All
too often the bottom line of profits and money tend to take precedence
over the people that actually allow the money to be made in these
lucrative fields to begin with. Shipowners and / or the corporations
that own them tend to be less sympathetic to the working conditions of a
roughneck then they are to when profit margins are cut. If you’re
working in this industry, you need an offshore injury lawyer who
understands this and are willing to vigorously fight for you and your
family, knowing that the opposition usually has deep pockets and is
capable of maintaining an expensive fight in court. There are many
types of accidents that can occur in these hazardous types of work
environments. Both ships and offshore oil rigs have oversized and heavy
pieces of machinery that can easily maim or cause death, there are
flammable and toxic fumes that can easily ignite or cause serious
internal, chemical injuries, wet decks pose an easy environment in which
a person can slip and fall, someone could simply be tossed overboard,
or any combination of the aforementioned.
If you’ve spent any amount of time working on a ship or an offshore oil rig, no one has to explain to you just how dangerous it is to work in either of these environments, and how often accidents take place. There is a natural frequency of accidents in this environment, and chances are you will, sometime in the future, require the services of an offshore injury lawyer if you haven’t employed one already. Simply stated, an offshore injury lawyer is simply a personal injury lawyer who specializes in accidents on sea vessels or on offshore rigs. A run-of-the-mill personal injury lawyer won’t be enough, you’ll need someone who is experienced in this specialized field. A good offshore injury lawyer will be familiar and comfortable with General Maritime Law, Death on the High Seas Act, the Longshore and Harbor Worker’s Compensation Act, as well as the Jones Act. These accidents are a foregone conclusion, it’s not a matter of if, but when. And when these accidents do happen, the very first knee-jerk reaction that shipowners and the corporate entities that own these rigs have is to build a legal fortress from which to disseminate misinformation as well as to task their hired goons in the form of attorneys and investigators in order to try and pressure, cajole, threaten, persuade, and bribe you to take a fraction of their true liabilities. They will exert as much force in order to protect their hoarded gains, legal and illegal, as long as the methods work. They take advantage of the general ignorance of the average roughneck, and try to pin the brunt of the responsibility on the roughneck in order to avoid paying the medical costs and just compensation that is due them. You cannot let them take advantage of you. It is a simple case of the shipowner sacrificing the health, life and general well-being of their workforce for cold hard cash, and it’s simply wrong.
