safety as a line item. In 2014, Brian Beckcom sued Edison Chouest Offshore and Chevron on his behalf, a matter of public record, and the case ended in a confidential recovery for Captain Thomas.
The case matters to Gulf Coast OSV crews for a simple reason: it was, at bottom, a case about an offshore supply vessel operator that heard a mariner's safety warnings and sailed him anyway. The distances were greater, but the company logic is the same one deckhands see in the Gulf every season.
The firm's other results run closer to home. Stephen Dufrene, a mariner whose foot was crushed in a winch accident, suffered a partial foot amputation; his maritime crush injury case resolved confidentially on favorable terms. Winch and deck-machinery injuries like his are among the most common serious injuries on OSVs and tugs working the Texas coast.
How We Prepare Your Case
1. Your lawyer leads your case.
The lawyer you hire is the lawyer who leads your case, an experienced trial lawyer, supported by a Board Certified partner, and you can talk to your lawyer directly. Not a case manager.
2. We find the evidence.
Offshore employers control the paperwork, so we move fast to lock it down: vessel logs, rough logs, and voyage plans; ECDIS and VDR (voyage data recorder) data; Coast Guard Form 2692 marine casualty reports; crane, winch, and deck-gear maintenance records; crewing lists, hitch schedules, and hours-of-rest records; weather routing and dispatch communications.
3. We build it for court.
Every case is prepared as if a Galveston County or federal jury will hear it. That is what makes a settlement offer serious instead of symbolic.
4. You decide.
We give you our honest advice about any offer. You alone decide whether to accept a settlement or go to trial.
A typical case takes one to two years. Contact VB Attorneys today and find out what yours actually involves.
Where Galveston Maritime Cases Are Filed
Federal maritime cases from Galveston, Texas City, and the near Gulf are heard in the Galveston Division of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, in the 1937 federal courthouse at 601 Rosenberg on the island. The Galveston Division covers Galveston, Brazoria, Chambers, and Matagorda counties. Under the saving-to-suitors clause of 28 U.S.C. § 1333, a seaman may instead file Jones Act and general maritime claims in state court, which for island cases usually means the Galveston County district courts. Where a case involving a Houston-based employer belongs, Galveston, Houston, federal, or state, is a strategic call we make case by case.
