Mumbai Offshore Platform Fire: What It Means for Offshore Workers Under US Maritime Law
You are reading this because a fire tore through an offshore oil platform and ten people were hurt. Maybe you work on a rig yourself, and the news out of the Arabian Sea made you think about what would happen to you and your family if the same thing happened on your platform. Maybe someone you love was injured in a platform fire in the Gulf of Mexico, and you are sitting in a hospital hallway at 2 a.m. trying to understand what rights they have. We are glad you found this page, and we are going to tell you everything we know.
First, the honest truth about this specific incident. The fire at the SHP Platform in the Mumbai High field occurred in Indian territorial waters, on a platform owned and operated by Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, an Indian state-owned enterprise. Every claim arising from that fire is governed by Indian maritime law, Indian offshore petroleum regulations, and Indian labor and tort law. No United States court has jurisdiction over that incident. No American statute—the Jones Act, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, general maritime law of the United States—applies to it. If the injured workers or their families contacted an American law firm, the correct and honest answer would be that Indian maritime counsel is the right resource, not a US plaintiff firm. We would say so directly and help point them in the right direction.
But here is why this page exists, and why it matters to you. Platform fires are not unique to the Arabian Sea. They happen on the US outer continental shelf, in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of California, in Alaska. The men and women who work those platforms are protected by a body of federal law that is older, stronger, and more generous than almost any workplace-injury regime in this country. The problem is that most offshore workers do not know what those protections are until the moment they need them—and by then, the insurance company has already started building its defense. This page is the education we wish every offshore worker had before the fire, and the roadmap we build after it. We are Attorney911, The Manginello Law Firm. We are trial lawyers who handle offshore and maritime injury cases, and what follows is the full picture of what the law gives you, what the company will try to take away, and what we do about it.
Your Rights After an Offshore Platform Fire: The Quick Answers
Can I sue my employer if I am injured in a platform fire? If you qualify as a “seaman” under federal law, yes. The Jones Act (46 U.S.C. § 30104) lets an injured crew member bring a negligence claim directly against their employer, with a right to trial by jury. This is not workers’ compensation. You do not have to accept a capped benefit check. You can hold the company accountable for its choices, in front of a jury, for the full measure of your losses.
Am I a seaman? The Supreme Court has a rough test: if you spend at least about 30 percent of your work time aboard a vessel in navigation—or an identifiable fleet of vessels—and your work contributes to the vessel’s function or mission, you likely qualify. A fixed production platform is not a vessel. But a supply boat, a crew boat, a jack-up rig that can move, a drilling barge, an FPSO—those can be vessels. If you work aboard one of those, or if you split your time between a platform and vessels that service it, seaman status is the first fight and the most important one. It is the difference between a capped benefit and a jury trial.
What if I am not a seaman? If you are a longshore worker, a harbor worker, a welder on a platform who never works aboard vessels, or a contractor who loads and unloads, you may fall under the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act (LHWCA), 33 U.S.C. § 903. That is a no-fault system—you get benefits without proving negligence—but it also gives you a separate negligence claim against the vessel owner if the vessel’s condition caused your injury (33 U.S.C. § 905(b)). On the outer continental shelf, the OCSLA extends state workers’ compensation law as a substitute, but the third-party claims against contractors, equipment makers, and vessel owners remain open.
How long do I have to file? Three years. The Jones Act borrows the statute of limitations from the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, which says no action may be maintained unless commenced within three years from the day the cause of action accrued (45 U.S.C. § 56, incorporated into the Jones Act via 46 U.S.C. § 30104). For latent injuries—cancer from chemical exposure, brain injury that manifests weeks later—the clock may not start on the day of the fire but on the day you discovered or should have discovered the injury and its connection to the fire. But do not gamble on that. Three years sounds like a long time. It is not, when the evidence is already disappearing.
What is my case worth? If you are a seaman with a Jones Act claim, there is no statutory cap on damages. You can recover full past and future lost earnings, full medical care, and pain and suffering. If the vessel was unseaworthy—meaning it or its equipment was not reasonably fit for its purpose—you have a second, independent claim that does not even require proving negligence. And the company owes you maintenance (a daily living allowance) and cure (medical expenses) from the moment you are hurt, regardless of fault, until you reach maximum medical improvement. The firm has recovered over $50 million in aggregate for injured clients, including a $2 million-plus maritime back-injury settlement. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes—but the architecture of these damages is designed to be full, not capped.
The Federal Maritime Law That Protects Offshore Workers
The Jones Act: Your Right to Sue the Employer
The Jones Act is the single most powerful tool an injured offshore worker has. 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.”
— 46 U.S.C. § 30104
That sentence does three extraordinary things. It lets you sue your employer directly—something most American workers cannot do because workers’ compensation is their exclusive remedy. It gives you a jury. And it imports the legal framework of the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, which was written for injured railroad workers and contains the most plaintiff-favorable causation standard in American injury law.
That causation standard is the engine of the Jones Act. The Supreme Court defined it in Rogers v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 352 U.S. 500 (1957), and reaffirmed it as recently as 2011 in CSX Transportation v. McBride:
“The test of a jury case is simply whether the proofs justify with reason the conclusion that employer negligence played any part, even the slightest, in producing the injury or death for which damages are sought.”
Read that again. “Any part, even the slightest.” You do not have to prove the employer’s negligence was the primary cause. You do not have to prove it was a substantial factor. You have to prove it played any part. A missing fire blanket, a faulty gas detector, a crew that was not trained on the emergency-shutdown procedure, a corroded pipe that should have been replaced—if any of those things contributed to the fire that hurt you, even slightly, the employer is liable under the Jones Act.
And your own negligence does not bar your claim. Under 45 U.S.C. § 53 (imported into the Jones Act), contributory negligence reduces your recovery but never eliminates it. The jury assigns a percentage of fault to you and reduces the award accordingly—but it can never zero you out. If you were 80 percent at fault, you still recover 20 percent of your full damages. And if the employer violated a federal safety statute that contributed to the injury, your contributory negligence is wiped off the board entirely.
Unseaworthiness: The No-Fault Warranty
Beyond the Jones Act, a seaman has a second claim that does not require proving negligence at all. It is called unseaworthiness, and it is a general maritime law doctrine that imposes an absolute, non-delegable warranty on the vessel owner: the vessel and all its appurtenances must be reasonably fit for their intended use. If a frayed fuel line, a broken fire-suppression system, an undermanned crew, or a defective piece of equipment made the vessel unfit, the owner is liable—regardless of whether anyone was careless.
The vessel owner cannot escape by blaming a contractor. The warranty is non-delegable. The owner cannot defend by saying it maintained the vessel well—it is liable for the condition, not its efforts. And assumption of risk is abolished for seamen (45 U.S.C. § 54, imported into the Jones Act framework). The employer cannot say “you knew the job was dangerous.”
One honest limit: the Supreme Court held in The Dutra Group v. Batterton (2019) that punitive damages are not available on an unseaworthiness claim. Unseaworthiness is a compensatory-damages remedy. But compensatory damages under maritime law include the full range of human losses—pain, suffering, lost earnings, lost earning capacity, medical expenses, and the rest.
Maintenance and Cure: What the Company Owes You Right Now
The moment a seaman is injured in the service of the vessel, the employer owes two things, no questions asked, regardless of fault: maintenance (a daily living allowance covering food and lodging ashore) and cure (all medical expenses). These run until the seaman reaches maximum medical improvement—the point at which doctors say further treatment will not improve the condition. The employer’s own negligence is irrelevant. The seaman’s own negligence is irrelevant. This is the fastest, most immediate financial help available to an injured offshore worker, and it is a federal obligation.
And here is the leverage: if the employer willfully and wantonly refuses to pay maintenance and cure, the Supreme Court held in Atlantic Sounding Co. v. Townsend (2009) that the seaman can recover punitive damages for that refusal. A company that stonewalls your medical bills after a fire is not just being difficult—it is exposing itself to punishment damages on top of everything else.
The critical record here is the treating physician’s MMI determination, because the employer’s obligation to pay cure can be cut off the day a doctor declares you have reached maximum medical improvement. A premature MMI finding terminates the benefit—which is exactly why the timing and basis of that finding is a record to preserve immediately. Learn more about workplace accident claims and how these benefits interact with broader injury claims.
The Three-Door Problem: Which Law Applies to You
The maritime law regime is a three-door system, and the doors are mutually exclusive. You cannot be in two at once.
Door 1—Seaman. If you are crew, you go through the Jones Act door (negligence) plus unseaworthiness (no-fault) plus maintenance and cure (no-fault benefits). You sue the employer. You get a jury. You get full tort damages. No workers’ comp cap.
Door 2—Longshore/Harbor Worker. If you are not crew but you work on the waterfront or on a platform loading, unloading, repairing, or building, you go through the LHWCA door. You get no-fault compensation from your employer (scheduled benefits, no jury), but you also get a separate negligence claim against the vessel owner under 33 U.S.C. § 905(b) if the vessel’s condition caused your injury. The vessel’s duties are narrower than the unseaworthiness warranty owed to crew—it owes a duty to turn over a safe vessel, a duty of active control during operations, and a duty to intervene when it knows of a hazard.
Door 3—Death on the High Seas. If a loved one is killed more than three nautical miles from shore, the Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA, 46 U.S.C. § 30302) controls the wrongful-death claim. It is narrow: only the spouse, parents, children, or a dependent relative can bring the claim, and recovery is limited to pecuniary losses—lost financial support, lost services, funeral costs. Under Miles v. Apex Marine Corp. (1990), survivors cannot recover for loss of society or companionship in a seaman wrongful-death case. The three-mile line is a guillotine: a death at 2.9 miles may allow broader damages; at 3.1 miles, DOHSA strips non-economic recovery.
Getting the right door is the first and most important decision in any offshore injury case. Pleading the wrong theory can forfeit the case before it begins.
Who Can Be Held Responsible for a Platform Fire
A platform fire is almost never one entity’s failure. The liability map on a US offshore installation typically includes several layers, and a thorough case names every one of them.
The platform owner and operator. The oil company that owns the platform and controls its operations owes duties under the Jones Act (to seaman-employees), under OCSLA (to workers on the outer continental shelf), and under general maritime law (to anyone aboard a vessel). If the fire resulted from inadequate maintenance, deferred repairs, failed gas-detection systems, or unsafe operational practices, the operator bears direct responsibility.
The drilling or service contractor. Many offshore platforms are staffed by contractors—drilling companies, maintenance companies, catering and housing providers. If a contractor’s work caused or contributed to the fire (hot work that ignited gas, a maintenance error that left a valve open, a welding spark near an untested area), that contractor is a separate defendant with its own insurance tower. The operator cannot shield itself by saying “the contractor did it”—and the contractor cannot shield itself by saying “the operator controlled the site.”
Equipment manufacturers. If a mechanical or electrical component failed and caused the ignition—a faulty compressor, a ruptured pipeline, a transformer that shorted, a gas separator that leaked—a product-liability claim against the manufacturer may exist, separate from the negligence claims against the operator. This is a different theory of liability, a different insurance tower, and a different path to recovery.
The vessel owner. If the injured person is a longshore worker or non-crew contractor, and the fire or the injury was caused by the condition of a vessel servicing the platform (a supply boat, a crew boat), the § 905(b) negligence claim against the vessel owner is the route to tort damages beyond the LHWCA’s scheduled benefits.
The corporate-structure reality is that each of these defendants may be a separate legal entity—a thin operating LLC that holds the license and almost no assets, a parent holding company that holds the cash, and an insurance tower stacked in layers between them. Identifying the right entities, and the right insurers behind each, is foundational work. Naming the wrong defendant can sink a case before discovery begins.
The Evidence That Disappears
Every offshore fire case lives or dies on records that are destroyed on a schedule. Here is what exists, who holds it, and how fast it can legally die.
Platform fire-detection and gas-sensor system logs. These establish whether detection systems activated properly and when, revealing whether equipment failure contributed to the fire. Digital system logs on offshore platforms may be overwritten on cycles ranging from 30 to 90 days. If no one demands they be preserved, the record of whether the gas alarms went off—and when—can vanish before a lawsuit is even filed.
CCTV and platform surveillance footage. This is the visual record of fire origin, spread, and emergency response. It is the single most decisive piece of evidence in a causation analysis. Platform CCTV systems typically overwrite on 7-to-30-day cycles depending on storage capacity. The footage of where the fire started, how fast it spread, and what the crew did in response erases itself automatically—unless a preservation letter freezes it first.
Maintenance and inspection records. These establish whether the platform was maintained to the applicable safety standards and whether known hazards were addressed. Was the fire-suppression system inspected on schedule? Were corroded pipes flagged for replacement? Were gas detectors calibrated and tested? The company holds these records, and while regulatory requirements mandate retention, access for claimants may be restricted without formal proceedings.
Witness statements. The firsthand accounts of fire origin, response, and conditions preceding the incident are irreplaceable. But offshore workers rotate on shift cycles—two weeks on, two weeks off—and they disperse to other platforms, to shore assignments, to their homes in Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and beyond. Memories fade within weeks. The person who saw what happened first may be on a different rig in a different state within a month, and their recollection will never be as clear as it is in the first 72 hours.
The company’s own internal investigation report. The operator will investigate itself. That report may contain admissions. But Indian regulatory investigation timelines can extend months (as the Mumbai incident shows—the cause remains undisclosed), and US companies control their own internal reports. A claimant may not see the company’s findings without formal discovery—a process that takes months and requires a filed lawsuit.
This is why the preservation letter goes out the day you call us, not the day we file suit. A written demand to preserve all evidence—CCTV, sensor logs, maintenance records, the physical components involved in the fire, the company’s investigation file—creates a legal obligation. If the company lets evidence die after receiving that letter, the consequences escalate. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e), if electronically stored information is lost because a party failed to take reasonable steps to preserve it, the court can order measures to cure the prejudice—or, if the loss was intentional, instruct the jury to assume the missing evidence would have been unfavorable to the company that destroyed it. That adverse-inference instruction can be the difference between a case that settles for a fraction of its value and one that demands the full amount.
The Injuries Offshore Fires Cause
Burns
A platform fire produces thermal burns from direct flame contact, flash burns from ignited gas vapor, and scald burns from ruptured steam lines or hot fluids. The severity is measured by two axes: how deep the burn goes and how much of the body it covers.
Doctors map the body using the Rule of Nines—each arm is 9 percent of total body surface area, each leg is 18 percent, the front of the torso is 18 percent, the back is 18 percent, the head is 9 percent. That single number, Total Body Surface Area (TBSA), drives almost every clinical decision that follows. A burn covering 25 percent of the body is not a description of pain—it is a measured map that determines whether the patient needs a specialized burn center and gallons of intravenous fluid just to survive the first night.
Burn depth matters as much as size. A first-degree burn is a bad sunburn. A second-degree burn blisters and is intensely painful. A third-degree burn has killed the skin all the way through—and counterintuitively, it is the worst burns that hurt the least, because the nerves that feel pain are destroyed. A person who was not screaming may have had the most severe burn, not the mildest. A fourth-degree burn extends through the skin into muscle, tendon, and bone.
The American Burn Association publishes referral criteria that tell hospitals which burns must be sent to a specialized burn center: any partial-thickness burn over 10 percent TBSA, any burn to the face, hands, feet, genitalia, or joints, any chemical burn, any high-voltage electrical burn, any suspected inhalation injury. If the hospital kept a patient who met that list instead of transferring them, that is a standard-of-care question.
For severe burns, the first 24 hours are a fluid-resuscitation crisis. The Parkland Formula—4 milliliters of Lactated Ringer’s per kilogram of body weight per percent TBSA burned—calculates the total fluid needed in the first day, with half due in the first eight hours from the time of the burn, not the time of arrival at the hospital. Every minute a badly burned worker sat un-transferred and under-resuscitated is a minute measured against a clock that started the instant the flames touched skin. For brain injuries that can accompany blast trauma, the diagnostic picture is different but equally time-critical.
A serious burn is one of the most expensive injuries in medicine. The rough clinical rule is 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 before rehabilitation, scar surgery, and years of follow-up even begin. The lifetime cost of burn care—grafting, contracture release surgeries (especially in children and young adults whose scars tighten as they grow), psychological treatment, and lost earning capacity—can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars and far more in catastrophic cases.
Inhalation Injury
The deadliest injury in a platform fire is often the one you cannot see. Superheated smoke and toxic gases—hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, combustion byproducts—burn and poison the airway and blood. Singed facial hair, soot in the mouth, a hoarse voice, or a productive cough are warning signs of airway injury that can swell shut hours later. The American Burn Association treats any suspected inhalation injury as an automatic burn-center referral. Inhalation injury independently raises burn mortality and is the invisible killer that turns a survivable fire into a fatal one.
Carbon monoxide poisoning is the silent companion of every enclosed-space fire. CO binds to hemoglobin more tightly than oxygen, starving the brain and heart. A carboxyhemoglobin blood draw is time-sensitive—a late draw understates the exposure. The first blood gas is the one that matters.
Blast and Overpressure Trauma
If the fire was accompanied by an explosion—a vapor-cloud ignition, a pressure-vessel rupture—the overpressure wave causes injuries that are distinct from burns. Primary blast injury affects gas-containing organs: the lungs (blast lung), the ears (tympanic membrane rupture), and the gastrointestinal tract. Secondary blast injury comes from flying debris. Tertiary blast injury comes from the body being thrown. All of these can produce traumatic brain injury without a single visible head wound—the brain is bruised by the deceleration force as it impacts the inside of the skull. A “mild” traumatic brain injury can come with a perfectly normal CT scan, because the damage is microscopic tearing of nerve fibers—diffuse axonal injury—that a standard scan was never built to see.
What Your Case Is Worth Under Maritime Law
The damages architecture for an offshore fire case is not a single number—it is a stack of separate claims, each with its own rules, and the total is the sum of all of them.
Jones Act negligence damages. Full tort damages, uncapped. Past and future lost wages and earning capacity, past and future medical expenses, pain and suffering, mental anguish, disfigurement, and loss of enjoyment of life. No statutory cap. The only reduction is your comparative-fault percentage, which reduces but never bars recovery.
Unseaworthiness damages. Compensatory only—no punitive damages after Batterton (2019). But compensatory includes the same range of human losses as the Jones Act: pain, suffering, lost earnings, medical care, and the rest. Unseaworthiness is a second, independent claim that does not require proving negligence, so it serves as a backstop if the Jones Act negligence argument is weak.
Maintenance and cure. A daily living allowance (the amount varies, but it is designed to cover food and lodging ashore) plus all reasonable medical expenses, running from the date of injury until maximum medical improvement. This is owed regardless of fault, and it is the fastest cash available to an injured seaman. A company that willfully refuses to pay it can be hit with punitive damages under Townsend (2009).
The workers’ compensation fork. For non-seaman offshore workers, the LHWCA or OCSLA-extended state comp provides no-fault scheduled benefits—faster, but capped and without pain-and-suffering. The third-party claim against the vessel owner (§ 905(b)) or against a non-employer contractor, equipment manufacturer, or premises operator is the route to full tort damages. Drawing this fork clearly is the most important early conversation with the family, because it reorders their entire understanding of the case.
The limitation of liability trap. A vessel owner can invoke the Limitation of Liability Act (46 U.S.C. § 30523) to try to cap everything they owe at the post-accident value of the vessel plus its pending freight. This is an 1851 law that can reduce a multi-million-dollar claim to pennies on the dollar—but only if the owner can prove it had no knowledge of or involvement in whatever went wrong. That is exactly where a thorough investigation cracks the defense: if the owner knew about the corroded pipe, the failed detector, the deferred maintenance, the limitation petition fails.
Honest case-value framing. The firm has recovered more than $50 million in aggregate for injured clients, including a $2 million-plus maritime back-injury settlement, a $5 million-plus brain-injury settlement, and a $3.8 million-plus amputation settlement. These are verified firm results. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. Every offshore fire case is unique—its value depends on the severity of the burn, the presence of inhalation injury or brain injury, the worker’s earning capacity, the strength of the negligence proof, and the insurance tower behind the defendant. What we can tell you is that the Jones Act was designed to make offshore employers pay the full cost of their choices, not a fraction of it, and that is the standard we build every demand to meet.
The Insurance Playbook: What the Company Will Try
Within hours of a platform fire, the operator’s risk-management team is working. Here are the plays they run and how we counter each one.
Play 1: The “just checking in” recorded-statement call. A friendly claims adjuster or company representative will call the injured worker or their family, express concern, and ask them to “just tell us what happened” on a recording. The call is engineered to get the worker to say “I’m feeling okay” or to describe the fire in a way that minimizes the company’s role. The counter: do not give a recorded statement without counsel. You have no obligation to do so. Anything you say can and will be transcribed and used to reduce your claim. The only statement that matters is the one you give with a lawyer present.
Play 2: The fast check with a release. A settlement check may arrive quickly, with a release form attached, before the full medical picture is known. Burns that look superficial on day one can deepen over 72 hours. Inhalation injury can worsen for days. A brain injury may not declare itself until the worker tries to return to work and cannot remember their own phone number. The insurance company knows this. The fast check is designed to close the file before the real costs appear. The counter: never sign a release before you know the full extent of your injuries, and you will not know that until your doctor says you have reached maximum medical improvement.
Play 3: The “you’re an independent contractor” defense. The employer will argue the injured worker was an independent contractor, not an employee, to escape Jones Act liability. But the test is not what the contract says—it is how much control the company exercised over the worker’s activities. If the company dictated the schedule, provided the equipment, controlled the means and methods of the work, and trained the worker, the “independent contractor” label is a fiction. The maritime law looks at control, not labels. This is the same fight we see in trucking cases, and it is one we know how to win.
Play 4: The company doctor and the IME. The insurer may send the worker to a doctor of its choosing for an “independent” medical examination. That doctor is not independent. The examination is designed to minimize the injury, attribute it to a pre-existing condition, or declare the worker has reached maximum medical improvement prematurely—cutting off maintenance and cure. The counter: the worker has the right to choose their own treating physician. Keep your own medical records, and let your treating doctor—not the insurance company’s hired expert—define your recovery.
Play 5: Social-media surveillance. The insurance company will monitor the injured worker’s social media accounts. A photo of the worker at a family barbecue, smiling, will be presented as proof that the burn is not serious—even if the worker was in agony an hour later. The counter: set every social media account to private immediately, do not post about the injury or the case, and assume every public post is being read by the insurance company’s investigator.
How We Build the Case
Here is the chronological walk of a maritime fire case from the day you call us to the day it resolves.
Week one. The preservation letter goes out—to the platform operator, to every contractor on site, to the vessel owner, to the equipment manufacturer. It demands, in writing, that all CCTV footage, sensor logs, maintenance records, inspection reports, the physical components involved in the fire, witness contact information, and the company’s own investigation file be preserved. This letter creates a legal obligation. If evidence disappears after the letter is received, the company faces spoliation consequences. We pull the FMCSA records if a commercial vessel was involved. We identify every potential defendant and every insurance tower behind them. We send a separate letter demanding maintenance and cure if the client is a seaman—because that obligation starts the day of injury, and every day it goes unpaid is leverage.
Weeks two through four. We secure the complete medical record from the burn center or trauma center—every TBSA assessment, every operative report, every fluid-resuscitation flowsheet, every blood gas, every imaging study. For brain-injury cases, we obtain the raw CT and MRI images (not just the radiologist’s report) so our neuroradiologist can re-read them for subtle diffuse axonal injury that the ER scan may have missed. We identify and interview witnesses while their memories are fresh and before they rotate to another platform. We begin building the life-care plan with a certified life-care planner, who prices out every surgery, every therapy session, every piece of equipment, and every caregiver hour the client will need for the rest of their life.
Months two through six. Discovery. We subpoena the company’s safety records, its prior incident reports, its OSHA or BSEE inspection history, its training records, its maintenance logs. We depose the safety director, the platform manager, the crew on duty—under oath, explaining the company’s choices. We hire a fire-cause investigator to reconstruct the origin and spread of the blaze. We hire a metallurgist if a pipe or vessel failed. We hire a process-safety engineer to compare the company’s actual practices against the standards it was required to follow.
The number. The demand is built from all of it—the medical records, the life-care plan, the lost-earnings projection from a forensic economist, the pain and suffering of a human being whose body was burned, whose lungs were seared, whose brain was injured, whose life will never be the same. The Jones Act’s “any part, even the slightest” causation standard means we do not have to prove the company was the sole cause—only that its negligence was one cause. That is a bar the company’s own records usually clear without much effort.
For a deeper look at how offshore cases work, watch our complete guide to offshore accidents—it walks through the entire process from injury through resolution.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do and What Not to Do
Hour 1: Medical care first. Burns worsen over 72 hours. Inhalation injury can worsen for days. Brain injury can declare itself late. Get to a burn center or a trauma center—the American Burn Association’s referral criteria are clear, and any fire-injury patient with burns over 10 percent TBSA, burns to the face or hands, any chemical or electrical burn, or any suspected inhalation injury belongs in a specialized burn unit. Do not let a small-platform medic or a company clinic make the call on whether you need a higher level of care.
Hours 2-24: Report the injury properly. Report it in writing to your supervisor. Get a copy of the incident report. Do not describe the fire in terms that minimize it—state what happened, what you saw, what you smelled, what you felt, what the conditions were. Do not speculate about cause. Do not admit fault. Do not sign anything beyond the incident report itself.
Hours 24-72: Document everything. Photograph your injuries before they are dressed—if medically safe to do so. Photograph the platform, the equipment, the scene if you can safely access it. Save every piece of paper the company gives you. Write down the names of every witness while you still remember them. Save every text message, every email, every dispatch record. Do not post on social media. Do not give a recorded statement to the insurance company or the company’s investigator.
Call a maritime lawyer. Not a general personal-injury lawyer—a maritime lawyer. The Jones Act, unseaworthiness, maintenance and cure, the LHWCA, OCSLA—these are specialized federal doctrines that a generalist will not know how to deploy. The preservation letter that saves the CCTV footage has to go out in days, not weeks. The maintenance and cure demand has to be made early, because every day the company does not pay is a day the worker goes without the daily living allowance and medical coverage the law guarantees them. The call costs nothing—the consultation is free, and we do not get paid unless we win.
Frequently Asked Questions
Am I a seaman if I work on a fixed production platform?
Not necessarily. A fixed production platform is not a vessel—it is a structure attached to the seabed. But if you spend at least about 30 percent of your work time aboard vessels that service the platform—crew boats, supply boats, drilling barges that can move—you may qualify as a seaman under the Chandris test. And if the platform itself is a jack-up rig, a semisubmersible, or an FPSO that is “practically capable of maritime transportation,” it may legally be a vessel, and you may be crew. Seaman status is the first question in any offshore case, and the answer changes everything.
What is maintenance and cure, and how fast should it start?
Maintenance is a daily living allowance (covering food and lodging ashore) and cure is all reasonable medical expenses, owed to an injured seaman from the moment of injury regardless of fault. It should start immediately—not after the company investigates, not after the claim is evaluated, not after the insurance company makes a determination. If the company is not paying maintenance and cure within days of the fire, it is violating a federal obligation, and we make that violation part of the case.
Can I sue if I was partly at fault for the fire?
Yes. Under the Jones Act, contributory negligence reduces your recovery but never bars it. If the jury finds you 20 percent at fault, you recover 80 percent of your full damages. And if the employer violated a federal safety statute that contributed to the injury, your contributory negligence is eliminated entirely. The “you were partly at fault” argument is the insurance company’s favorite line, and the law has an answer for it.
What if my loved one was killed in an offshore fire?
If the death occurred more than three nautical miles from shore, the Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA) controls, and recovery is limited to pecuniary losses—lost financial support, lost services, funeral costs. If the death occurred within three nautical miles, state wrongful-death law may apply, which can include loss of society and companionship. The three-mile line is outcome-determinative, and the exact location of the platform relative to the coastline must be established precisely. The personal representative of the decedent’s estate is the person authorized to bring the claim.
How long do I have to file a Jones Act claim?
Three years from the date the cause of action accrued—typically the date of injury. This deadline is imported from the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (45 U.S.C. § 56) through the Jones Act (46 U.S.C. § 30104). For latent injuries that manifest later—cancer from chemical exposure, a brain injury that is diagnosed weeks after the fire—the clock may start when you discovered or should have discovered the injury and its cause. But never assume the clock starts late. Three years passes faster than you think, and the evidence that proves your case does not wait for the deadline.
Will I have to go to court?
Most maritime injury cases settle before trial, but the Jones Act gives you the right to a jury, and the strength of that right is what drives settlement. A company that knows it will face a jury under the “any part, even the slightest” causation standard is a company that has a strong incentive to resolve the case fairly. We prepare every case as if it will go to trial, because that preparation is what makes the settlement real.
What if the company says I signed a waiver or release?
Under 45 U.S.C. § 55 (imported into the Jones Act framework), any contract, rule, regulation, or device designed to exempt the carrier from liability is void. A release signed in the hospital, under medication, before the full extent of injuries is known, is not a defense—it is a piece of paper the law refuses to enforce. If the company pushes a release on an injured worker, the timeline, the circumstances, and the worker’s condition at the time of signing are all evidence that the release is unenforceable.
What does it cost to hire a maritime injury lawyer?
Nothing upfront. We work on contingency—33.33 percent of the recovery before trial, 40 percent if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free, and we have live staff available 24 hours a day, seven days a week—not an answering service, but people who can take your call right now. If we are not the right fit for your case, we will tell you. If you need a specialist in a different area of law, we will say so. Honesty is the foundation of everything we do.
Why Attorney911
Ralph P. Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court—admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he learned to find the truth before he learned to argue it. He is admitted to the State Bar of Texas (Bar No. 24007597, licensed November 6, 1998) and is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association and the Houston Bar Association. Ralph leads the active $10 million-plus hazing lawsuit against Pi Kappa Phi and the University of Houston. He is Italian-American, born in New York, raised in Houston, and he speaks Spanish.
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm—the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like you. He is a former insurance-defense attorney who knows how the other side prices a claim, sets its reserves, selects its IME doctors, and runs surveillance. Now he sits on your side of the table. Lupe is admitted to the State Bar of Texas (Bar No. 24084332, licensed December 6, 2012) and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
Together, we have recovered more than $50 million in aggregate for injured clients—including a $2 million-plus maritime back-injury settlement that speaks directly to the offshore work we do. We handle cases from our Houston offices at 1177 West Loop South, Suite 1600, and 1635 Dunlavy Street, serving Harris, Montgomery, Fort Bend, Brazoria, and Galveston counties. Our Austin office serves Travis, Williamson, Hays, and Bastrop. Our Beaumont office serves Jefferson, Orange, and Hardin. And we take offshore and maritime cases statewide.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But the law that protects you—the Jones Act, the unseaworthiness doctrine, maintenance and cure—is not a promise we make. It is a federal statute that has been on the books for over a century, and it was written for the specific purpose of making offshore employers pay the full cost of the harm they cause. Our job is to make that law work for you.
If you were injured in a platform fire, or someone you love was, call us. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case. And the evidence that proves what happened is disappearing right now, on a timer set by the company’s own recording systems, counting down from the moment the fire started.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911). Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, a real person answers. Hablamos Español.