A Jones Act lawsuit is a federal claim an injured seaman can bring when an unsafe vessel or crew decision caused the injury. Unlike workers’ compensation, a Jones Act claim can account for the employer’s fault, which makes it a different kind of claim from comp. At Inzina Law Injury Attorneys, Blase and Erica Inzina handle Louisiana maritime cases personally.
Call (337) 347-7177 for a free consultation, or request a free case review below and we will call you back.
Reviewed and updated September 2026.
On this page
- What is a Jones Act lawsuit?
- Are you a seaman under the Jones Act?
- What makes a vessel or a job unsafe?
- How is a Jones Act claim different from workers’ compensation?
- What should you do after an offshore or vessel injury?
- What if you lost a loved one offshore?
- Why Inzina Law: A Lafayette husband and wife injury team
- Jones Act questions offshore workers ask
- Talk to a Louisiana Jones Act lawyer today
What is a Jones Act lawsuit?
A Jones Act lawsuit is how an injured maritime worker holds an employer accountable when the employer’s negligence, or an unsafe vessel, caused the injury. It is a federal law, not a state workers’ compensation claim, and it exists because offshore and vessel work is dangerous in ways ordinary jobs are not. If you were hurt working on a rig, a boat, or a barge, and something unsafe about the vessel or the crew played a part, you may have a claim. If you are not sure whether what happened to you is a case, that is exactly what the free call is for. And if another firm has already told you no, the second look is free.
Are you a seaman under the Jones Act?
The Jones Act protects seamen, and “seaman” is broader than it sounds. It covers the people who actually do the work out on the water: offshore rig hands, crew-boat and supply-vessel crews, barge workers, tugboat and dredge crews, and others who spend a real part of their job aboard a vessel that is in operation. You do not have to be a captain or a lifelong sailor. Whether you qualify turns on your specific job and how much of it happens aboard a vessel, so the honest answer for most Louisiana offshore and boat workers is to ask rather than assume. If you are not sure whether you count as a seaman, call us and we will tell you straight.
We take Jones Act cases from anywhere in Louisiana, not only Acadiana. The crews who call us work out of Port Fourchon, Morgan City, Intracoastal City, the Port of Iberia, Cameron, Venice and the Houma yards, and they get hurt in the Gulf, in the Intracoastal Waterway, on the Mississippi and the Atchafalaya, and in the inland canals and bayous. Where you were hurt matters to the case. It does not have to be near our office for us to take it.
What makes a vessel or a job unsafe?
It is rarely just a bad day at sea. Behind most offshore injuries is a decision someone made before the worker ever got hurt. Maritime employers operate under Coast Guard requirements and their own written safety manuals, and when a crew member gets hurt, the question we ask is which of those rules was ignored. Was the vessel unsafe or poorly maintained? Was the crew too small for the job?
Was broken gear left in service, or was training skipped? Was the crew pushed to keep working through weather, fatigue, or a schedule that could not be met safely? Those are company decisions, made onshore, and they are where the full case is. We don’t stop at what happened. We ask why the vessel was unsafe, because holding the company accountable is how the next crew stays safe.
How is a Jones Act claim different from workers’ compensation?
A Jones Act claim is not the same as a state workers’ compensation claim, and the difference matters. An ordinary comp claim does not ask whose fault the injury was. A Jones Act claim does: it turns on whether the employer or the vessel was negligent, which is why what actually caused your injury is worth investigating carefully. Maritime employers also carry a different kind of insurance, protection and indemnity coverage, rather than a standard comp policy. There are also two protections a comp claim does not have. If the vessel itself was unsafe, whether the gear, the crew, or the conditions, you may have a separate unseaworthiness claim against the vessel owner.
And separately from fault, an injured seaman is generally owed maintenance and cure: basic daily living expenses and medical care while you recover, regardless of who was to blame. A standard comp claim does not work that way. The practical result is that a maritime claim is a different kind of case than a comp claim, and it deserves to be handled by someone who works these regularly. We do, in-house. One more distinction worth knowing: dock, harbor, and longshore workers who are not seamen fall under a different federal system instead of the Jones Act, so if you are not sure which one covers your job, call us and we will help you find out.
What should you do after an offshore or vessel injury?
The first steps protect both your health and your claim. Report the injury to your employer, but be careful with the paperwork: the company accident-report form and any recorded statement get written down and used later, so it is fine to report the basic facts and decline to guess about cause or fault. Get medical care, and be honest with the provider about everything that hurts.
Do not sign a release and do not accept an early settlement offer before someone on your side has looked at it, because those early offers are often lower than the claim is worth. And preserve what you can: photograph the equipment or condition involved, and get the names of the crew who saw what happened. The company and its insurer start investigating right away, and evidence aboard a vessel can change or disappear, so getting a lawyer involved early matters more here than in almost any other kind of case. Then call us. The consultation is free and confidential.
What if you lost a loved one offshore?
Some offshore accidents take a life, and no webpage can speak to what that is like. What we can tell you is that maritime law gives certain family members a claim after a death at sea, both for what your loved one went through and for what your family has lost. We handle those cases personally, both of us, in plain language and at whatever pace your family needs. If you want straight answers about whether your family has a claim, the conversation is free and confidential.
Why Inzina Law: A Lafayette husband and wife injury team
Inzina Law Injury Attorneys is Blase and Erica Inzina, a husband and wife team in Lafayette. We take maritime cases in-house, and Blase or Erica personally oversees your case. You are not handed off to a file number. Blase spent more than twelve years defending insurance companies, including the kinds of carriers that stand behind maritime employers, which is why we know their playbook.
Erica, a former teacher, makes sure you understand what is happening at every step, in plain language and without pressure. And we ask the harder questions about why the vessel or the job was unsafe, because the goal is not only your recovery. It is making the company fix what it broke so the next crew does not go through the same thing.
Call (337) 347-7177 for a free consultation. No fee unless we win.
Jones Act questions offshore workers ask
What are the four requirements of the Jones Act?
You will see “four requirements” lists online, but a real case comes down to a few plain questions rather than a rigid checklist: Are you a seaman? Were you hurt in the course of your work? Did your employer’s or a coworker’s negligence play a part in what happened? And did that cause your injury? The only way to know whether your situation fits is to have someone look at the specifics, which we will do for free.
What must be met to be considered a Jones Act case?
The threshold that decides many of these cases is whether you count as a seaman: someone who does a meaningful part of their work aboard a vessel in operation. That covers a lot of Louisiana workers, offshore rig crews, crew-boat and supply-vessel hands, barge and tug crews, even though many of them do not think of themselves as sailors. The other piece is that something the employer or the vessel did wrong, an unsafe condition or a careless decision, was behind your injury. If both of those sound like your situation, it is worth a call.
Are cruise ships affected by the Jones Act?
The Jones Act protects the people who work aboard vessels, the crew, not cruise passengers, who generally have different remedies. For our clients that distinction rarely matters, because the workers we help are not on cruise ships at all. They are the offshore and inland vessel crews of the Gulf: rig hands, boat crews, barge and tug workers. If that is the kind of work you do and you were hurt on the water, the Jones Act is very likely the law that applies to you.
Does the Jones Act still exist?
Yes. The Jones Act is more than a century old, and it is still active federal law today. It still protects the offshore and maritime workers who keep Louisiana’s energy and shipping industries running. If you were injured doing that work, the same law that has protected seamen for generations protects you, and we can help you use it.
Related: we also handle maritime injury claims, barge accident injuries, car accidents, work injuries, wrongful death claims, and oilfield and construction injuries. For an overview of how the firm handles injury claims generally, see our Lafayette personal injury lawyer page.
Read more about Jones Act claims
Talk to a Louisiana Jones Act lawyer today
Call (337) 347-7177 for a free consultation. No fee unless we win. Prefer to type it out? Request a free case review and we will call you back.
Inzina Law Injury Attorneys
3861 Ambassador Caffery Pkwy Ste 601, Lafayette, LA 70503
(337) 347-7177 · inzinalaw.com