Admiralty law, sometimes known as maritime law, relates to incidents, harms, or crimes that occur on navigable waters, which are waterways used for travel or commerce. Maritime law covers a range of legal disciplines, including workers’ compensation, personal injury, and product responsibility. It is crucial to first determine the type of legal job or claim you have before selecting a marine attorney who focuses on your particular area of law while looking for a maritime lawyer.
Identifying Your Maritime/Admiralty Claim
Establish the nature of your legal claim or legal matter. You must first identify your underlying legal issue in order to decide what kind of maritime attorney you require. You might have a claim for personal harm, a violation of contract, or retaliation against your employer, for instance. To analyse your shipping or charter boat contracts, you might also need a marine contract expert. Finding a marine attorney with experience in the field of law that best suits your needs is crucial.[1]
Determine whether your legal requirements are business-related. Commercial practises involving shipping, navigation, or any other type of labour based on the operation of a ship are governed by maritime law. This can entail signing shipping agreements with a significant shipping company or renting a charter boat for recreational purposes.
Look for a lawyer who specialises in maritime commercial and/or contract law if you need someone to draught or review contracts.
You will require a marine attorney who specialises in contract law if your disagreement involves a breach of contract, which means that someone failed to respect their commitments under a written agreement relating to shipping or the commercial use of a boat.
If applicable, think about where your injury came from. You can have a claim for personal injury under maritime law if you are hurt while operating a boat or while a passenger. Although these behaviours are comparable to those that result in injury on land, they are governed by different sets of laws and regulations.
Boating incidents might give rise to injury claims.
negligent boat or ship maintenance.
Actions may also be connected to injuries brought on by faulty products, such as a damaged jet ski. Products liability law is the name of this field of law.
Workers in the maritime industry, such as sailors, are susceptible to accidents.
A claim for marine personal injury or products liability may be made if the person had the right to be on board the ship and was hurt as a result of someone else’s carelessness.
Remember if you were at work when you got hurt. The treatment of employee injuries that happen in the course of employment is governed by special statutes under maritime law. A worker who sustained an injury at work as a result of employer negligence may have a Jones Act claim. This federal law applies to accidents that happened while a person was working aboard a vessel that was in navigation and happened as a result of their job.
Different regulations apply to employee actions for injuries received while working depending on whether you work as a seaman, docker or on an oil rig.[3] It is crucial that you contact a maritime attorney that specialises in worker’s compensation cases if you were hurt while working on a boat or in another nautical job.
Locating a Maritime Lawyer
Search the legal directories. You should start your lawyer search with a legal directory like the Martindale-Hubbell database because maritime law is a less popular legal specialty and because there are numerous specialisations within maritime law. You can view solicitors by geographic region and marine law specialisation using this online search tool. You can search by maritime specialisations like finance or workers’ compensation, for example. The initial phase of finding a maritime attorney should be streamlined with the aid of this kind of search.[4]
Review the rankings of marine legal firms. Once you have located a few law offices that specialise in your particular category of maritime claim, you may check internet law firm rankings, such those produced by US News, to determine which companies in your neighbourhood have a good reputations.[5] Large commercial matters may require you to select a reputable law firm, since their reputation may help you in your negotiations.