Beaumont Offshore Injury Lawyer

Steven Toups knows how to represent injured victims in offshore injury cases. As an experienced offshore injury lawyer, Steven understands the extreme hazards involved in working offshore, including equipment issues, dangerous surface and deck conditions, falls, explosions, helicopter and transport boat crashes, confined space incidents, collisions with other vessels, lifting injuries, and more.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, workers in marine transportation have a fatality rate six times higher than other workers. From 2001-2017, there were 11,000 non-fatal injuries, most involving upper extremity, lower extremity, neck, back, and head injuries resulting in disability.

If you or a family member has been involved in a maritime accident, it likely resulted in a serious and debilitating injury that may affect you and your family for the rest of your life. Fortunately, maritime injury laws are generally favorable to the injured worker due to the risks they take daily in such dangerous environments.

Steven has over three decades of experience helping injured Southeast Texans and can handle your case while you focus on getting your life back together.

The types of hazards encountered by those working in marine environments include:

• Repetitive strain injuries
• Falling overboard
• Hypothermia
• Chemical and fire burns
• Explosions
• Slips, trips, and falls
• Loss of limbs
• Assault
• Injuries from falling objects
• Injuries during rough seas or bad weather

Maritime accidents include injuries working in the following areas:

• Shipyards
• Marine terminals and port operations
• Marine transportation
• Seafood processing
• Oil rigs
• Jack up rigs
• Cruise Ships
• Commercial fishing
• Commercial diving
• Helicopter accidents

Jones Act, maintenance and cure, and the other maritime laws that may apply

Which law covers your injury depends on where you were hurt and what your job was. A seaman — a crew member assigned to a vessel in navigation whose work contributes to its mission — can generally bring a negligence claim against the employer under the Jones Act, something an ordinary workers' compensation system never allows. A seaman injured in the service of the vessel is also owed maintenance and cure — a daily living allowance plus medical care — regardless of who was at fault, until reaching maximum medical improvement.

If the vessel or its equipment was not reasonably fit for its intended use, an unseaworthiness claim may lie against the vessel owner under general maritime law. Longshore workers, harbor workers, shipbuilders, and others who are not seamen are usually covered by the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act, and may still have a third-party negligence claim against a vessel owner. Deaths occurring more than three nautical miles from shore may fall under the Death on the High Seas Act. Sorting out seaman status and which remedies apply is often the first fight in an offshore case — and the company's lawyers will have formed an opinion about it long before you have.

Should I contact a Beaumont offshore injury lawyer regarding a maritime accident?

Definitely yes. Nobody hurt on a rig or a vessel is expected to understand seaman status, maintenance and cure, or admiralty procedure while they are recovering — and the vessel owner, its insurer, and its attorneys are counting on you not to. Taking them on alone, at the worst moment of your life, is a losing proposition.

Offshore cases turn on expert testimony: admiralty experts on vessel operations, engineers on equipment failures, accident reconstructionists on how the injury happened, and economists on what it will cost you over a lifetime. They also come with traps that land-based cases don't. The most dangerous is the limitation of liability action, a federal procedure that lets a vessel owner try to cap its exposure at the value of the vessel. If that filing goes unanswered, your claim can be cut off entirely or dragged into a court that favors the owner.

Timing matters more offshore than almost anywhere else. The company's investigators typically reach the scene before you have left the hospital. Deadlines stack on top of that: Texas claims generally carry a two-year limit from the date of injury, Jones Act and general maritime claims generally three years, and a limitation-of-liability filing can impose a court-set deadline far shorter than either. The exceptions — for minors, incapacitated individuals, and active-duty military — are narrow.

Reach out to Steven as soon as you can after a maritime injury so the investigation starts on your side of the table. Three decades of this work mean he can carry the legal fight while you concentrate on healing.