Articles Tagged with Miami cruise ship lawyer

Our Florida Maritime Attorneys have dedicated their decades of experience to representing cruise ship passengers that are injured by the acts or omissions of the cruise ship industry and its employees. However, as this blog discussed last month, on occasion, it is one of the cruise ship’s crew that is injured by the negligence of a cruise company.

Generally, cruise ship crew members who are injured on the job are protected by the provisions of the “Jones Act,” as long as they fall under the legal definition of “seamen.” The Jones Act provides that a seaman that is injured as the result of the negligence of an employer or co-worker on a vessel may recover two different types of financial compensation from their employer known as “maintenance” and “cure” benefits. “Maintenance” requires the cruise line to continue paying a crew member wages in the event an on-the-job injury prevents the individual from being physically able to work, while “Cure” is the obligation of the cruise line to provide a crew member with medical care in the event an injury is sustained in the course of employment.

Recently, the protections offered to cruise crew members by the Jones Act have been threatened by proposed legislation, H.R. 4005. Introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on February 6, 2014, H.R. 4005, entitled the “Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Act of 2014”, for the most part, regulates various aspects of how the Coast Guard conducts its business.