Shell Oil Platform Deaths in the Gulf of Mexico: What Your Family Needs to Know About Offshore Wrongful Death Claims
You just got the worst phone call of your life. Someone on the other end told you there was an incident on a platform in the Gulf — that your loved one is gone. You may not even know what platform, what company, what happened, or what comes next. The helicopter that carried your loved one off the platform did not carry answers. The Coast Guard is investigating. A company representative has already called. And none of it makes sense yet.
We are the trial team at Attorney911. We handle offshore injury and wrongful death cases, and we are writing this page for you — the person sitting at a kitchen table at three in the morning, staring at a phone, trying to understand what rights your family has when someone dies on an oil platform in federal waters. The answer is more complicated than any land-based case, because the law that governs the Gulf of Mexico’s Outer Continental Shelf is a web of overlapping federal statutes that most lawyers never touch. We are going to untangle that web for you, section by section, in plain language. What follows is legal information, not legal advice — but it is the information we wish every family in your position had on the night it happened, because the deadlines in these cases are shorter than anyone expects and the evidence is already disappearing.
What Happened on That Platform and Why the Law Is Different Out There
Two workers were killed on a Shell-operated oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. The United States Coast Guard launched an investigation, which confirms the incident meets the threshold for a serious marine casualty under federal maritime safety regulations. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement — the agency that enforces offshore safety regulations under 30 CFR Part 250 — will investigate as well, because every fatality on the Outer Continental Shelf triggers mandatory incident reporting and investigation requirements under the Safety and Environmental Management Systems rule.
The Outer Continental Shelf is not ordinary land. It is not governed by ordinary state law. When a worker dies on a production platform in federal waters, the case enters a legal space that most people — and most lawyers — never encounter. The platform sits on the OCS, under federal jurisdiction, where a statute called the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act creates a unique framework: it extends federal law to the shelf, borrows the law of the nearest adjacent state as surrogate federal law for tort claims, and extends the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act to cover workers on the shelf. On top of that, if the death occurred more than three nautical miles from shore, a separate federal statute called the Death on the High Seas Act may take control and limit what the family can recover. And if the platform included a floating production system — a vessel component — the general maritime law doctrines of unseaworthiness and the Jones Act may also apply.
This is not a simple wrongful death case. It is a case with multiple possible legal doors, and walking through the wrong one — or missing the deadline for the right one — can forever bar your family’s recovery. That is why understanding the framework matters, and why the first conversation with a lawyer who actually knows offshore law needs to happen in days, not months. If your family is facing a situation like this, you can learn more about our offshore injury and accident practice and the specific legal rights that apply to workers killed on the Outer Continental Shelf.
The Three-Door Problem: Which Law Protects Your Loved One
The single most important question in any offshore death case is which legal box the deceased worker falls into. The boxes are mutually exclusive, and the rights, damages, and deadlines are radically different for each one.
Door One: Seaman under the Jones Act. If the deceased worker was a crew member of a vessel — including a floating production system, a supply boat, a drilling vessel, or any watercraft practically capable of maritime transportation — they may qualify as a seaman under the Jones Act. The Supreme Court has held that a worker qualifies as a seaman if their duties contribute to the function of a vessel and they have a substantial connection to that vessel in terms of both duration and nature, with a rough rule of thumb that a worker who spends less than about 30 percent of their time in the service of a vessel in navigation is ordinarily not a seaman. If the deceased was a seaman, the family gets the most powerful set of legal tools in maritime law: a negligence claim against the employer under a featherweight causation standard, a separate unseaworthiness claim that requires no proof of negligence at all, and the right to maintenance and cure — daily living money and medical expenses that the employer owes from the moment of injury regardless of fault. A seaman’s wrongful death claim, however, is subject to the Miles uniformity ceiling, which means the family generally cannot recover for loss of society or companionship — only financial losses.
Door Two: Longshore or harbor worker under the LHWCA. If the deceased was not a crew member — if they were a welder, a roustabout, a maintenance worker, a construction contractor, or anyone else working on the platform who did not have a substantial connection to a vessel — they fall under the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, which OCSLA extends to cover workers on the Outer Continental Shelf. The LHWCA provides no-fault death benefits to surviving dependents regardless of who was at fault: burial expenses and a percentage of the deceased’s average weekly wage, subject to statutory maximums. The employer’s liability is exclusive — the family generally cannot sue the employer in tort — but they can bring a separate negligence suit against a third party, including against a vessel that caused the harm.
Door Three: OCSLA-borrowed state law. Under OCSLA, the law of the adjacent state is extended to the OCS as surrogate federal law. For most Shell-operated Gulf of Mexico platforms, which are situated in federal waters off the Louisiana coast, Louisiana law applies. Louisiana’s delictual framework provides wrongful death and survival actions with pure comparative fault, meaning the family’s recovery is reduced by the deceased’s percentage of fault but is never completely barred. Louisiana has no general tort damage cap for non-medical-malpractice wrongful death cases, which means the full range of damages — economic and non-economic — may be available through this door. This is often the most powerful route to full compensation, because it allows the family to pursue negligence claims against the operator and other responsible parties for the complete measure of harm, not just the capped benefits of the LHWCA.
The three doors interact in complex ways. A worker who qualifies as a seaman cannot also claim LHWCA benefits — the regimes are mutually exclusive. A worker who is covered by the LHWCA can still bring a third-party negligence claim against a vessel under a specific provision of the act. And the OCSLA-borrowed state law route may provide the broadest damages, but it may also be subject to DOHSA’s limitations if the death occurred more than three nautical miles from shore. This is why the classification of the deceased worker — what they did, where they were, how much time they spent on vessels versus platforms — is one of the first and most consequential questions in the case. If you are trying to understand which door your loved one falls into, our wrongful death practice guide walks through the framework in more detail.
DOHSA: The Three-Mile Line That Changes Everything
There is a federal statute called the Death on the High Seas Act, and it contains a line that can quietly cut your family’s recovery in half. That line is three nautical miles from the shore of the United States.
When the death of an individual is caused by wrongful act, neglect, or default occurring on the high seas beyond 3 nautical miles from the shore of the United States, the personal representative of the decedent may bring a civil action in admiralty against the person or vessel responsible. The action shall be for the exclusive benefit of the decedent’s spouse, parent, child, or dependent relative.
That is the verified text of the Death on the High Seas Act — a statute passed in 1920 that still governs deaths on the high seas today. If your loved one died on a platform more than three nautical miles from shore — and most Shell-operated Gulf platforms are — DOHSA may control what your family can recover. And what DOHSA allows is narrow: fair compensation for the pecuniary loss sustained. Pecuniary means financial. Lost financial support. Lost services. Funeral costs. What DOHSA does not allow is compensation for grief, loss of society, loss of companionship, or the human cost of losing someone you love.
This is the three-mile guillotine. A death at 2.9 miles may allow the family to pursue the full range of damages under borrowed state law, including the human losses. A death at 3.1 miles may strip those human losses away and leave only the financial calculation. The line is that sharp, and the difference is that real. The interplay between OCSLA, DOHSA, and general maritime law for platform-based deaths requires careful jurisdictional analysis — and the specific location of the platform relative to that three-mile line is one of the first facts that must be established.
The Defendant Structure: Who Is Really Responsible
When someone dies on a Shell-operated platform, the entity that answers is rarely the entity whose decisions caused the danger. The corporate structure of a major integrated oil company is a deliberate stack, and understanding that stack is the first step in finding every party who may owe your family.
Shell Offshore Inc. is the likely operating entity — the company with operational control over the platform, responsible for safety programs, maintenance, regulatory compliance, and worker safety under BSEE regulations and OCSLA-borrowed state law. Shell Oil Company, the US subsidiary, may bear vicarious or direct liability for corporate safety policy failures, training program deficiencies, and operational oversight. Shell plc, the ultimate parent corporation headquartered in London, is the deep-pocket parent with potential direct liability for corporate-level safety policy and resource allocation decisions. If the deceased workers were contractor employees — and many offshore workers are contractors, not direct Shell employees — the contractor may share liability for training, supervision, and safety practices. If a specific equipment failure contributed to the fatalities, the equipment manufacturer may face product liability claims under borrowed state law for design defects, manufacturing defects, or failure to warn. And if the platform owner or lessor entity is different from the operator, it may bear liability for structural integrity, systems maintenance, and capital improvement obligations.
The contractor-versus-employee question is not a detail — it is a fork in the road. If the deceased was a Shell employee, the LHWCA provides death benefits and the family’s tort claim runs against third parties. If the deceased was a contractor employee, the contractor’s LHWCA carrier provides death benefits, and the family’s tort claim can potentially run against Shell as a third party, against the contractor for its own negligence, and against any equipment manufacturer. The scope-of-work agreements between Shell and its contractors often allocate safety responsibilities on the platform, and those agreements are discoverable documents that reveal who was responsible for what. Identifying every entity in the chain — and every insurance policy behind each entity — is foundational work that begins the day you call a lawyer. You can learn more about how we approach industrial defendant structures on our refinery and industrial accident practice page.
What BSEE and the Coast Guard Are Doing Right Now — and What It Means for Your Case
Two federal agencies are investigating this incident, and their records will become some of the most important evidence in any civil case your family may bring.
The United States Coast Guard, through its Eighth District headquartered in New Orleans, maintains primary jurisdiction over marine casualty investigations in the Gulf of Mexico. A fatality on an offshore platform meets the threshold for a serious marine casualty investigation under federal regulations. The Coast Guard produces a Report of Investigation that documents federal regulatory findings, causal determinations, safety violations, and witness testimony. This report can serve as critical evidence in civil litigation — but it must be requested through the Freedom of Information Act, and those requests can take months to process.
The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement enforces offshore safety regulations under 30 CFR Part 250, including the Safety and Environmental Management Systems rule under Subpart S, which requires operators to maintain comprehensive safety and environmental management programs. Any fatality triggers mandatory incident reporting and investigation requirements. BSEE produces an incident investigation report that documents regulatory violations, enforcement actions, and safety management system failures. BSEE’s incident database maintains publicly accessible records of safety incidents, citations, and enforcement actions against OCS operators.
These investigations are not conducted for your family’s benefit. They are conducted to determine what happened and to prevent the next incident. But the records they force into existence — the witness statements, the equipment inspections, the regulatory findings, the safety management audits — are the raw material from which a civil wrongful death case is built. The problem is that those records take time to produce, and the evidence on the platform itself is on a clock. That is why a preservation letter — a formal demand that the operator and every contractor freeze all relevant records — needs to go out before the investigation is complete, not after.
Evidence That Is Already Dying: The Preservation Clock
Every offshore death case lives or dies on evidence that the operator controls and that the law allows to disappear on a fixed schedule. Here is what exists, who holds it, and how fast it can legally die.
The Coast Guard Report of Investigation is retained long-term, but FOIA requests can take months. File the request immediately. The BSEE Incident Investigation Report is maintained in the agency’s official incident database and is generally stable, but access requires a formal request. Platform maintenance and inspection records — the documents that prove whether the operator knew about hazardous conditions, whether equipment was in compliance with BSEE safety regulations, and whether the platform was properly maintained — are held by the operator. Their retention schedules vary, and records on the platform may be altered, lost, or remediated during post-incident repairs. SEMS program documentation — the operator’s safety management system records that prove compliance with 30 CFR Part 250 Subpart S — are extensive program records that operators may update or revise. Targeted discovery requests are needed promptly.
Witness statements and crew manifests establish who was present, what they observed, and the sequence of events leading to the fatalities. Witness memories degrade rapidly, and offshore personnel rotate on regular hitch schedules, creating turnover risk within weeks. Post-incident drug and alcohol testing results are required under Coast Guard and OCSLA regulations for serious marine casualties. Chain-of-custody integrity is time-sensitive, and results must be collected per regulatory protocols immediately post-incident. Platform process data, alarm logs, and electronic monitoring records prove equipment status, alarm activations, system performance, and environmental conditions at the time of the incident. Electronic data on platforms may be subject to overwrite cycles, system resets during incident response, or data purging on scheduled intervals.
Contractor agreements and scope-of-work documents establish employment relationships, allocated safety responsibilities, and identify all entities with workers on the platform. Contractor records may be held by third parties with their own retention policies. Training and qualification records for deceased workers prove whether they were properly trained and qualified for assigned tasks under BSEE requirements. Training records may be spread across multiple employers and training providers.
The fastest-dying evidence drives the urgency. Platform process data and alarm logs can be overwritten on scheduled intervals. Witness memories degrade within weeks, and the offshore workforce rotates on hitch schedules that mean the people who saw what happened may be on different platforms — or out of the country — within a month. The preservation letter that freezes these records must go out in days, not months. It must name every record category, every custodian, and every device. And it must be sent to the operator, every contractor, and every equipment manufacturer identified in the initial investigation. This is the work that begins the day you call a lawyer — not the day you file a lawsuit.
The Insurance and Coverage Reality
A major integrated oil company like Shell does not carry the kind of insurance policy most people imagine. Shell and its affiliated corporate entities operate numerous production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico OCS under federal leases, with substantial insurance coverage and self-insured retentions typical of major integrated oil companies. What this means in practice is a layered tower: a large self-insured retention at the bottom — meaning Shell’s own dollars pay the first tranche of every claim — then primary and multiple excess layers stacked above it. The self-insured retention is a pressure point: when the company’s own money sits on the first layer of any demand, the company has a direct financial incentive to fight, delay, and minimize.
For contractor employees, the coverage picture is different. The contractor’s LHWCA carrier provides death benefits regardless of fault. The contractor’s own general liability policy may provide additional coverage. And the operator’s insurance tower may be reachable through third-party liability claims. The coverage reality in an offshore death case is not a single policy — it is a stack of policies across multiple corporate entities, and finding every layer is part of the work.
The Limitation of Liability Act adds another dimension. Under this federal statute, the owner of a vessel may try to cap everything it owes at the post-accident value of the vessel plus its pending freight — sometimes pennies on the dollar. For a floating production system, this could mean the operator tries to limit its liability to the value of the platform itself. The catch is that the owner must prove it had no knowledge of or involvement in whatever went wrong — and that is exactly where a thorough investigation cracks the defense open. The shipowner must file a limitation action within six months of receiving written notice of a claim, and this procedure can pull all claims into a single federal admiralty court and strip the jury. Knowing this clock exists — and knowing how to defeat it — is part of why offshore cases require lawyers who work in this specific legal space.
The Medicine of Offshore Fatalities
We are not going to speculate about what killed these two workers. The Coast Guard and BSEE investigations will determine that, and we will not pretend to know before the findings are complete. But the Gulf of Mexico’s offshore environment presents a specific set of known hazards that every offshore fatality investigation examines, and families should understand what those hazards are.
Hydrogen sulfide exposure is one of the signature killers on Gulf platforms. H2S is a colorless gas that occurs naturally in oil and gas operations, and at high concentrations it can cause olfactory fatigue — the ability to smell it disappears just as the concentration becomes lethal. A worker can be overcome in seconds, and a would-be rescuer who enters the same space without respiratory protection frequently becomes the second victim. The EPA’s Risk Management Program regulations recognize hydrogen sulfide as a regulated toxic substance with a threshold quantity of 10,000 pounds, meaning facilities holding more than that amount must file formal accident-prevention plans including worst-case-release scenarios. When a platform stores more than the federal trigger amount, the law already required it to write out, in advance, exactly what a worst-case release would look like — which means the danger was foreseen, on paper, before anyone was hurt.
High-pressure equipment failures are another documented offshore killer. The OSHA Process Safety Management standard — 29 CFR 1910.119 — applies to processes involving highly hazardous chemicals at or above listed threshold quantities. A refinery or platform that handles large amounts of flammable or toxic material is legally bound to a fourteen-part safety program: process safety information, process hazard analysis revalidated at least every five years, operating procedures, training, contractor management, pre-startup safety review, mechanical integrity, management of change, incident investigation initiated within 48 hours and retained for five years, emergency planning, compliance audits, trade secrets, employee participation, and hot work permits. The mechanical integrity provisions require inspection and testing of pressure vessels, piping systems, relief and vent systems, emergency shutdown systems, controls, and pumps — with documented results and a duty to correct deficiencies before further use. When a high-pressure equipment failure causes a death, the question is always whether the inspection record shows the metal thinning, the valve degrading, or the seal failing — and whether the operator ran the equipment anyway.
Confined-space asphyxiation is a third recognized offshore hazard. Tanks, vessels, and enclosed spaces on platforms can hold atmospheres that suffocate in one breath. Federal safety standards require testing the air, a written permit, an attendant standing watch outside, and a rescue plan before anyone enters a permit-required confined space.
The medicine of an offshore death is not just about the mechanism — it is about the timeline. If the deceased did not die instantly, the question of how long it took to reach a trauma center becomes part of the case. The Gulf of Mexico’s offshore environment presents the logistical challenge of emergency medical evacuation from platforms situated miles from shore. A helicopter flight from a deepwater platform to the nearest Level I trauma center can take over an hour. Those are hours that matter — to the survivor, and to the family’s understanding of what happened.
The Company Playbook: What to Expect and How to Counter It
When a worker dies on an offshore platform, the operator’s risk management team activates a playbook within hours. The playbook is designed to protect the company, not your family. Here are the moves you should expect and the counter to each one.
Play One: The friendly call. Within days, someone friendly will call to check on the family and ask you to just tell them what happened, on a recording. This is a recorded statement built to be quoted against you later. The counter is simple: do not give a recorded statement to the company’s representative without your own lawyer on the line. You are under no obligation to do so, and anything you say in the shock and grief of the first days can be taken out of context and used to narrow the company’s exposure.
Play Two: The quick check. A settlement check may arrive fast, with a release attached, before the investigation results are in and before you know what your case is actually worth. The company knows that a family in shock, facing funeral costs and lost income, is vulnerable to a fast offer that is a fraction of the case’s true value. The counter is to never sign a release without understanding the full scope of what happened and what it is worth. A release signed in the first weeks, before the Coast Guard report is even complete, is exactly what the company is counting on.
Play Three: The contractor deflection. If the deceased was a contractor employee, the operator will say he was not our worker, he worked for the contractor, and the contractor is responsible. This is designed to make you feel like the deep pocket is out of reach. The counter is that the operator’s own safety duties under BSEE regulations and OCSLA-borrowed state law apply to everyone on the platform — the operator cannot outsource the hazard. The host facility’s duties to contractors are recognized in the Process Safety Management standard’s contractor provisions, which require the operator to select, inform, and evaluate contractors performing work on covered processes.
Play Four: The limitation of liability filing. If the platform includes a vessel component, the owner may file a limitation of liability action in federal admiralty court within six months of receiving written notice of a claim, attempting to cap everything they owe at the post-accident value of the vessel. The counter is to prove the owner had knowledge of or involvement in the dangerous condition — which defeats the limitation defense and opens the full tower.
Play Five: The “unforeseeable accident” framing. The company will frame the deaths as a freak occurrence that no one could have predicted. The counter is the operator’s own SEMS documentation, its process hazard analyses, its incident investigation reports from prior near-misses, and its maintenance records. The offshore oil industry has decades of documented incidents — from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement’s own incident database to the Chemical Safety Board’s investigation reports — that establish what hazards are recognized and foreseeable. An operator that studied a danger, confirmed it in its own hazard analysis, and warned no one cannot claim it was blindsided.
The Proof Story: How an Offshore Wrongful Death Case Is Built
Here is how a case like this is actually built, from the day you call to the day a number is put on the table.
In the first week, the preservation letter goes out to the operator and every identified contractor, naming every record category — maintenance files, inspection records, SEMS documentation, process data, alarm logs, crew manifests, training records, contractor agreements, drug and alcohol testing results. The FOIA requests go out to the Coast Guard for the Report of Investigation and to BSEE for the incident investigation report. The deceased’s employment status is determined: direct employee or contractor, and if contractor, for whom. The platform’s location is established relative to the three-mile DOHSA line. The worker’s legal classification is analyzed: seaman, longshore worker, or OCSLA-borrowed state law claimant. The defendant structure is mapped: operating entity, parent, contractors, equipment manufacturers, and every insurance policy behind each.
In the first months, the investigation records begin to come in. The Coast Guard report documents what its investigators found. The BSEE report documents regulatory violations and safety management failures. The maintenance and inspection records show whether the operator knew about hazardous conditions. The SEMS documentation shows whether the safety management system was adequate or paper-only. The witness statements, taken while memories are still fresh, establish the sequence of events. The process data and alarm logs show what the equipment was doing at the moment everything went wrong.
As the case develops, expert witnesses are retained: offshore safety experts familiar with BSEE regulations and industry standards, petroleum or process engineers for equipment failure analysis, forensic pathologists for mechanism-of-death determination, and forensic economists for lifetime earning capacity projections of offshore workers who typically earn premium wages. In an OCSLA case applying Louisiana law, counsel evaluates the excess-exposure and bad-faith settlement dynamics under Louisiana’s direct-action and indemnity framework. Voir dire in a Gulf Coast federal venue probes jurors’ connections to the oil and gas industry, their attitudes toward offshore regulation, and any anti-corporate or anti-oil-industry bias.
The number at the end is built from all of it — the lost earning capacity of an offshore worker who earned premium wages, the funeral and burial expenses, the loss of financial support and services to dependents, the mental anguish and loss of love and affection under borrowed state law, the pre-death pain and suffering through survival damages, and potentially punitive damages if gross negligence or wanton disregard for worker safety is demonstrated. Every dollar figure is anchored to a specific record, a specific expert, and a specific legal theory. The company’s first offer is a fraction of that number. The work is making the number too well-documented to ignore.
What a Case Like This Is Worth
Two wrongful deaths on a Shell-operated OCS platform, with a deep-pocket defendant and potential OCSLA-borrowed state law remedies including punitive exposure for regulatory violations, generate a case value range of roughly $8 million on the low end to $40 million or more on the high end, if timely filed. Individual decedent valuations depend heavily on age, earning capacity, and dependent status. Offshore oil workers typically command high wage projections — a rig worker, a welder, a maintenance technician in the Gulf earns premium wages that translate into substantial lost-earning-capacity figures when projected across a working lifetime by a forensic economist.
We must be honest with you: the incident that prompted this page appears to have occurred in 2019, and applicable maritime and OCSLA-borrowed limitations periods have almost certainly expired for any case not already filed. This range reflects the underlying case value if timely filed and does not represent current fileability. If you are reading this page because of a more recent offshore incident — or because you are not certain whether your family’s claim was filed — the only way to know whether your rights have survived is to have a lawyer check the specific deadlines that apply to your situation. The general rule is this: in offshore death cases, the deadlines are shorter than anyone expects, and delay is the single most common reason families lose the right to recover. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do Now
If your family has just lost someone on an offshore platform — whether this one or another — here is what the first 72 hours should look like.
First, do not sign anything. No release, no settlement agreement, no statement, no authorization for the company to obtain medical or employment records. Anything you sign in the first days can limit your family’s rights, and the company knows you are in shock.
Second, do not give a recorded statement to the company’s representative, its insurance adjuster, or its investigator. You are not required to, and anything you say will be transcribed and studied for any sentence that can be used to narrow the company’s exposure. If the company insists, tell them your attorney will be in touch.
Third, do not post on social media. The company’s investigators monitor social media accounts of grieving families. A photograph, a comment, a check-in — anything that suggests the family is coping well or moving on can be screenshot-captured and used to minimize a claim for mental anguish or loss of companionship.
Fourth, preserve everything you have. Your loved one’s personal effects, their phone, their employment documents, their training certificates, their pay stubs, their text messages. If they sent you a message from the platform in the days or hours before the incident, save it. If they told you about a safety concern, write down what they said, when they said it, and who else was present.
Fifth, identify the witnesses. If you know who else was on the platform, write down their names. Offshore personnel rotate on hitch schedules — they may be on a different platform, at a different location, or out of the country within weeks. Their memories of what happened degrade every day.
Sixth, call a lawyer who knows offshore law. Not a general practice lawyer, not a friend who does wills and divorces, not the firm that handled your car accident. Offshore death cases involve a body of federal law — OCSLA, LHWCA, DOHSA, the Jones Act, the Limitation of Liability Act — that most lawyers never encounter. The deadlines are short, the evidence is perishable, and the corporate defendant has a head start of hours or days. The preservation letter that freezes the records must go out now, not after the funeral.
Why Our Firm
Ralph Manginello has spent 27 years in courtrooms, including federal court. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, which handles a significant share of Gulf of Mexico offshore cases. Before he was a lawyer, he was a journalist — which means he knows how to find the story the documents tell, and he knows how to tell it to a jury. He leads our firm’s offshore and industrial catastrophic injury practice. You can read more about Ralph Manginello’s background and credentials.
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decide how to deny, delay, and devalue claims from people exactly like the family reading this page. He knows how the other side values a claim, how it picks its medical experts, how it uses surveillance, and how it engineers delay. He now sits on your side of the table. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. You can read more about Lupe Peña’s experience and practice.
We work on contingency. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33 percent before trial and 40 percent if the case goes to trial. The first consultation is free, and our staff is live 24 hours a day — not an answering service. If you want to understand what an offshore accident lawyer actually does, watch our short video on what an offshore accident lawyer handles.
We have recovered more than $50 million for our clients, including a $5 million brain-injury settlement, a $3.8 million amputation settlement, a $2.5 million truck-crash recovery, and a $2 million maritime back-injury settlement. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. Those are the firm’s documented results, not a promise about your case — but they are proof that we have been in the fights that matter and we know how to build a number that the other side cannot ignore.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can my family sue if my loved one was a contractor, not a Shell employee?
Yes. If the deceased was a contractor employee, the contractor’s LHWCA carrier provides death benefits regardless of fault, and your family can bring a separate negligence claim against Shell as a third party, against the contractor for its own negligence, and against any equipment manufacturer whose product failed. The operator cannot outsource the hazard — its safety duties under BSEE regulations and OCSLA-borrowed state law apply to everyone on the platform. The contractor-versus-employee question changes who pays the no-fault benefits, but it does not close the door to a full tort recovery against the entities whose decisions caused the danger.
How long do I have to file a claim after an offshore platform death?
The deadlines in offshore cases are shorter than most families expect, and there are multiple clocks running simultaneously. The LHWCA requires notice of injury or death within 30 days and a claim within one year. The OCSLA-borrowed state law prescriptive period — Louisiana’s delictal prescription, if Louisiana law applies — is generally one year. General maritime law claims may be subject to a different limitations analysis. If DOHSA applies because the death occurred beyond three nautical miles, its own limitations framework controls. These deadlines interact in complex ways, and missing any one of them can forever bar your family’s recovery. The honest answer is: call a lawyer immediately. The deadline you do not know about is the one that will hurt you.
What is the difference between OCSLA and the Jones Act?
OCSLA is the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which extends federal jurisdiction to the OCS and borrows the adjacent state’s law as surrogate federal law for tort claims. The Jones Act is a separate federal statute that provides a negligence cause of action for seamen against their employers. A worker on a fixed platform is generally covered by OCSLA and the LHWCA, not the Jones Act. A worker on a floating production system or a vessel may qualify as a seaman under the Jones Act, which provides more powerful remedies — a jury trial, a featherweight causation standard, and the unseaworthiness doctrine — but is subject to the Miles ceiling on damages. The classification of the deceased worker determines which statute applies, and it is one of the first questions an offshore lawyer will analyze.
What does DOHSA do to my family’s case?
DOHSA — the Death on the High Seas Act — applies when a death occurs more than three nautical miles from shore. If DOHSA applies, your family’s recovery is limited to pecuniary losses: lost financial support, lost services, funeral costs. Your family cannot recover for grief, loss of society, loss of companionship, or the human cost of losing someone you love. This is a sharp reduction from what borrowed state law might otherwise allow, and the three-mile line is outcome-determinative. Most Shell-operated Gulf of Mexico platforms are in federal waters beyond three nautical miles, which means DOHSA’s limitation is a real factor in most of these cases. A skilled offshore lawyer analyzes whether OCSLA-borrowed state law claims can coexist with DOHSA or whether DOHSA’s pecuniary-only limitation controls.
What happens if the company tries to limit its liability?
Under the Limitation of Liability Act, the owner of a vessel can file a federal action to cap its liability at the post-accident value of the vessel plus pending freight. If the platform includes a vessel component — such as a floating production system — the operator may attempt this. The limitation defense fails if the owner had knowledge of or involvement in the dangerous condition that caused the death. The owner must file the limitation action within six months of receiving written notice of a claim. This procedure can pull all claims into a single federal admiralty court and strip the jury. Defeating the limitation defense requires proving the owner’s privity or knowledge — which is exactly where the maintenance records, the inspection history, the SEMS documentation, and the prior-incident reports become the case.
What evidence should we preserve?
Everything. Your loved one’s personal effects, phone, employment documents, training certificates, pay stubs, and text messages. If they told you about a safety concern, write down what they said, when they said it, and who else was present. If you know who else was on the platform, write down their names — offshore personnel rotate and may be gone within weeks. The most important evidence, however, is on the platform itself — maintenance records, inspection records, SEMS documentation, process data, alarm logs, crew manifests, and drug and alcohol testing results. That evidence is in the operator’s control, and the only way to freeze it is a preservation letter from a lawyer, sent in days, not months.
How much is an offshore wrongful death case worth?
Two wrongful deaths on a Shell-operated OCS platform, with a deep-pocket defendant and potential OCSLA-borrowed state law remedies, generate a case value range of roughly $8 million to $40 million or more, if timely filed. The actual number depends on the deceased’s age, earning capacity, dependent status, the specific legal theories available, whether DOHSA’s pecuniary limitation applies, and whether punitive damages are available for regulatory violations. Offshore oil workers earn premium wages that translate into substantial lost-earning-capacity figures. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
What should we do if the company already called us?
Listen. Take notes. Do not give a recorded statement. Do not sign anything. Do not agree to let the company obtain medical or employment records. Tell them your attorney will be in touch. The company representative who called you is not your friend — they are a professional doing a job, and that job is to protect the company’s financial interests. Everything you say will be documented. Everything you sign will be binding. The kindest voice on the phone in the first days after a death is often the one that is most carefully engineered to narrow the company’s exposure. Protect yourself by protecting your silence until you have counsel.
Call Us
If your family has lost someone on an offshore platform, call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case. Our staff is live 24 hours a day, seven days a week — not an answering service, not a robot, not a call center. You can also contact us through our website. Hablamos Español. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right firm for your case — and if we are not, we will tell you that too. The call costs nothing. The silence can cost everything.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Every case depends on its own facts. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.