Breakfast & Refreshments Provided

We will discuss various issues pertaining to maritime defense and indemnity, including interpretation of contracts, choice-of-law, and anti-indemnity statutes. 

The history and current law concerning wrongful death recovery in maritime cases. I will also briefly touch on survival actions.

The presentation will address recent procedural developments in the doctrine of shipowners’ limitation of liability in maritime cases, pursuant to the 1851 federal statute, the Shipowners’ Limitation of Liability Act. The topics that will be discussed include the parties that can assert limitation of liability, when the courts have jurisdiction to hear a limitation action, when a suit is timely under the six-month rule in the statute, which issues (among liability, apportionment, limitation, and damages) must be heard in a federal admiralty court and which issues may be heard in a common-law court and the procedure to allow portions of a limitation matter outside the federal admiralty court, when claims must be filed and how to default claimants who have not presented a timely claim, proper pleading of the limitation action, and when can the shipowner be exonerated or have its liability limited.

A panel of learned judges discuss the most recent developments in maritime personal injury law including:  Jurisdiction and Removal, Vessel Status, Seaman Status, Maintenance and Cure Jones Act Liability, Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, General Maritime Law, Punitive Damages, Indemnity, and Insurance.

The presentation will discuss seaman status when the seaman has two employers: a lending/direct employer and a borrowing employer. The presentation will examine Wilcox v. Wild Well Control, 794 F.3d 531 (5th Cir. 2015), where the Fifth Circuit refused to adopt a rule to govern this scenario, as well as Cole v. Oceaneering International, Inc., 681 F. Supp. 3d 568, 581 (E.D. La. 2023), where the district court determined that appropriate employment period, for purposes of a Jones Act claim against a borrowing employer, is the one with the borrowing employer, not the lending/direct employer. The presentation argues that Cole was correctly decided. The presentation is based on a paper that will soon be published in the Tulane Maritime Law Journal. 

This presentation will cover recent decisions related to the application of maritime law to mixed contracts and admiralty jurisdiction.

A recent line of cases out of Louisiana federal district courts has examined the distinction between pain and suffering, which are considered pecuniary damages and thus recoverable under the Jones Act, and mental anguish, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life, and permanent scarring and disfigurement, all of which are considered non-pecuniary and therefore not available damages to seaman. While it is clear that non-pecuniary damages are not recoverable under the Jones Act, certain courts have considered aspects of these damages, such as mental and emotional anguish and loss of enjoyment of life when assessing damages for pain and suffering. While some district courts may allow evidence on these non-pecuniary damages to inform the court’s award for pecuniary damages, others have drawn a hard line by dismissing all claims for scarring and disfigurement, loss of enjoyment of life, and other such elements of damages traditionally considered non-pecuniary. This CLE will dive into these nuances, examine the history of this jurisprudence, and discuss how litigants may consider addressing these issues in one’s practice.