Claris Law Legal Blogging Community

Editor: Rod Sullivan
Profession: Maritime Attorney

Category: Unseaworthiness and The Jones Act

Maritime employers are well known to invent pretexts for firing seamen who ware injured during the course of their employment. In 1981 the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans recognized a cause of action for retaliatory termination under the Jones Act. Later that year the 5th Circuit precedent became the law in the 11th Circuit (Florida, Georgia, and Alabama) as well.

Retaliatory termination is an intentional tort, meaning that a Jones Act seaman who is fired from his job is entitled to not only his lost wages, but also pain and suffering.

Smith v. Atlas Off-Shore Boat Service, Inc., 653 F.2d 1057 (5th Cir. 1981) the court said:

"The employer's discharge of the at-will seaman-employee, while it is in essence a lawful act, should not be used as a means of effectuating a "purpose ulterior to that for which the right was designed." Blades, supra note 3, at 1424. The employer should not be permitted to use his absolute discharge right to retaliate against a seaman for seeking to recover what is due him or to intimidate the seaman from seeking legal redress. The right to discharge at will should not be allowed to bar the courthouse door. Nor does the struggle affect only the employer and the seaman. To permit the seaman's discharge because he resorts to the courts may result in casting the burden of the employer's reprisal in part on the public in the form of unemployment compensation or social security for the worker or his family.

The recognition of a cause of action in admiralty providing the seaman with relief from a discharge caused by his filing of a claim against the employer is particularly appropriate in light of the admiralty court's protective attitude towards the seaman. n14 The judiciary's leading role in fashioning controlling rules of maritime law n15 and in reshaping old doctrine to meet changing conditions n16 makes the admiralty court peculiarly sensitive to the inequities inherent in the traditional rule. Moreover, this type of cause of action is not without federal precedent."