Shell Was Fined £560,000 for a North Sea Explosion Scare — Here Is What It Means for Every Offshore Worker
Shell was fined £560,000 — roughly $710,000 — after an explosion scare on a North Sea oil platform. If you work offshore, that headline should land two ways at once.
First: an “explosion scare” means the conditions for a catastrophe were already present. A gas release. A loss of containment. A failure of the safety systems that are supposed to keep flammable hydrocarbons from finding a spark. The only thing that separates an “explosion scare” from an explosion is luck — and luck is not a safety system. When regulators fine a company for letting conditions deteriorate that far, they are telling you the danger was real, documented, and preventable.
Second: that fine is not your compensation. The regulator’s penalty punishes the company. It pays nothing to the worker who was on that platform when the alarms went off, who breathed the gas that leaked, who ran to the muster station not knowing whether he was walking into fire or away from it. The fine is a number the company writes off as a cost of doing business. Your injury — your burns, your blast-traumatic brain injury, your PTSD, your lost wages, your family’s terror — is a different number entirely, and federal maritime law gives you a separate door to reach it.
That door is more powerful than most offshore workers are ever told. But the company is already on the other side of it, working to keep it shut. We are Attorney911, and this page is the full picture of what the law gives you, what the company will try to take away, and what to do in the first hours after a platform incident to protect yourself and the people who depend on you.
The Three-Door Problem: Which Federal Law Protects You on an Offshore Platform
Maritime law is not one system — it is three, and they are mutually exclusive. The first job in any offshore injury case is figuring out which door is yours. Pick the wrong one and the case dies before it starts.
Door one: the Jones Act. If you are a “seaman” — a crew member with a substantial connection to a vessel in navigation — you can sue your employer in front of a jury for full tort damages. The standard is borrowed from the railroad-worker statute, and it is deliberately tilted toward the worker. Your employer’s negligence need only have played any part, even the slightest, in producing your injury. Your own carelessness reduces your recovery but never eliminates it. You can recover pain and suffering, full lost earnings, and future medical care — with no statutory cap.
Door two: the LHWCA through OCSLA. If you work on a fixed platform and are not a seaman — a roughneck, a welder, a maintenance worker, a caterer — the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act extends the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act to cover you. You get no-fault workers’ compensation from your employer, which is a capped benefit schedule with no pain-and-suffering component. But you also get a second, separate claim: if a vessel or a third party caused your injury, you can bring a negligence suit against them on top of the comp benefits. That third-party suit is where the real money lives.
Door three: DOHSA. If someone is killed more than three nautical miles from shore, the Death on the High Seas Act controls — and it is narrow. Only the spouse, parents, children, or a dependent relative can bring the claim. The recovery is limited to financial losses: lost support, lost services, funeral costs. Grief, loss of companionship, and loss of society are stripped out. The three-mile line is a guillotine — a death at 2.9 miles may allow broader state-law damages; at 3.1 miles, DOHSA cuts them away.
“A seaman injured in the course of employment or, if the seaman dies from the injury, the personal representative of the seaman may elect to bring a civil action at law, with the right of trial by jury, against the employer.”
— 46 U.S.C. § 30104 (the Jones Act)
The fight over which door you walk through is the first fight in every offshore case. The company will try to push you into the LHWCA door because it pays less. If you spend a third of your time aboard a vessel that services the platform — a crew boat, a supply vessel, a MODU that moves — you may qualify as a seaman under the Jones Act, and that classification changes everything.
Are You a “Seaman”? The Chandris Test and Why the Company Will Fight It
The Supreme Court set the test in Chandris, Inc. v. Latsis (1995). Two elements: your duties must contribute to the function of a vessel or the accomplishment of its mission, and your connection to that vessel must be substantial in both duration and nature. The Court endorsed a rough yardstick: a worker who spends less than about 30% of his time in the service of a vessel in navigation ordinarily is not a seaman.
That 30% line is not a statute — it is a rule of thumb, and the defense will attack it. The company wants you classified as a longshore worker because LHWCA benefits are scheduled, capped, and carry no jury trial. A seaman gets a jury, full tort damages, pain and suffering, and a causation standard so low that even a sliver of employer negligence is enough. The gap between those two outcomes is the gap between a capped check and a life-changing recovery.
What counts as a “vessel” is broader than you might think. In Stewart v. Dutra Construction Co. (2005), the Supreme Court held that a dredge with limited self-propulsion was a vessel because it was “practically capable of maritime transportation.” A jack-up rig, a semi-submersible, a barge — if it can float and move across water, it can be a vessel, and the people working it can be crew. Fixed platforms are different. A permanently anchored production platform is generally not a vessel. But the vessels that service it — and the people who crew them — are.
What If You Work on a Fixed Platform? The OCSLA Path
If your feet are planted on a fixed offshore platform, you are most likely covered by the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which extends the LHWCA to the OCS. That means two things, and the second one is the one the company hopes you never learn about.
The workers’ compensation floor. Your employer owes you no-fault benefits regardless of who was at fault. Medical care, disability payments, and scheduled benefits. This is the floor — not the ceiling. It is fast, it is guaranteed, and it is capped. It does not include pain and suffering. It does not include the full lost-earning capacity that a tort case can recover. It is the minimum, not the measure.
The third-party tort claim. If someone other than your employer caused your injury — the platform operator (Shell, BP, Chevron, whoever holds the lease), a contractor working on the platform, the manufacturer of a defective valve or gas detector — you can bring a separate negligence suit against them. This claim runs on top of the comp benefits, not instead of them. It includes pain and suffering, full lost earning capacity, and the kind of damages that can run into the millions for a catastrophic injury. The company’s lawyers will not explain this fork to you. They will hand you the comp paperwork and tell you that is the system. It is not the whole system — it is the floor.
The LHWCA has its own deadlines, and they are short. You must give your employer written notice of the injury within 30 days. You must file a formal claim within one year of the injury (or within one year of the last payment of compensation). Miss these and the no-fault benefit can be lost — and with it, the foundation that supports you while the third-party case is built. If you are reading this and those windows are close, calling a lawyer today is not aggressive — it is arithmetic.
The Defendant Structure: Who Actually Pays When a Platform Explodes
An offshore platform is not run by one company. It is a stack of separate legal entities, each designed to stand between you and the money. Understanding this stack is the difference between a claim that recovers and one that bounces.
The operator. The company that holds the lease and runs the platform — Shell, BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, a mid-tier operator — is the entity with the deepest pockets and the most control over safety. If the operator’s failure to maintain equipment, its inadequate safety management system, or its decision to keep producing despite known hazards caused the conditions that led to the explosion scare, the operator is a target. Major oil companies are self-insured at scale, with massive retentions and excess towers that run into the hundreds of millions. But they fight hard, because every dollar comes off their own balance sheet.
The contractor. If you are employed by a drilling contractor, a service company, a catering firm — your direct employer is probably shielded by the workers’ comp exclusive remedy. But the contractor’s negligence, if it contributed to the incident, is still part of the story — and other parties may share liability for it.
The equipment manufacturer. If a valve failed, a gas detector did not alarm, a pressure-relief device was defective — the manufacturer of that equipment is a separate defendant with its own coverage tower. Product-liability claims against equipment makers can reach far larger insurance towers than the operator’s self-insured retention.
The corporate shell game. The name on the platform is not always the name of the entity you need to sue. Shell operates through layers of subsidiaries — Shell Offshore Inc., Shell E&P companies, joint-venture entities. The entity that holds the lease may differ from the entity that manages day-to-day operations, and both may differ from the parent that holds the balance sheet. Naming the wrong entity can mean serving a company that has no assets and no insurance, while the real defendant walks away. This is why identifying the correct operating entity from the lease filings, the BSEE permits, and the corporate structure is the first piece of investigative work.
For a company like Shell, the coverage architecture is typically a layered tower: a large self-insured retention at the bottom, then primary commercial general liability, then multiple excess layers stacked above. The federal financial-responsibility requirements for offshore operators set floors, but the real towers are far higher. The coverage is there — the question is whether you can reach it, and that depends on naming the right entities and pleading the right theories.
The Evidence Clock: What Records Exist After a Platform Incident, and How Fast They Disappear
Every offshore platform incident generates a paper trail. The problem is that the company controls most of it, and the law lets much of it die on a schedule measured in months, not years.
CCTV and surveillance footage. Modern platforms are covered in cameras — helideck cameras, process-area cameras, evacuation-route cameras. This footage is the single most important piece of evidence in many cases, showing exactly what happened before, during, and after the incident. It overwrites itself on a rolling cycle that is set by the company’s own policy, not by law — commonly within 30 to 90 days. If no one sends a written preservation demand, the footage records over itself and is gone. This is the fastest-dying record on the platform.
Gas detector and alarm logs. Every platform has a fire-and-gas detection system that logs every alarm, every gas reading, every trip. These logs show whether the safety systems were working, when they activated, and whether anyone responded. They are retained per company policy, which varies — and “the logs could not be located” is the standard defense answer when the retention period has quietly expired.
Permit-to-work records. Hot work permits, confined-space entry permits, lockout-tagout records — these documents show what work was authorized, who authorized it, and what safety checks were performed before the work began. If an explosion scare happened during or near hot work, the permit is the proof of who signed off on the risk.
Maintenance and inspection records. OSHA’s Process Safety Management standard (29 CFR 1910.119) requires facilities handling threshold quantities of flammable materials to maintain mechanical-integrity inspection records for pressure vessels, piping, relief systems, and emergency shutdown systems. If the company skipped inspections or ignored wall-loss data on corroded piping, the gap between what the law required and what the company did is the case. But the company controls these files, and a preservation demand has to reach them before they are “lost.”
Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) files. Under 29 CFR 1910.119(e)(6), the operator must update and revalidate its process hazard analysis at least every five years. This document is the company’s own study of how its process can fail — and if the hazard that caused the explosion scare was already identified in a PHA that was never acted on, that document is a smoking gun.
Incident investigation reports. Under 29 CFR 1910.119(m), the operator must initiate an incident investigation within 48 hours and retain the report for five years. But five years is a shredding clock too — a near-miss report from four years before a fatal event can be legally destroyed if no one has demanded it.
BSEE incident reports. For US OCS operations, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement requires operators to report certain incidents under 30 CFR Part 250. These reports are public records and are durable — but they reflect what the company chose to report, not necessarily what actually happened.
The preservation letter. Every one of these records is under the company’s control. The single most important thing a lawyer does in the first week is send a written preservation demand — a spoliation letter — ordering the company to freeze every log, every video, every maintenance file, every alarm record, every permit, every investigation report. Once that letter is on file, the company’s destruction of any of those records becomes sanctionable. Without it, the evidence legally disappears on the company’s own schedule. The day you call is the day that clock starts working for you instead of against you.
The Medicine of an Offshore Platform Explosion: What Happens to the Body
An explosion on an offshore platform is not one injury — it is a cascade. Understanding the mechanism is what lets a jury see what was actually done to a human being, and what the defense will try to make invisible.
Blast overpressure. When a hydrocarbon vapor cloud ignites, the pressure wave that tears through the platform does damage that has nothing to do with fire. Primary blast injury hits the air-filled organs: the lungs can suffer barotrauma — alveolar rupture, air embolism, pulmonary edema — without a single visible mark on the chest. The brain can suffer diffuse axonal injury from the overpressure itself, even if the worker’s head never struck a surface. The tympanic membranes can rupture, causing hearing loss that the defense will later call a pre-existing condition. The gastrointestinal tract can suffer intestinal barotrauma. A worker who “looks fine” after a blast can be dying internally.
Thermal burns. A flash fire from ignited hydrocarbon vapor can cause full-thickness burns in seconds. The severity is measured by Total Body Surface Area (TBSA) — the front of each leg counts as 9%, the whole front of the torso as 18%, the head as 9% — and by depth. A full-thickness (third-degree) burn is painless at the burn site because the nerve endings have been destroyed, which is the cruelest trap in burn medicine: the silence of the wound is a sign of the worst kind of burn, not a mild one. The American Burn Association’s referral criteria send every burn to the face, hands, feet, or genitals, every chemical burn, every high-voltage electrical burn, and every burn over 10% TBSA to a specialized burn center. A burn patient can spend roughly one day in the hospital for every percent of body surface burned — a 30% burn means a month in a burn unit before rehabilitation even begins.
Inhalation injury. The gases that an offshore platform releases when it loses containment are not just flammable — they are toxic. Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) causes olfactory fatigue at low concentrations, meaning you stop smelling it right as it reaches lethal levels. At higher concentrations it causes “knockdown” — sudden collapse and cellular asphyxiation. Hydrocarbon vapors cause central nervous system depression and can sensitize the heart to arrhythmia. Smoke inhalation causes carbon monoxide poisoning and thermal injury to the airway. Every suspected inhalation injury is an automatic burn-center referral under ABA criteria, because the airway can swell shut hours after the exposure.
Traumatic brain injury from blast. The brain does not need to strike the skull to be injured. Blast overpressure produces rotational and translational forces that stretch and shear the brain’s white-matter tracts — diffuse axonal injury. A normal CT scan is expected in a mild TBI, not exceptional: in a so-called mild brain injury, the CT comes back clean about 90% of the time because the damage is microscopic tearing that a standard scan was never designed to see. More than a third of people with a Glasgow Coma Scale score of 13 — the top of the “mild” range — have potentially life-threatening intracranial lesions. The defense will call it a mild injury with a clean scan. The medicine says the opposite.
PTSD from the explosion scare. Even without a physical injury, an explosion scare is a traumatic event under the DSM-5. Criterion A is satisfied by direct exposure to actual or threatened death. The body’s response — tonic immobility, the freeze response — is a documented, involuntary survival reflex, not a choice. Rape is the single most PTSD-generating event humans experience, and combat is among the worst — but an explosion scare on a platform, where you believe you are about to die in a fireball on the open ocean, is a Category A trauma by any clinical measure. The nightmares, the hypervigilance, the inability to return to work offshore — these are compensable injuries, not weakness. They are proven with clinical instruments (CAPS-5, PCL-5), neuropsychological testing, and the testimony of treating clinicians, not with X-rays.
The lifetime cost. A catastrophic offshore injury — high spinal cord injury, severe TBI, full-thickness burns over a large body surface — carries a lifetime cost that runs into the millions. The National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center puts the first year of a high tetraplegia injury at over $1.4 million and the lifetime care for a young adult at more than $6 million — and that figure deliberately excludes every lost paycheck. A severe burn can mean a month in the ICU, multiple grafting surgeries, years of scar-release operations, and a lifetime of psychological care. A serious TBI can mean lifelong attendant care, recurring medical treatment, and a working life cut short. These are not lawyer’s numbers — they are the numbers that the federal injury registries and peer-reviewed cost studies have measured. The adjuster’s first offer will be a fraction of this. Our firm has recovered $2M+ in a maritime back-injury settlement, and $5M+ in a brain-injury settlement — but past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
The Money: What an Offshore Platform Case Is Actually Worth
The value of an offshore injury case is built from four things: the law that applies, the severity of the injury, the defendant’s ability to pay, and the evidence that ties the company’s choices to the harm.
Under the Jones Act, a seaman recovers full tort damages: past and future medical care, past and future lost earnings, lost earning capacity, and pain and suffering. There is no statutory cap. The causation standard is the featherweight “any part, even the slightest” test borrowed from the railroad-worker statute. Pure comparative fault applies — your own negligence reduces your recovery but never eliminates it. If the company violated a federal safety statute, your comparative fault is wiped out entirely. A catastrophic Jones Act case — paralysis, severe burns, TBI — can run into the millions and sometimes tens of millions.
Under the LHWCA/OCSLA, a non-seaman platform worker gets scheduled workers’ compensation benefits from their employer — medical care, disability payments based on a formula, and no pain-and-suffering component. But the third-party negligence suit against the platform operator, a contractor, or an equipment manufacturer runs on top of comp and can include full tort damages. The comp benefits are the floor; the third-party case is where the real recovery lives.
Under DOHSA, a death beyond three nautical miles is limited to pecuniary losses — lost financial support, lost services, funeral costs. Grief, loss of society, and loss of companionship are stripped out. This is why the three-mile line is outcome-determinative: a death inside three miles may allow broader state-law damages; beyond three miles, DOHSA narrows the recovery to money alone.
The coverage tower. A major oil company carries a coverage tower that can reach into the hundreds of millions — a self-insured retention at the bottom, primary CGL, and multiple excess layers above. For the injured worker, the question is never whether the money exists. It does. The question is whether you have named the right entity, pleaded the right theory, and preserved the right evidence to reach it. A thinly capitalized contractor’s $1 million policy is a fraction of what a catastrophic injury costs. Reaching the operator’s tower is the work.
What the adjuster’s first offer looks like. For a serious offshore injury, the first offer from the company or its insurer is typically a fraction of the case’s full value — often less than the cost of the first year of medical care, and always before the long-term costs are known. The adjuster is working from a valuation model that discounts pain it cannot see and future care it has not priced. The life-care plan and the forensic economist are what convert a guess into a number a jury can trust. We have walked this process with maritime clients, and the number at the end is built from the evidence, not from the adjuster’s opening bid.
The Playbook: What the Company and Its Insurer Will Try
The oil company and its insurer have a playbook for platform incidents, and it runs on a timeline that starts within hours of the event. Knowing the plays before they run is the best protection a worker can have.
Play one: the “you are not a seaman” move. The company’s lawyers will argue you belong in the LHWCA system, not the Jones Act, because LHWCA pays less and has no jury. The counter is the Chandris test: if you spent roughly 30% or more of your time aboard a vessel in navigation — a crew boat, a supply vessel, a MODU — you may qualify as a seaman. Even if you do not, the OCSLA third-party claim against the platform operator is a separate path to full tort damages.
Play two: the “take the comp check” move. The company hands you LHWCA workers’ compensation paperwork and tells you that is the system. It is the floor, not the system. The third-party claim against the operator, the equipment manufacturer, or a negligent contractor runs on top of comp and includes pain and suffering — which comp never pays. Accepting comp does not waive the third-party claim, but signing a release does. Never sign a release without a lawyer reading it.
Play three: the “recorded statement” move. Within hours or days of the incident, a friendly-sounding person will call to “check on you” and ask you to “just tell us what happened” on a recording. That recording is designed to be quoted against you at deposition and at trial. The counter is simple: do not give a recorded statement without your own counsel present. The adjuster is not your friend. The recording is a tool.
Play four: the “quick settlement” move. A check may arrive fast — with a release printed on the back or attached — before your medical results are in, before the MRI has been read, before the full scope of a brain injury or a burn is known. The first offer is always a fraction of the case’s value, and the release is permanent. Never sign a release before your doctors have reached maximum medical improvement and a life-care plan has been built.
Play five: the “you assumed the risk” move. The company says offshore work is inherently dangerous and you knew the risks when you signed up. Under the Jones Act, the assumption-of-risk defense is abolished — Congress killed it in 45 U.S.C. § 54, and the language is absolute: the employee “shall not be held to have assumed the risks of his employment.” And when the company violates a federal safety statute, even your own comparative negligence is eliminated. The danger on a platform is not an inherent risk of the job. It is a chosen failure of the safety system.
Play six: the “you were partly at fault” move. The company will try to pin percentage points of fault on you because every point reduces your recovery. Under the Jones Act’s pure comparative fault rule, your fault reduces but never eliminates your recovery — and if the company violated a federal safety statute, your fault drops to zero. Every point the adjuster tries to hang on you is money, and every point is worth fighting.
Play seven: the “mild” TBI move. If you suffered a blast concussion, the defense will call it “mild” because your Glasgow Coma Scale score was 13 or above and your CT was clean. The medicine says that “mild” is a triage word, not a prognosis: more than a third of GCS-13 patients have life-threatening intracranial lesions, and a normal CT is expected in 90% of mild TBIs because the damage is microscopic wiring-tearing the scan cannot see. Brain injuries require specialized medical and legal proof, and the defense’s word “mild” is the first thing to defeat.
The Proof Story: How an Offshore Platform Case Is Actually Built
A maritime case is not filed on the day you call. It is built, step by step, and the steps are the same in every serious offshore case.
Week one: the preservation letter. The day you call, a written demand goes to the platform operator, your employer, and every contractor with relevant evidence. The letter names every record by name — CCTV, alarm logs, gas detector data, permit-to-work files, maintenance records, PHA files, incident investigation reports, weather data, muster records, medical records from the platform medic. Once the letter is on file, destruction becomes spoliation, and a court can impose sanctions or give the jury an adverse-inference instruction — the jury may assume the lost evidence was as bad as you say it was.
Weeks two through four: the medical record. Your treatment record is the foundation. Every CT, every MRI, every burn assessment, every neuropsychological test, every psychiatric evaluation is captured and preserved. For a TBI, advanced imaging (DTI, SWI) may be ordered — scans built to see the microscopic damage a standard CT misses. For burns, the TBSA calculation, the burn-center admission record, and every grafting operation note are the evidence. For PTSD, the CAPS-5 and PCL-5 scores and the treating clinician’s diagnosis are the proof. The defense will look for gaps in the medical record and fill them with alternative explanations. The answer is a complete, contemporaneous treatment record built from day one.
Months one through three: the investigation. BSEE incident reports, OSHA citations (if applicable), Coast Guard investigation records, and the company’s own incident investigation file are pulled. The company’s safety management system is examined — was the SEMS program actually implemented, or was it paperwork? The PHA is reviewed — had the hazard that caused the explosion scare already been identified and ignored? The maintenance records are compared against the mechanical-integrity requirements of 29 CFR 1910.119(j) — were the inspections done, and were the results acted on?
Months three through six: the experts. A forensic reconstructionist models the gas release and the blast. A process-safety engineer reviews the platform’s safety systems against federal standards. A life-care planner builds the lifetime cost of care — every surgery, every therapy, every piece of equipment, every caregiver hour, every medication, projected across a full lifespan and reduced to present value. A forensic economist calculates the lost earning capacity, including the fringe-benefit multiplier (benefits run roughly 30% of total compensation for a private-sector worker, and all of it vanishes with the job).
Months six through twelve: discovery and depositions. The records come out in formal discovery — the maintenance files, the alarm logs, the training records, the permit-to-work documents. The depositions follow, where the platform’s safety director, the offshore installation manager, the company’s process-safety engineer, and the people who were on the platform that day answer questions under oath. The company’s choices are pinned down, one fact at a time.
The number. The demand is built from all of it — the medical proof, the lifetime care plan, the lost earning capacity, the pain and suffering, and the company’s own documents showing what it knew and what it failed to do. For a catastrophic injury, that number can run into the millions. We have recovered $2M+ in a maritime back-injury settlement — but every case turns on its own facts, and past results do not guarantee future outcomes.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do, What Not to Do
The hours and days after a platform incident are when the case is won or lost — not in the courtroom, but in the decisions you make before you ever talk to a lawyer.
Get medical treatment first. Even if you feel fine. Blast overpressure can cause lung injury and brain injury without a visible mark. H2S exposure can cause delayed neurological effects. A concussion can have a normal CT and still change your life. The first medical record is the one the defense will attack hardest — if you waited three weeks to see a doctor, the defense will argue the injury was not serious or was caused by something else. Go to the ER the day of the incident, describe every symptom, and follow every referral. For offshore accidents, the medical record is the spine of the case.
Do not give a recorded statement. To anyone. Not to the company’s safety officer, not to the claims adjuster, not to the “investigator” who shows up at the heliport or at your house. Whatever you say will be transcribed and used to minimize your claim. If they insist, say: “I need to speak with a lawyer first.” That sentence has never hurt a case. The recorded statement has hurt thousands.
Do not sign anything. No release, no waiver, no “acknowledgment of receipt,” no return-to-work agreement, no settlement offer. The company will try to get you to sign a release before the full scope of your injuries is known. A release is permanent. A $5,000 check with a release attached can cost you a $2 million case.
Document everything. Photograph every injury, every piece of damaged equipment, every condition on the platform if you are still there. Write down the names and contact information of every witness. Save your clothing and personal protective equipment — it may be evidence of gas exposure, heat damage, or equipment failure. Keep a daily journal of your symptoms, your pain levels, your sleep, your mood, your ability to concentrate. The defense will look for the gap between “I felt fine at the time” and “I can’t work anymore.” Your contemporaneous journal closes that gap.
Report the injury in writing. If you are an LHWCA-covered worker, the 30-day notice clock is running. Report the injury to your employer in writing, identifying the date, time, location, and mechanism of injury. Keep a copy. If you are a Jones Act seaman, report it to your employer and to the vessel’s master. The paper trail starts with you.
Call a maritime lawyer. Not a general personal injury lawyer — a maritime lawyer. The Jones Act, the LHWCA, DOHSA, and general maritime law are specialized federal regimes that most personal injury lawyers never touch. The deadlines are short. The evidence is dying. The company’s team is already working. The preservation letter goes out the day you call, and that letter is what stands between you and a company that would rather the evidence quietly disappear. The call is free. The consultation is free. You pay nothing unless we win.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue if I was injured on an offshore platform?
Yes — but the path depends on your legal classification. If you are a “seaman” under the Jones Act (you spend roughly 30% or more of your time on a vessel in navigation), you can sue your employer in front of a jury for full tort damages including pain and suffering. If you work on a fixed platform and are not a seaman, you are covered by the LHWCA through OCSLA — you get no-fault workers’ comp from your employer, plus a separate negligence suit against any third party (the platform operator, a contractor, an equipment manufacturer) whose fault contributed to your injury. The third-party suit includes pain and suffering and can run into the millions for a catastrophic injury.
Am I a “seaman” under the Jones Act?
The Supreme Court’s Chandris test asks two things: do your duties contribute to the function of a vessel or its mission, and is your connection to that vessel substantial in both duration and nature? The rough yardstick is about 30% of your work time in the service of a vessel in navigation. If you crew a supply boat, a crew boat, a MODU that moves between locations — you may qualify. If you only work on a fixed platform and never go to sea on a vessel, you probably do not. The company will fight this classification because LHWCA pays less than the Jones Act. This is one of the most important threshold questions in any offshore case.
How long do I have to file an offshore injury claim?
The deadlines depend on which law applies. A Jones Act seaman has three years from the date the cause of action accrued — borrowed from the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (45 U.S.C. § 56). An LHWCA-covered worker must give written notice of injury within 30 days and must file a formal claim within one year of the injury (or within one year of the last compensation payment). A DOHSA death claim must be brought within three years. General maritime law claims borrow the personal-injury statute of limitations of the state where the case is filed, which varies. These deadlines are unforgiving — missing them can extinguish a case no matter how strong the facts are. If you are near any of these windows, calling a lawyer today is not an option you are considering; it is a deadline you are racing.
What if the company says I was partly at fault?
Under the Jones Act, pure comparative fault applies — your own negligence reduces your recovery by your percentage of fault but never eliminates it. If you are 20% at fault, you recover 80%. If the company violated a federal safety statute, your comparative fault is wiped out entirely — you recover 100% even if you were partly careless. Under the LHWCA, workers’ comp is no-fault, so comparative fault does not apply to the comp claim. In a third-party negligence suit under OCSLA, the applicable comparative-fault rule depends on the state whose law is borrowed. Every point of fault the company tries to hang on you is money — which is exactly why the adjuster works so hard to pin percentage points on the worker.
Can I get compensation for PTSD from an explosion scare?
Yes. An explosion scare on an offshore platform — where you believed you were about to die in a fireball on the open ocean — is a traumatic event under the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for PTSD. The diagnosis requires eight specific criteria to be met, documented by a treating clinician, and validated with standardized instruments (CAPS-5, PCL-5). The injury is invisible, which is exactly what the defense will exploit — but PTSD is a formal medical diagnosis with objective diagnostic criteria, not a mood or a label. The treatment can last years. The cost of care — therapy, medication, lost earning capacity — is a recoverable damage. The defense’s “you look fine” argument is the playbook move, and the medical record is the answer.
What is the difference between workers’ comp and a Jones Act case?
Workers’ compensation is a no-fault system with scheduled, capped benefits — medical care and disability payments based on a formula. There is no jury trial, no pain and suffering, and no recovery for lost future earning capacity beyond the schedule. A Jones Act case is a full tort claim in front of a jury — you can recover pain and suffering, full past and future lost earnings, lost earning capacity, future medical care, and the featherweight causation standard means even a sliver of employer negligence is enough. The difference between a capped comp check and a Jones Act jury verdict can be the difference between a fraction of your loss and the full measure. This is why the fight over seaman status is the first fight in every offshore case.
What if the company already paid me workers’ comp?
Accepting LHWCA workers’ compensation does not waive your right to bring a third-party negligence suit against the platform operator, an equipment manufacturer, or a negligent contractor. Comp is the floor, not the ceiling. But signing a release does waive claims — and the company may try to bundle a release into the comp paperwork. If you have been receiving comp and have not signed a release, your third-party claim is likely still alive. If you have signed something you are not sure about, a lawyer can tell you whether it closes the door or leaves it open. Never assume a document the company handed you is harmless.
How much is my offshore injury case worth?
The value depends on four things: the law that applies (Jones Act vs. LHWCA vs. DOHSA), the severity of the injury, the defendant’s ability to pay, and the evidence tying the company’s choices to the harm. A catastrophic Jones Act case — paralysis, severe TBI, full-thickness burns — can run into the millions or tens of millions because there is no cap on damages and the causation standard is featherweight. An LHWCA third-party suit against a major operator can reach the operator’s coverage tower, which can stretch into the hundreds of millions. A DOHSA death case is limited to pecuniary losses, which can still be substantial for a high-earning offshore worker but excludes grief and loss of society. The firm has recovered $2M+ in a maritime back-injury settlement and $5M+ in a brain-injury settlement — but past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The honest answer to “what is my case worth” requires a full review of the medical records, the incident evidence, and the defendant’s coverage — which is why the consultation is free.
Should I give a recorded statement to the company?
No. A recorded statement is a tool designed to be used against you, not a genuine inquiry about your well-being. The adjuster or “investigator” who calls is trained to get you to say things that can be quoted at deposition and at trial — “I’m feeling okay,” “I think I might have bumped my head,” “I’m not sure exactly what happened.” Every one of those phrases will be used to minimize your claim. The correct response is: “I need to speak with a lawyer before I give any statement.” That sentence protects your case. The recording never does.
What if the platform operator was not my employer?
That is the most common offshore situation — and it is the one the company is counting on you not understanding. If your direct employer is a contractor (a drilling company, a service company, a catering firm), workers’ comp probably bars a direct suit against them. But the platform operator — the Shell, the BP, the Chevron that holds the lease and runs the safety program — is a third party. If the operator’s negligence, its failed safety systems, or its decision to keep producing despite known hazards caused the conditions that led to your injury, you can bring a negligence suit against the operator on top of your comp benefits. That third-party claim includes pain and suffering, which comp never pays. Refinery and industrial explosion cases follow a similar third-party structure — the operator is the target, and the coverage tower is the prize.
Our Firm: Who We Are and What We Do
Ralph P. Manginello is the managing partner of Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. He has spent 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court, licensed in Texas since November 6, 1998 (Texas Bar #24007597), admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. A journalist before he was a lawyer, Ralph built this firm around one idea: the truth, told plainly and proven with evidence, is the most powerful thing in a courtroom. He has recovered $50 million in aggregate for injured clients, including a $2M+ maritime back-injury settlement and a $5M+ brain-injury settlement. He handles the cases the insurance company does not want to see in front of a jury.
Lupe Peña is an associate attorney (Texas Bar #24084332, licensed 2012, admitted to the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas). Lupe spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. He knows how the reserve is set in the first 48 hours, how the recorded-statement call is engineered, how the IME doctor is chosen, and how the quick check with a release attached is designed to close the file before the MRI results come back. He now sits on your side of the table. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
We work on contingency. The fee is 33.33% before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free, and it is a consultation — not a sales pitch. If we are not the right fit for your case, we will tell you. If the case does not have merit, we will tell you that too. What we will not do is tell you what the adjuster wants you to hear.
The call is free: 1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911). The line is staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — by live people, not an answering service. If you are reading this at 2 a.m. because you just got off a helicopter and your hands are still shaking, call. If your husband is in a burn unit and the company’s adjuster has already called twice, call. If you are not sure whether you even have a case, call. The worst that happens is we tell you honestly where you stand.
Hablamos Español. Lupe conducts full consultations in Spanish. Your family does not need an interpreter to understand their rights.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. This page is legal information, not legal advice. Contacting the firm is free and confidential.