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Editor: Rod Sullivan
Profession: Maritime Attorney

Category: Safety at Sea

American Maritime Cases is a source which has been relied upon by maritime attorneys for decades. However, a noticeable bias has developed in the past few years which is causing many attorneys, myself included, to forego citing to it in our briefs and legal opinions.

The reason is that AMC has become a publication of the "defense bar." The editorial board is dominated by attorneys representing Protection and Indemnity Associations, insurance companies, shipowners, and other defense interests.

In order to get a case published in AMC you need to submit it to a member of the editorial board who must find it to be noteworthy and then recommend it for publication. The problem is that defense attorneys seldom find cases in which the Plaintiffs win to be noteworthy, and hence they refuse to publish them.

Other, more subtle techniques of avoiding the publication of cases where Plaintiffs win is by erecting procedural barriers to publication. I once had three cases which I considered noteworthy, all of which were favorable to Plaintiffs. I submitted them to the local member of editorial board, who happened to be a defense attorney who represented the Protection and Indemnity Clubs. He lost the cases (or so he said). I sent him another copy. He lost them again. I sent a third copy---lost again. Obviously they were never going to be published, so I gave up.

I represent an importer of men's suits and jackets. There are a number of cases out of the Southern District of Florida, the State Courts of Florida, and the Southern District of New York finding that each suit, which is packaged in a plastic bag, is a package. One case found that they were not packages. I've tried for years to get the other cases published, but AMC simply wont do it. They don't want adverse case law to become well known so they don't publish it.

With the availability of LEXIS and Westlaw, AMC is an anachronism. I stopped purchasing the volumes last year. If you are looking for a complete set from 1916 to 2005, let me know.