Kirkland Maritime Accident Attorney

Commercial Fishing Injuries & Recreational Boating Accidents

Commercial fishing or recreational boating accidents can be devastating, career-ending, and fatal. If you find yourself dealing with a serious maritime accident, you need to hire a personal injury attorney immediately. An experienced legal advocate can investigate the circumstances of your accident and obtain corroborating statements from witnesses on the vessel or in a recreational boating accident to support your claim.

When dealing with these types of cases, you need to establish proof of liability through witness statements and other various means. The underwriter of any vessel in a commercial fishing or another vessel on the high seas should be able to obtain statements of witnesses who are critical to your case, and our attorney can help facilitate the investigation. After a job is finished, crew members often disappear, moving on to other vessels or returning home, which is why acting fast to build your case is absolutely essential.

Let Attorney Rob Kornfeld Help You

At Kornfeld Law, our experienced legal team has the resources and the experience necessary to help you after a maritime accident involving a commercial or recreational boating incident. Attorney Robert Kornfeld has more than 38 years of legal experience and he has obtained more than $35 million in compensation for his clients. If you were seriously injured, you have a right to seek compensation for the resulting damages and our firm can help you fight for the justice you deserve.

Injured After a Boating Accident? We Can Help

Following a serious accident, it is absolutely crucial to take statements when the vessel is in port. Once an accident has taken place, you must inform your attorney of all possible eyewitnesses who could have seen the incident in question, or the conditions that led to the accident. Doing so better enables the investigator may obtain statements from all possible witnesses, supporting your case.

Potential Damages in a Maritime Accident

Next, proof of damages must be established. Typically, the damages you claim will include anything that affects the loss of past, present, or future earnings. For example, the vessel owner and crew might have earned future wages through ongoing fishing contracts with the same or other employers in seasons to come, if the accident hadn’t occurred. Therefore, an injured seaman may be entitled to lost future earnings and deserves compensation for the potential earnings, just like anyone injured in a car accident who is unable to return to work.

This injury may affect future anticipated contracts of employment with this or other vessels, or other work in the private sector. In the meantime, regardless of liability, injured seamen (which includes women) are entitled to recover medical treatment and ongoing maintenance, a daily wage. This care will continue until the seaman reaches maximum medical improvement, according to his or her treating physician.

Crews are often required to work under onerous and hazardous conditions in hopes of increasing the vessel’s revenues, which can be exceedingly risky for all of those involved. These conditions can lead to serious injuries, property damage, and may even cause fatalities. In short, asking a worker to continue working in hazardous circumstances is dangerous, careless and negligent. If you were injured because of the negligence of an employer or an operator and owner of any type of sea-going vessel, or any condition aboard the vessel is an “unseaworthy” condition aboard the vessel (this is a legal term of art Rob can explain to you), you may have a Jones Act claim. A Jones Act claim may provide you with an easier opportunity to prove negligence and allow you to an opportunity to recover your lost past and future wages, compensation for medical expenses, for pain and suffering, and other general damages.

If you were injured in a boating accident, whether it’s aboard a sea-going vessel or a recreational boating accident on a river, or lake, you may be entitled to compensation for the following: