What an Offshore Platform Fire Means for a Maritime Worker — and Why the Law That Protects You Depends on Where the Fire Happened
If you are reading this because you were hurt in a platform fire — or because someone you love was — you are probably sitting in a hospital room or a kitchen at two in the morning, trying to understand what rights you actually have. The phone has not rung yet from a lawyer. Maybe it has rung from your employer’s claims department, and the voice on the other end sounded friendly. We need to tell you what that voice means, what your rights really are, and why the answer depends entirely on one question: whose waters were you standing in when the fire started.
Ten workers were injured in a fire on ONGC’s SHP offshore platform, a production installation on the Mumbai High oil field roughly 160 kilometers off the coast of India. The fire broke out around 5:45 pm local time. ONGC’s emergency response teams contained and extinguished the blaze before it could spread to other platform infrastructure. All ten injured workers were reported in stable condition with what were described as minor injuries. Normal production resumed shortly after the incident. The cause of the fire has not been disclosed, and ONGC said it would release further details once its internal investigation was complete.
Here is what we want you to understand before anything else: that fire happened in Indian territorial waters, on an Indian state-owned platform, operated by an Indian corporation, under Indian regulatory authority. No United States agency — not the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, not the Coast Guard, not OSHA — has any jurisdiction over that installation. No Jones Act claim, no general maritime unseaworthiness claim, and no US personal injury statute would apply to the workers injured on that platform. For those ten workers, the governing law is India’s: the Oil Industry Safety Directorate regulates offshore petroleum operations under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, and workplace injuries are addressed through India’s Employees’ Compensation Act of 1923.
But if you are reading this page from the Gulf of Mexico — if you crew a supply vessel, work a production platform off the Louisiana coast, tend a drilling rig off Texas, or service a pipeline in federal waters — the fire on that Indian platform is a mirror of a danger you already know. And the law that governs what happens to you is completely different from the law that governs what happened to them. US maritime law gives offshore workers rights that most onshore workers never get — and most offshore workers never realize they have until the moment they need them and no one has told them.
That is what this page is for. We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. We handle offshore and maritime injury cases. We are going to tell you, in full and without padding, what your rights are when fire hits a platform, who can be held responsible, what evidence disappears first, what the insurance company is already doing about your claim, and what your case is genuinely worth. Everything we write here is legal information, not legal advice. But everything we write here is also what we would tell you if you called us at 1-888-ATTY-911 at three in the morning — which you can do, for free, because we have live staff answering that line twenty-four hours a day. Not an answering service. Us.
How Offshore Platform Fires Start — and Why the Cause Is Never an Accident
A fire on an offshore platform does not happen the way a kitchen fire happens. A platform is a tightly packed industrial complex sitting in the middle of the ocean, processing hydrocarbons — flammable gases and liquids under pressure — through miles of piping, hundreds of valves, pressure vessels, separators, compressors, and electrical systems, all operating in a corrosive saltwater environment and all maintained by human beings working long shifts in difficult conditions. Every one of those elements is a potential ignition source, and every one of them is supposed to be controlled by a safety system that someone designed, someone installed, someone inspected, and someone maintained. When the fire starts, one of those systems failed. The question is never “was this bad luck.” The question is always “which system failed, and who was responsible for keeping it from failing.”
The most common origins of platform fires follow a small number of patterns, and each one points to a specific failure of a specific duty:
Gas leaks from degraded piping and equipment. Hydrocarbon gas is the fuel that drives everything on a platform, and it is also the thing most likely to kill the people working there. A flange that was not properly torqued during maintenance. A gasket that degraded past its service life and was never replaced. A section of pipe whose wall thinned from corrosion until the pressure inside split it open. The gas finds an ignition source — a hot surface, a spark from electrical equipment, a static discharge — and the platform is on fire. Federal process safety regulations in the United States require operators to inspect and test piping, pressure vessels, and relief systems on a defined schedule, to document the results, and to take equipment out of service the moment a deficiency is found. When the inspection records show the wall thinning and the unit kept running, that is not a mechanical failure. That is a decision.
Electrical faults in classified areas. Offshore platforms have areas classified by the type of hazardous atmosphere that can be present. Electrical equipment in those areas must be rated and installed to prevent sparks or hot surfaces from igniting gas. A junction box that was never rated for the area. Wiring that was damaged during a turnaround and wrapped in standard electrical tape instead of being properly repaired. A breaker that was oversized so it would not trip when it should have. The electrical system on a platform is not just a convenience — it is a controlled system designed to coexist with explosive atmospheres, and any compromise of that control is a fire waiting for its moment.
Hot work during maintenance and turnaround. Welding, cutting, grinding, and other hot work on a platform is supposed to be permitted, gas-tested, fire-watched, and isolated from any source of flammable material. A hot work permit that was signed without the gas test being done. A fire watch who was pulled to help with another task “for just a minute.” A section of pipe that was not blinded off and still contained flammable residue. Hot work fires are the most predictable fires on a platform because they are the most controlled activity — which means every hot work fire is a failure of a system that existed on paper and was not followed in practice.
Process upsets and emergency shutdown failures. When a process goes out of control — a pressure spike, a temperature excursion, a separator that overflows — the emergency shutdown system is supposed to isolate the problem and vent safely. An ESD valve that was bypassed for operations and never restored. A blowdown system that was partially blocked. A safety instrumented system that was put in override mode during a difficult operation and left there. When the process upsets and the shutdown system does not respond, the fire that follows is the result of a safety system that someone disabled and never re-enabled.
Human error under fatigue. The last link in the chain is almost always a human being who was tired, undertrained, or working under production pressure that made the safe way take too long. But “human error” is never the root cause. The root cause is the system that put a fatigued, undertrained worker in a position where a single mistake could ignite a platform. Federal hours-of-service regulations exist for transportation workers. No comparable federal rule caps the hours a platform worker can be required to work — which means the duty to schedule safely falls on the company, and a worker who has been on shift for sixteen hours is a worker the company chose to keep there.
Every one of these patterns has a common thread: the fire was foreseeable. The hazard was known. The safety system to prevent it existed. And someone — the operator, the maintenance contractor, the equipment manufacturer — did not do what the system required. That is what makes a platform fire a legal case and not a natural disaster.
The Jones Act — the Federal Law That Gives Offshore Workers Rights Most Workers Never Get
If you work on a vessel or a platform in US waters and you are injured by a fire, the first question is not “do I have a case.” The first question is “which law applies to me” — and the answer depends on a legal classification that the company will try to control from the moment you are hurt.
The Jones Act, codified at 46 U.S.C. § 30104, is the single most powerful federal statute protecting offshore workers. It says:
“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. Laws of the United States regulating recovery for personal injury to, or death of, a railway employee apply to an action under this section.”
That last sentence is the key to everything. The Jones Act borrows the entire legal framework that Congress built for injured railroad workers — the Federal Employers’ Liability Act — and hands it to offshore workers. That framework is dramatically more favorable to the injured worker than ordinary state personal injury law or state workers’ compensation. Three things make it different:
The causation standard is the lowest in American injury law. Under the FELA standard the Jones Act incorporates, a seaman does not have to prove the employer’s negligence was the primary cause, the main cause, or even a substantial cause of the injury. The seaman only has to prove the employer’s negligence “played any part, even the slightest” in producing the injury. The Supreme Court reaffirmed this standard as recently as 2011. If a platform operator’s negligence contributed even one percent to a fire that injured you, the Jones Act says the operator is liable. This is not a high bar. This is the floor.
Your own fault does not bar your recovery. Under the Jones Act, comparative negligence applies — but it only reduces your recovery, it never eliminates it. If you were partly at fault, the jury reduces your damages by your percentage of fault. If you were twenty percent at fault and your damages are a million dollars, you recover eight hundred thousand. You do not recover zero. And if the employer violated a federal safety statute that contributed to your injury, your comparative fault is wiped out entirely — your own carelessness counts for nothing.
Assumption of risk is abolished. The employer cannot defend by saying “the job was dangerous and you knew it.” That defense was eliminated by Congress. A platform worker who is injured by a known hazard — a gas leak, a hot work area, a faulty ESD system — does not lose the case because the hazard was obvious. The question is never whether the worker knew the job was dangerous. The question is whether the employer did what it was required to do to make the workplace safe.
The deadline to file a Jones Act claim is three years from the date the cause of action accrues — borrowed from FELA’s statute of limitations at 45 U.S.C. § 56. Three years sounds like a long time. It is not. Evidence disappears on a much faster clock, and the insurance company’s strategy is built on the assumption that you will wait until you feel better to call a lawyer, by which point the proof you need may be legally gone.
Who Is a “Seaman” — and Why It Is the Most Important Question in Your Case
The Jones Act protects “seamen.” That word has a specific legal meaning, and the fight over whether you qualify is often the entire first battle of the case. The Supreme Court laid down the test in Chandris, Inc. v. Latsis, 515 U.S. 347 (1995). Two elements must be met:
First, your duties must contribute to the function of the vessel or to the accomplishment of its mission. A roustabout, a welder, a rig mechanic, a crane operator, a galley hand, a pump man — if your work helps the vessel do what it was built to do, you meet this element.
Second, you must have a connection to a vessel in navigation — or an identifiable fleet of vessels — that is substantial in terms of both its duration and its nature. The Court endorsed a rough rule of thumb: a worker who spends less than about thirty percent of his time in the service of a vessel in navigation ordinarily does not qualify as a seaman. If you spend a third of your work time or more aboard a functioning vessel, you are likely a seaman. If you spend almost all your time on a fixed platform and never go to sea, you probably are not — and the company will argue you belong in a different, less generous legal framework.
The second question is equally important: what counts as a “vessel”? The Supreme Court answered this in Stewart v. Dutra Construction Co., 543 U.S. 481 (2005): a vessel is “any watercraft practically capable of maritime transportation” — meaning used, or capable of being used, as a means of transportation on water. A jack-up rig that can move from location to location can be a vessel. A drill ship is a vessel. A barge that is towed from site to site is a vessel. A floating production storage and offloading vessel is a vessel. A fixed production platform that is permanently attached to the seabed and cannot move is probably not a vessel — which is why workers on fixed platforms may fall under a different regime.
If you are a seaman, the Jones Act gives you a jury trial, the featherweight causation standard, comparative fault that reduces but never bars, no assumption of risk, and the full range of tort damages — past and future lost earnings, medical expenses, and pain and suffering. If you are not a seaman, you may fall under the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, which provides no-fault statutory benefits but no jury trial and no pain and suffering. The difference in recovery can be enormous. Getting this classification right is the first job.
Unseaworthiness — the No-Fault Claim That Exists Alongside the Jones Act
A seaman who is injured in a platform fire has two shots, not one. The Jones Act is the first — a negligence claim against the employer. The second is the general maritime law doctrine of unseaworthiness, and it is in some ways more powerful because it requires no proof of negligence at all.
The vessel owner — whether that is an employer, a charterer, or another party that owns the vessel or platform — owes the crew an absolute, non-delegable warranty that the vessel and its appurtenances are reasonably fit for their intended use. If any part of the vessel — a frayed cable, a failed valve, a defective fire suppression system, an undermanned crew — was not reasonably fit, and that unfitness caused the injury, the owner is liable. The owner cannot escape by saying it was careful. The owner cannot escape by blaming a contractor. The warranty is absolute.
In a platform fire case, the unseaworthiness claim might target a fire detection system that failed to alarm, a gas detection system that was not calibrated, a fire suppression system that was offline for maintenance without a proper bypass, an emergency shutdown system that did not isolate the fuel source, or a crew that was too small to safely operate the platform under the conditions that existed. Each of these is a potential breach of the seaworthiness warranty, and each is a path to recovery that does not require proving anyone was careless — only that the vessel was not fit.
One important limit: the Supreme Court held in The Dutra Group v. Batterton, 588 U.S. 366 (2019), that punitive damages are not available on an unseaworthiness claim. Unseaworthiness provides compensatory damages only — medical expenses, lost earnings, pain and suffering, and the rest of the full tort measure. But it does not provide punishment damages. That is a real limit, and any honest evaluation of a maritime fire case accounts for it.
Maintenance and Cure — the Benefit That Starts the Day You Are Hurt, Regardless of Fault
There is a third right that a seaman has, and it is the fastest money in any maritime case. Maintenance and cure is a general maritime law doctrine that requires the employer to provide, from the moment a seaman is injured or falls ill in the service of the vessel:
Maintenance — a daily living allowance covering food and lodging ashore while the seaman recovers.
Cure — all reasonable medical expenses until the seaman reaches maximum medical improvement, the point at which further treatment will not improve the condition.
Fault is irrelevant. Even the seaman’s own negligence does not defeat the right to maintenance and cure. If you were careless and the fire was your fault, you are still owed maintenance and cure. The employer cannot deny it by saying you caused the accident. The obligation runs from the moment of injury until a doctor declares you have reached maximum medical improvement — which makes the date and basis of any MMI finding a record that must be preserved immediately, because a premature MMI call from a company doctor can legally terminate the benefit before you are actually healed.
And if the employer willfully and wantonly refuses to pay maintenance and cure, the Supreme Court held in Atlantic Sounding Co. v. Townsend, 557 U.S. 404 (2009), that punitive damages are available for that refusal. This is one of the few contexts in maritime law where punitive damages survive — and a company that stonewalls a injured worker’s medical benefits does so knowing that a jury can punish it for the stonewalling.
If the Fire Killed Someone — DOHSA and the Three-Mile Line
If a platform fire kills a crew member, a different federal statute may control the wrongful death claim — and it draws a hard line at three nautical miles from shore.
The Death on the High Seas Act, 46 U.S.C. § 30302, applies when a death is caused by a wrongful act, neglect, or default occurring on the high seas — defined as beyond three nautical miles from the shore of the United States. If your loved one was killed in a platform fire more than three miles offshore, DOHSA governs the wrongful death claim. Only the personal representative of the decedent may bring the action, for the exclusive benefit of the spouse, parent, child, or dependent relative.
DOHSA has a critical limit: recovery is restricted to pecuniary losses — lost financial support, lost services, funeral costs. The family cannot recover for grief, loss of society, or loss of companionship under DOHSA. That restriction is why the three-mile line is outcome-determinative: a death at 2.9 miles may allow broader state-law damages; a death at 3.1 miles is governed by DOHSA and stripped of non-economic recovery. If you are reading this because someone died in a platform fire, one of the first questions we need to answer is exactly how many miles from shore the platform sits — because that number changes what the case is worth.
Evidence That Disappears — and How Fast It Dies
Every offshore fire case is won or lost on evidence that exists for a shockingly short time. The fire detection and gas detection system logs that show whether the alarms triggered — electronic logs that can overwrite on routine cycles. The maintenance and inspection records that show whether fire suppression and emergency shutdown systems were kept to regulatory standard — records that can be amended after the incident. The Emergency Shutdown System activation records that show whether automated fire response and isolation systems functioned — operational data typically retained for thirty to ninety days before routine overwrite. The CCTV and surveillance footage from the platform — the visual record of fire origin, propagation path, and emergency response timeline — offshore platform camera systems that often overwrite in thirty days or less. The worker medical records and injury documentation — stable records, but early independent documentation is always stronger than what the company’s doctor writes weeks later.
A preservation letter — a formal demand that the company and every third-party vendor lock down this evidence — is the first thing that goes out the day you call us. Not the week after. Not the month after. The day. Because the company is not going to save this evidence for you. Its own lawyers are already deciding what to keep and what to let cycle out, and the records that show the company’s failures are the records most likely to develop a quiet “retention problem.”
If a defendant lets required evidence die after receiving a preservation demand, the law answers. An adverse-inference instruction — the jury may assume the lost record was as bad as the plaintiff says it was. Sanctions. And in some circumstances, a separate claim for the destruction itself. The bar for the harshest sanctions is high, but the leverage begins the moment the letter is on file.
Here is what we tell every offshore worker who calls us: the difference between a strong case and no case is often measured in weeks, not years. The statute of limitations gives you three years. The evidence gives you thirty days. Those two clocks are running at the same time, and the second one is the one that matters first.
Who Is Responsible — the Defendant Structure in an Offshore Fire Case
A platform fire is almost never one defendant’s fault on paper, because the operation of an offshore platform is deliberately split among multiple companies. The platform operator — the company that holds the lease and controls production — is the primary defendant, responsible for the safety systems, the maintenance regime, the inspection schedules, and the emergency response. But there are almost always others:
Maintenance contractors and service providers may have worked on the very equipment that failed. If a contractor’s work, installation, or maintenance contributed to the fire origin, that contractor is a separate defendant with its own insurance. Equipment manufacturers — if the investigation reveals a component failure in fire detection, gas detection, electrical, or processing equipment — face product liability claims. And if the fire originated in a vessel tied up alongside the platform — a supply vessel, a work boat, a tanker — the vessel owner and operator carry their own liability under general maritime law.
The point is this: a platform fire case requires mapping every company that touched the hazard, every company that controlled the equipment that failed, and every insurance policy that sits behind each one. The company that signs your paycheck may not be the only company that owes you. The operator that owned the platform may not be the only party whose choices caused the fire. Naming the right defendants — and naming all of them — is how a case that looks like a workers’ compensation claim becomes a full maritime tort recovery.
What the Insurance Company Is Already Doing — and How to Counter Each Play
Within hours of a platform fire, the company’s insurance apparatus begins moving. If you have been injured, you need to know what is coming. Lupe Peña, our associate attorney, spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims from people exactly like you. He sat in those rooms. He knows the plays. Now he sits on your side of the table.
Play 1 — the friendly recorded statement. Within days, someone from the company or its insurer will call to “check on you” and ask you to “just tell us what happened.” This call is recorded. Every word will be transcribed and used to build a defense. The counter: do not give a recorded statement without counsel. You have no obligation to. Anything you say will be used against you, and nothing you say will help your case at this stage.
Play 2 — the quick settlement check with a release attached. A check may arrive fast — before the full extent of your injuries is diagnosed, before the MRI results come back, before a doctor has determined whether the smoke inhalation caused long-term lung damage. Attached to that check is a release. If you sign it, you give up the right to pursue any further compensation, no matter how serious the injury turns out to be. The counter: never sign a release from your employer or its insurer before consulting a lawyer. A quick check is designed to close the case before the real cost of your injury is known.
Play 3 — the company doctor and the premature maximum medical improvement declaration. The employer may direct you to a doctor it chooses — one who has an incentive to minimize your injuries, declare you healed, and cut off maintenance and cure. A premature MMI finding terminates the employer’s cure obligation the day it is issued. The counter: you have the right to choose your own treating physician. Get independent medical care. The date and basis of any MMI finding is a record that must be preserved, and a premature declaration from a company doctor is itself evidence the employer was trying to cut off your benefits.
Play 4 — surveillance and social media monitoring. The insurer may assign an investigator to watch you — at your home, at medical appointments, in public. They will mine your social media for any post that can be framed as evidence you are not really hurt. The counter: assume you are being watched from the day you are injured. Do not post about your activities. Do not discuss your case online. Let your lawyer handle all communication about the injury.
Play 5 — the “you assumed the risk” argument. The company may argue that you knew the job was dangerous and accepted the risk. The counter: assumption of risk is abolished under the Jones Act. This defense is dead. If the employer raises it, it is telling you it has nothing better — which is exactly why you should not be intimidated by it.
Play 6 — the independent contractor dodge. The company may argue you are an independent contractor, not an employee, and therefore cannot bring a Jones Act claim. The counter: the label the company puts on you is not what controls. What controls is the degree of control the company exercised over your work — your schedule, your tasks, your equipment, your supervision. If the company controlled the means and methods of your work, the law may treat you as an employee regardless of what the contract says.
The Medicine of Fire Injuries — What Happens to Your Body and Why the Defense Tries to Minimize It
A fire on an offshore platform produces a specific set of injuries, and each one has a medical reality the insurance company will try to shrink. We want you to understand what actually happens to a body in a platform fire, because the defense is already planning to tell a jury it was not that bad.
Thermal burns. Doctors measure burn severity by Total Body Surface Area — the percentage of the body’s surface that is burned. The front of one leg is roughly nine percent. The whole front of the torso is eighteen percent. That single number drives almost every medical decision that follows: whether you need a specialized burn center, how many liters of IV fluid you need in the first twenty-four hours just to survive, and how many surgeries you will need. The American Burn Association publishes referral criteria that require every chemical burn, every high-voltage electrical burn, every burn to the hands or face, and any burn over ten percent of the body to be sent to a dedicated burn center. If you were kept at a platform’s medic station or a small clinic and never transferred, that is a flag.
A serious burn is one of the most expensive injuries in medicine. A rough clinical rule holds that a burn patient spends about one day in the hospital for every one percent of the body burned. A burn covering a third of the body can mean a month in a burn unit, multiple surgeries to graft skin, and years of operations to release scars as the body grows or ages — a cost that does not end when the patient goes home.
Inhalation injury. The deadliest injury in a fire is often the one you cannot see. Superheated smoke and toxic gases — hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, combustion products — burn and poison the airway and the blood. Singed nasal hairs, soot in the mouth, a hoarse voice — these are warning signs of an airway that is already swelling shut. Carbon monoxide poisoning can cause brain damage that is not visible on a standard scan. The American Burn Association treats suspected inhalation injury as an automatic burn-center referral. A worker who “walked away” from a fire may have lungs that are failing hours later.
The “minor injuries” trap. ONGC described the ten injured workers as having “minor injuries.” That word is the most dangerous word in a burn case. “Minor” is a triage word — it means the worker was conscious and talking. It says nothing about the second-degree burns that will scar. It says nothing about the smoke inhalation that causes asthma and chronic lung disease. It says nothing about the post-traumatic stress that follows surviving a fire on a platform in the middle of the ocean with no way off. If you were told your injuries were “minor,” treat that label with suspicion and get a full medical evaluation from a doctor who works for you, not the company.
The long-term progression. Burn injuries and inhalation injuries do not heal on a schedule. Scar tissue contracts and limits movement. Lung damage from smoke inhalation can worsen over months. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a diagnosable medical condition with specific criteria — and in the maritime context, it is a real injury, not an excuse. The defense will try to minimize these delayed consequences. The medical record — built from the day of the fire forward, by your own doctors — is what defeats that minimization.
What Your Case Is Worth — an Honest Evaluation
We are not going to tell you a number for a case we have not evaluated. What we will tell you is how the number is built, what the law allows, and what the honest range looks like.
Under the Jones Act and general maritime unseaworthiness, a seaman can recover the full measure of tort damages: past and future medical expenses, past and future lost wages and lost earning capacity, pain and suffering, disfigurement, and the value of household services the seaman can no longer perform. There is no statutory cap on these damages in the Jones Act framework.
For the ten workers injured in the ONGC Mumbai High fire, the governing law is India’s Employees’ Compensation Act of 1923 — a statutory compensation framework that provides benefits calibrated to injury classification and earning capacity, far more limited than US tort damages. No US-style non-economic damages, no punitive damages, and no Jones Act remedies would be available to those claimants. A US plaintiff personal injury firm has no actionable claim arising from that incident.
But for a comparable offshore platform fire in US Gulf of Mexico waters, with a US maritime worker covered by the Jones Act, the value depends on the severity of the injury, the strength of the negligence and unseaworthiness evidence, the quality of the medical documentation, and the size of the insurance tower behind the defendant. A platform fire with minor injuries — burns that heal, smoke inhalation that resolves, no permanent disability — might range from approximately $50,000 to $500,000 per worker depending on the specific facts. A platform fire with catastrophic injuries — severe burns requiring grafting, permanent lung damage, disabling PTSD — can reach into the millions. A fatal platform fire with a strong negligence case can produce a wrongful death recovery that reflects the decedent’s lifetime lost earnings, the family’s lost financial support, and (outside DOHSA’s three-mile limit) the full human loss.
These figures are not predictions. They are the landscape. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The only honest way to value your specific case is to evaluate your specific medical records, your specific employment and earnings history, your specific evidence of negligence and unseaworthiness, and the specific insurance coverage behind the specific defendants — which is what the free consultation is for.
Your First 72 Hours — a Practical Roadmap
If you were injured in a platform fire, or if someone you love was, here is what the first three days should look like. This is not legal advice for the ONGC Mumbai High workers — their rights are governed by Indian law and they should consult Indian counsel. This is for the US maritime worker reading this page who needs to know what to do right now.
Medical first — and choose your own doctor. Get to a hospital. Not the platform medic. Not the company clinic. A hospital with a burn center or an emergency department that can evaluate burns, smoke inhalation, carbon monoxide exposure, and trauma. Tell the doctor everything — every symptom, every sensation, every moment you can remember from the fire. The emergency room record is the first piece of evidence in your case, and a thin or rushed one hurts you. You have the right to choose your own treating physician. Exercise it.
Do not give a recorded statement. If the company calls, if the insurer calls, if a “claims adjuster” calls — be polite, decline to give a recorded statement, and say you are consulting a lawyer. You are not required to give a recorded statement, and nothing you say will help you at this stage.
Do not sign anything. If a check arrives, if a release arrives, if a “medical authorization” arrives — do not sign it. A release closes your case. A medical authorization lets the company’s lawyers read your entire medical history, not just the fire injury. Sign nothing without a lawyer reviewing it.
Preserve everything. Photograph your injuries. Photograph the burns, the bandages, the hospital room. Save every piece of paper — the discharge instructions, the work restrictions, the medication list, the name of every doctor and nurse. Write down everything you remember about the fire while it is fresh — what you saw, what you heard, what alarms sounded, what the conditions were, who was there. Memory degrades. A written record does not.
Document your pre-injury baseline. Your earnings records, your tax returns, your pay stubs, your performance reviews — these establish what you were earning and what your career trajectory looked like before the fire. Lost earning capacity is one of the largest components of a maritime injury case, and proving it requires showing what you were on track to make. Gather these records now.
Call a maritime injury lawyer. This is the step that starts the clock working for you instead of against you. The day you call, the preservation letter goes out — freezing the platform data, the CCTV, the maintenance records, the ESD logs before they can cycle out. The day you call, the investigation begins — identifying every defendant, every insurance policy, every piece of evidence. The consultation is free. You pay nothing unless we win.
The Limitation of Liability Act — the Shipowner’s Escape Hatch
One more thing you need to know, because the company is counting on you not knowing it. The Limitation of Liability Act, 46 U.S.C. § 30523, lets a vessel owner try to cap everything it owes at the post-accident value of the vessel plus its pending freight — sometimes pennies on the dollar. The catch for the owner: it only works if the owner can prove the danger happened completely without its privity or knowledge. That is a high bar for a platform operator that controlled the maintenance, the inspections, the safety systems, and the crew. A thorough investigation cracks the limitation defense open by showing the owner knew — or should have known — about the hazard that caused the fire. But the owner must file a limitation action within six months of receiving written notice of a claim, and that procedure can pull all claims into a single federal admiralty court and strip the jury. The date written notice was given is a record that must be preserved. This is one more reason the preservation letter matters — it establishes the notice date, and it puts the company on the clock.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue my employer for a platform fire, or is workers’ compensation my only option?
If you are a seaman — a crew member with a substantial connection to a vessel in navigation — you are not limited to workers’ compensation. The Jones Act gives you the right to sue your employer directly for negligence, in front of a jury, with full tort damages including pain and suffering. Workers’ compensation is a no-fault system with capped benefits and no pain and suffering. The Jones Act is a fault-based system with uncapped damages and the lowest causation standard in American injury law. If you qualify as a seaman, the Jones Act is almost always the better path. If you are not a seaman — if you work on a fixed platform with no vessel connection — you may fall under the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, which provides no-fault statutory benefits but no jury trial and no pain and suffering. Determining which framework applies to you is the first and most important question in your case.
How long do I have to file a Jones Act claim?
Three years from the date the cause of action accrues. The Jones Act borrows the statute of limitations from the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, which provides a three-year deadline at 45 U.S.C. § 56. Three years sounds like plenty of time. It is not. The evidence that proves your case — platform CCTV, fire detection system logs, ESD activation records, maintenance records — can be legally destroyed in thirty to ninety days. The deadline to sue is three years. The deadline to save the proof is measured in weeks. The single most important thing you can do is call a maritime injury lawyer early — the day you call is the day the preservation letter goes out and the clock starts working for you instead of against you.
What if I was partly at fault for the fire?
You can still recover. Under the Jones Act, comparative negligence applies — your own fault reduces your recovery but never bars it. If you were twenty percent at fault, your damages are reduced by twenty percent. If you were fifty percent at fault, your damages are reduced by fifty percent. You never recover zero, no matter how much fault is assigned to you. And if the employer violated a federal safety statute that contributed to your injury, your comparative fault is eliminated entirely. The employer cannot use your own conduct to escape responsibility for the unsafe conditions it created or tolerated.
What is maintenance and cure, and how fast can I get it?
Maintenance and cure is the oldest benefit in maritime law. From the moment you are injured in the service of a vessel, your employer owes you a daily living allowance (maintenance) and all medical expenses (cure) until you reach maximum medical improvement. No fault is required — even if the fire was your fault, you are still owed maintenance and cure. The obligation runs until a doctor declares you have reached MMI, which makes the MMI determination a critical record. If the employer willfully refuses to pay, punitive damages are available under the Supreme Court’s 2009 ruling in Atlantic Sounding Co. v. Townsend. Maintenance and cure can begin within days of the injury — it is the fastest money in a maritime case.
What if the platform fire killed my family member?
If your loved one was killed in a platform fire, the legal framework depends on where the death occurred. If the death occurred more than three nautical miles from the US shore, the Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA) governs, and recovery is limited to pecuniary losses — lost financial support, lost services, funeral costs. DOHSA does not allow recovery for grief, loss of society, or loss of companionship. If the death occurred within three miles of shore, state wrongful death law may apply, which can include non-economic damages. A Jones Act wrongful death claim may also be available if the decedent was a seaman. The personal representative of the decedent is the person authorized to bring the claim. The difference between a DOHSA case and a state wrongful death case can be enormous, and the three-mile line is the dividing factor.
Is a fixed offshore platform a “vessel” under the Jones Act?
It depends. The Supreme Court defined a vessel as “any watercraft practically capable of maritime transportation” in Stewart v. Dutra Construction Co. A jack-up rig that can be moved from location to location is likely a vessel. A drill ship is a vessel. A floating production storage and offloading vessel is a vessel. A fixed production platform that is permanently attached to the seabed and cannot move is probably not a vessel — which means workers on fixed platforms may not qualify as seamen and may not have Jones Act protection. If you work on a fixed platform, your claim may fall under the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act or general maritime law instead. The specific facts of your work — where you work, how much time you spend on vessels versus fixed platforms, whether the structure can move — determine which law protects you.
The company says I signed a waiver or release — am I out of luck?
Not necessarily. The Jones Act contains an anti-waiver provision at 45 U.S.C. § 55 that voids any contract, rule, regulation, or device whose purpose is to exempt the employer from liability created by the Act. A release signed under pressure, a waiver buried in employment paperwork, a quick settlement check with a release attached before your injuries were fully diagnosed — all of these may be void as a matter of federal law if their purpose was to let the employer escape Jones Act liability. Do not assume a paper you signed ends your case. A maritime injury lawyer can evaluate whether the release is enforceable.
What if the fire was caused by faulty equipment, not the platform operator?
Then you may have a product liability claim against the equipment manufacturer in addition to your Jones Act claim against your employer. If a fire detection system failed to alarm, a gas detection system was not calibrated, an electrical component was defectively designed, or a valve failed because of a manufacturing defect, the manufacturer of that equipment is a separate defendant with its own insurance. Product liability claims in maritime cases can reach defendants and coverage towers that the employer claim cannot — and a complete case names every responsible party, not just the one that signed your paycheck.
Who We Are — and Why That Matters to Your Case
Ralph Manginello is the managing partner of The Manginello Law Firm. He has been a licensed attorney for 27+ years, admitted in Texas and to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, which covers the Gulf Coast and the heart of the offshore oil and gas industry. Before he was a lawyer, Ralph was a journalist — he learned to find the story, to ask the question no one else is asking, to follow the paper trail until it leads somewhere. He brings that to every case. He is a competitor who hates losing, and he works a case the way a reporter works a story — until the facts are found and the truth is on the record. He has recovered over $50 million for injured clients, including a $5 million brain-injury settlement, a $3.8 million amputation settlement, and a $2.5 million truck-crash recovery. He currently leads the active $10 million hazing lawsuit against Pi Kappa Phi at the University of Houston. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney. Lupe 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 you. He sat in the rooms where reserve figures were set in the first forty-eight hours, where IME doctors were selected, where surveillance was authorized, where recorded statements were transcribed for impeachment. He knows how the machine works because he was part of the machine. Now he uses that knowledge for injured clients. Lupe is fluent in Spanish — he conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter, and we say that with pride. If your family prays in Spanish, we speak your language.
We handle cases on contingency. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. Our fee is 33.33 percent if the case settles before trial and 40 percent if it goes to trial. The first consultation is free, and it costs you nothing. We have live staff — not an answering service — answering our emergency line twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You can call us right now.
What the First Call Looks Like
When you call 1-888-ATTY-911, you will speak to a person — not a recording, not a service that takes a message. That person will take basic information about what happened, where it happened, when it happened, and what your injuries are. An attorney will call you back — the same day, if you call during business hours; the next morning, if you call at night. The consultation is free. We will tell you honestly whether you have a case, what law applies, what the deadline is, and what the next steps look like. If we are not the right fit for your case, we will tell you that too. We would rather lose a client than take a case we cannot win.
If we take your case, the first thing we do is send the preservation letter. That letter goes to the platform operator, every maintenance contractor, every equipment vendor, and every data system provider — ordering them, in writing, to freeze every piece of evidence relevant to the fire. The CCTV. The fire detection logs. The ESD activation records. The maintenance and inspection files. The trip telemetry. The crew hours and shift records. The moment that letter is received, the company’s routine destruction cycle stops being routine and becomes spoliation — and a company that destroys evidence after receiving a preservation demand faces an adverse-inference instruction, sanctions, and potentially a separate claim for the destruction itself.
That letter is the difference between a case built on the company’s narrative and a case built on the company’s own records. It goes out the day you call.
Hablamos Español
Lupe Peña conducts full client consultations in Spanish — without an interpreter, without a gap, without anything lost in translation. If your family speaks Spanish, your case will be handled by an attorney who speaks your language. No intermediary. No filter. Just direct communication with a lawyer who understands what you are going through, in the words you actually use. That matters — in a case where every detail matters, the language you tell those details in should be the language you think in.
Call Us Now — Before the Evidence Does
The ONGC platform fire in the Mumbai High field injured ten workers who are protected by Indian law, in Indian waters, under a framework that no American firm can change. But if you are a US offshore worker — if you crew a vessel in the Gulf, work a platform off the coast, service a rig in federal waters — the fire that happened 160 kilometers off Mumbai is a warning about what can happen to you, and a reminder that the law protecting you is stronger than you may realize. The Jones Act, the unseaworthiness doctrine, and maintenance and cure are rights that most American workers never get. But they are only real if you use them, and the evidence that proves them dies on a clock that does not wait for you to feel better first.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. The call is free. The preservation letter is free. You pay nothing unless we win your case. We have been doing this work since 2001 — more than twenty-four years of fighting for injured people against the companies and insurers that would rather pay them nothing. We know the playbook because one of us used to write it. Now we use that knowledge for you.
Learn more about our offshore injury practice — or visit our workplace accident and wrongful death practice pages for related cases. If you were injured in a refinery or industrial fire rather than an offshore platform, our refinery accident practice covers the same safety-system failures onshore. Watch our definitive guide to offshore accidents and learn what an offshore accident lawyer actually does to understand the full scope of what a maritime injury case involves.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. Contacting the firm is free and confidential. The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC — Attorney911. Houston, Texas. 1-888-ATTY-911. No fee unless we win.