Houston Jones Act Lawyers

What Is the Jones Act?

The Jones Act is a federal law that gives an injured seaman the right to sue their employer for negligence and have the case decided by a jury. It was passed as Section 27 of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 and is codified at 46 U.S.C. § 30104. That right makes seamen different from nearly every other American worker. Land-based employees gave up the right to sue their employers in exchange for workers’ compensation. Seamen never did.

Three features define a Jones Act claim:

• You sue your employer directly. Seamen are excluded from state workers’ comp systems entirely.
• The burden of proof is light. Courts call it a “featherweight” standard. You win if your employer’s negligence played any part in causing your injury. An employer that is 1% responsible is liable for its share.
• Damages are not capped. Lost wages, future earning capacity, medical care, and pain and suffering. 

Do I Qualify as a Jones Act Seaman?

You qualify as a Jones Act seaman if your work contributes to the function or mission of a vessel in navigation and your connection to that vessel, or an identifiable fleet, is substantial in both duration and nature. That is the two-part test the U.S. Supreme Court set in Chandris, Inc. v. Latsis, 515 U.S. 347 (1995). As a rule of thumb, spending at least 30% of your working time in service of the vessel satisfies the duration requirement.

• You likely qualify if you’re a deckhand, engineer, tankerman, driller on a jack-up rig or drillship, galley or housekeeping crew, captain, fisherman, or an ROV technician working from a vessel. Your job title doesn’t matter. Your connection to the vessel does.
• You likely don’t if you work on a fixed platform. Those claims usually run through the LHWCA or state law under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. Harbor workers, longshoremen, and shipyard workers are covered by the LHWCA, not the Jones Act.
• Working outside U.S. waters doesn’t disqualify you if you work for an American company on an American vessel.

Seaman status is the most contested question in maritime litigation, and courts keep reading it in workers’ favor. In Santee v. Oceaneering International, Inc. (5th Cir. 2024), the Fifth Circuit held that an ROV technician’s work “easily satisfied” the contribution requirement. If your employer says you’re not a seaman, don’t take their word for it. 

What Compensation Can I Recover?

An injured seaman can recover two separate types of compensation. Knowing the difference matters.

• Maintenance and cure. Owed automatically, no fault required. From the day you’re injured in service of the ship, your employer owes maintenance (a daily living allowance) and cure (medical care) until you reach maximum medical improvement. The company won’t volunteer two facts. Maintenance rates are low, often just tens of dollars per day. You are not required to treat with the company doctor. You have the right to your own physician. If an employer willfully refuses to pay maintenance and cure, the Supreme Court held in Atlantic Sounding Co. v. Townsend, 557 U.S. 404 (2009), that punitive damages are available on top of the benefit itself.
• Full damages. When negligence or unseaworthinesscaused your injury. A successful Jones Act negligence or unseaworthiness claim recovers past and future lost wages, loss of earning capacity, all past and future medical care, and pain, suffering, mental anguish, and disfigurement. For a seaman who can never return to sea duty, future earning capacity is usually the largest number in the case. It is also the one insurers fight hardest to shrink.

Our Record in Jones Act & Maritime Cases

Our victories include recoveries against some of the largest offshore drilling, transport, and energy companies in the world. Maritime insurers know our name. They know we try cases.

Which Maritime Law Covers Me? How Long Do I Have?

Five laws cover injured maritime workers, and each has its own deadline. Which one applies depends on your duties and your connection to a vessel, not your job title. We routinely see workers misclassified in the company’s favor.

For occupational illness like chemical exposure or hearing loss, the clock may start when you discover the condition, not when the exposure happened. Either way, don’t wait. Vessels sail, crews scatter, and logs get overwritten.

What’s the Difference Between Negligence, Unseaworthiness, and Maintenance & Cure?

Most offshore cases assert three claims at once, because they target different defendants and different failures:

• Jones Act negligence targets your employer’s conduct. Unsafe procedures, inadequate training, short-handed crews, or pushing operations in dangerous weather. The featherweight standard applies.
• Unseaworthiness targets the vessel itself and is brought against the vessel owner under general maritime law. The owner has a non-delegable duty to provide a vessel reasonably fit for its purpose. Defective equipment, an undertrained crew, missing safety gear, improperly stowed cargo, and unsafe living conditions all breach it.
• Maintenance and cure is owed by your employer regardless of fault. Willful refusal to pay it exposes the employer to punitive damages (Atlantic Sounding Co. v. Townsend, 2009).

The remedies are different, and choosing the right combination matters. Punitive damages are available for withheld maintenance and cure, but not for unseaworthiness (The Dutra Group v. Batterton, 2019) or Jones Act negligence. Your future is too important to place in the hands of a lawyer who doesn’t know maritime law.

What’s Changed in Maritime Law: 2024–2026

Maritime law has changed in the last two years. Three developments injured workers should know:

• Seaman status is getting broader. In Santee v. Oceaneering International, Inc. (5th Cir. 2024), the Fifth Circuit held that an ROV technician’s work “easily satisfied” the vessel-contribution test. Specialized offshore technicians increasingly qualify for Jones Act rights.
• Offshore wind is Jones Act territory. Wind farms are rising on the Outer Continental Shelf, and courts are sorting out which vessels and workers the Jones Act covers. Workers building and servicing these projects face the same hazards as oil and gas crews. Many will have the same rights.
• Punitive damages turn on your employer’s conduct. After Batterton (2019), punitive damages are only available for willful failure to pay maintenance and cure. What your employer does in the first weeks after your injury is legally significant. Keep records of every payment they make and every payment they miss.

What Should I Do After an Offshore Injury?

Report the injury to your supervisor and insist on a written incident report. Get medical care immediately. Do not give a recorded statement or sign anything before talking to a maritime lawyer. The company’s claims team starts working the file within hours, often before the vessel reaches port. Early settlement offers are calculated before anyone knows the full extent of your injuries, and employer-appointed doctors may describe your condition in the company’s favor.

What If My Loved One Didn’t Come Home?

Families of seamen killed by work-related injury or illness have the right to bring a wrongful death action under the Jones Act. Compensation can include lost support and earnings, funeral expenses, medical debt, loss of consortium, and your loved one’s pain and suffering before death. If the death occurred more than 3 nautical miles from shore, the Death on the High Seas Act may govern instead, and it sharply limits what can be recovered. 

The choice of claims, court, and law is often worth more than anything else in the case.

We know this work because we have done it. When the El Faro sank with its entire crew, the widows turned to our law firm. We have also negotiated what is believed to be the largest known settlement for a wrongful death offshore. We have been there for families during their darkest moments. 

Why Do Injured Seamen Choose Arnold & Itkin?

Maritime companies and their insurers know which firms will try a case. We prepare every Jones Act case for trial from day one. We preserve black box and logbook evidence, depose crews before stories harden, and hire the vocational and medical experts who can help prove our case. That preparation is why our cases have produced record results. Our founding partners are members of the Inner Circle of Advocates, limited to the top 100 plaintiff’s lawyers in the nation. Our firm holds Tier 1 rankings from Best Law Firms in Houston for both Personal Injury Litigation and Admiralty & Maritime Law. We have recovered more than $25 billion for our clients. You pay nothing unless we win.

Injured Offshore? Talk to Us Before You Talk to Their Insurer.

The company’s lawyers started on your case the day you were hurt. Call Arnold & Itkin at (888) 493-1629 for a free, confidential consultation with a Houston Jones Act lawyer. We fight for oil rig employees, ship crews, tankermen, and every seaman who keeps this industry running. No Matter What.