Three Laws, One Question: Where, and Who
Jones Act death claims
If the person you lost was a seaman — a crew member with a substantial connection to a vessel — and the death was caused by the employer’s negligence, the Jones Act, 46 U.S.C. § 30104, gives the family a wrongful death claim against that employer. The claim is brought by the personal representative of the estate for the benefit of the spouse, children, or dependent parents, and the causation standard is the same one that makes the Jones Act powerful in injury cases: the family only has to show the employer’s negligence played any part, however slight, in the death.
General maritime law
For deaths in state territorial waters — inside three nautical miles — general maritime law supplies a wrongful death remedy, including claims based on an unseaworthy vessel: a ship, its gear, or its crew that was not reasonably fit for the work. For seamen, these claims run alongside the Jones Act claim. For others killed on the water inside the line, such as passengers, state wrongful death law can add remedies of its own.
DOHSA: the Death on the High Seas Act
When a death happens on the high seas — beyond three nautical miles from U.S. shore — the Death on the High Seas Act, 46 U.S.C. §§ 30301–30308, controls. It was written in 1920 and it shows. The claim belongs to the personal representative, for the exclusive benefit of the spouse, parent, child, or dependent relative. Recovery is limited to pecuniary loss: the financial support, services, and contributions the family actually lost. No damages for grief. No loss of society. The decedent’s own fault does not bar the claim, but it reduces the recovery proportionally.
That pecuniary limit is why the three-mile line matters so much, and why proving what a mariner truly provided his family — wages, benefits, the pension that was coming, the work he did at home — is not paperwork. It is the whole case. We build that proof witness by witness and document by document, because under DOHSA it is the measure of everything.
Wrongful Death and Survival: Two Claims, Not One
A wrongful death claim compensates the family for its own losses going forward. A survival claim belongs to the estate: it is the claim the person you lost would have had, including conscious pain and suffering between the injury and the death, and wages lost in that window.
Maritime law separates what the family lost from what the person who died went through. Companies settle cheap when a family does not know the second claim exists. Both must be investigated in every maritime death case.
How We Prove a Maritime Death Case
The vessel keeps records the family has never heard of, and most of them can disappear on the next voyage. We move immediately to preserve the voyage data recorder and bridge audio, the AIS track, the logbooks, the muster and drill records, the safety management system, the manning records, the weather-routing traffic, and the Coast Guard casualty report file. Then we take depositions early, before the crew scatters to other ships. Every claim we make traces back to the company’s own witnesses and records.
This is the work Brian Beckcom has done at the highest level of the field. He studied the Jones Act and general maritime law under Professor David W. Robertson, and he represented 9 of the crew of the Maersk Alabama after Somali pirates seized the ship in 2009 — the most complex maritime and Jones Act case in modern history, and one that changed the way the industry treats mariner safety. Every one of those cases resolved confidentially, on favorable terms.
How We Prepare Your Case
Most cases settle. The number they settle at depends on whether the other side believes your case is ready for a courtroom. Ours always are. 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.
