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Are vessel crimes blurring the lines between on and offshore laws?

"What happens in the locker room stays in the locker room" and "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" are part of the public lexicon.

"What happens between these bulkheads stays between these bulkheads" has always been sacrosanct in the seafaring world. Seafaring life has always been its own universe. Separated from the world ashore by its own dictator (the Captain) and its own laws (admiralty).

If a crew member is injured on the job, he or she is not entitled to the normal worker's compensation available to land based workers but to "maintenance and cure" under the auspices of the Jones Act.

The world ashore has more clearly delineated jurisdictional authorities divided up among municipal, state and national levels. Out on the water, it’s a more complicated division due a phalanx of players including flags of registry, territorial waters and origin of crew members. There are also disagreements by nations such as the United States as to the authority of the Law of the Sea Treaty; the U.S. has signed onto but not ratified that entity which grants the United Nations oversight over the earth’s international waters and sea beds.

Differing terminology plays a role in this confusion. For example, what is classified on the high seas as “piracy” is called “robbery” or assault in the Caribbean. There, crimes against vessels and their occupants are treated like home break-ins and handled by local police and courts instead of by coast guards and maritime legal venues.

Shipping companies have long been accused of using the confusing nature of maritime legal authority to handcuff their employees’ right to justice and fair compensation. Because maritime or admiralty law is specialized, sometimes mariners have not found justice because they went to general practice attorneys who steered their cases to the wrong courts.

With a lawsuit being filed by crew members of the Maersk Alabama against their former employer for failure to adequately protect them against piracy, the maritime industry may not be as isolated from the shore based legal system as it is accustomed.

Until the Alabama was hijacked in April of this year, this kind of legal liability was something that had not been on the radar of shipping companies. After all, it had been over 200 years since the previous reported high profile pirate attacks upon a U.S. flag vessel.

But during the time of the Barbary Pirate attacks off North Africa 200 years ago, ships could defend themselves virtually any way they saw fit without having to worry about the recourse of crew liability lawsuits.

Today’s liability in the context of adequately defending crew members against maritime crimes is entering unsettled legal waters. If mass casualties were to occur from a gunman opening fire in a high rise office building and no building security guard was present, the building’s owner would no doubt be subject to class action litigation for failure to protect the tenants.

But does this scenario apply to a vessel when crew members are injured in a pirate attack after the company failed to provide them with an armed security detail, in essence telling the crew members to defend themselves?

The former Maersk Alabama crew members suing the company may prove to be pioneers in this area of maritime law.

Attorney Brian Beckcom is representing six of the workers in the case filed in Houston, Texas.

Learn your rights as a seaman by ordering free copy of The Insider's Guide to Winning Your Maritime Injury Case written by Jones Act and maritime accident injury lawyer Brian Beckcom.

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