Documents to Gather Before a Maritime Injury Review

What a Maritime Injury Review Looks At

A maritime injury review is a conversation built around the records that establish what happened: the incident itself, the injured person's status and employment terms, the vessel, and the medical picture. Those four pieces are what a legal claim depends on, so they are what the review keeps coming back to.

Which law applies depends on the facts: where the injury happened, the vessel, the waters, and the injured person's status. A Jones Act seaman is a worker whose job ties them to a vessel; under 46 U.S.C. § 30104, a seaman injured in the course of employment, or the personal representative if the seaman dies from the injury, may elect to bring a civil action at law, with a jury, against the employer. The same section excludes certain aquaculture workers from the term "seaman" where state workers' compensation is available to them. Other workers fall under the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act, and some fall under neither. Not every offshore worker is a seaman, and the guide to who qualifies as a Jones Act seaman explains that line in more depth.

The records matter for another reason. Under 46 U.S.C. § 6308(a), no part of a Coast Guard marine casualty investigation report, including its findings of fact, opinions, recommendations, deliberations or conclusions, is admissible as evidence or subject to discovery in any civil or administrative proceeding, other than an administrative proceeding the United States starts. The Coast Guard's own rule, 46 C.F.R. § 4.07-1(b), says its investigations promote safety and are not intended to fix civil or criminal responsibility. So a review leans on the underlying records instead.

Having those records in hand means the conversation can spend its time on what the law asks rather than guessing at what a document might say.

The Injury Report and What It Contains

The injury report is often the first document a worker thinks of, and the one they are least likely to have seen. Under 46 C.F.R. § 4.05-1(a), the owner, agent, master, operator or person in charge of a covered vessel generally must notify the Coast Guard of a marine casualty that includes, among other events, a loss of life, or an injury that requires professional medical treatment beyond first aid and, for a person engaged or employed on board a vessel in commercial service, renders that person unfit to perform their routine duties. Some injuries to shipyard or harbor workers are excluded from that notice rule when they fall under OSHA reporting instead.

The written follow-up is set out in 46 C.F.R. § 4.05-10(a). The owner, agent, master, operator or person in charge must file it within 5 days on Form CG-2692 (Report of Marine Casualty, Commercial Diving Casualty, or OCS-Related Casualty), supplemented as necessary by appended forms: CG-2692A (Barge Addendum), CG-2692B (Report of Mandatory Chemical Testing Following a Serious Marine Incident Involving Vessels in Commercial Service), CG-2692C (Personnel Casualty Addendum), and CG-2692D (Involved Persons and Witnesses Addendum).

That report is the employer's or operator's account. It may not match the injured person's memory of how things happened, and seeing where the two differ is one of the most useful things a review can do. The involved persons and witnesses addendum also matters on its own, because it lists people who were present. Injured workers and families often ask the employer or vessel owner for a copy.

Recreational boating is different. Under 33 C.F.R. § 173.57(b), a recreational boating accident report must contain, if available, a long list of information, including each vessel's number and name, each owner's name and address, the time, date and location, weather and water conditions, each person injured or killed, the nature and extent of each injury, any equipment failure, a description of the accident, and the name, address and telephone number of each witness. Maritime jurisdiction for recreational incidents is fact-specific, and many are governed by state law.

Pay Records and the Crew or Fishing Agreement

Pay records answer a question people rarely expect a review to ask first: what exactly was the job? Under 46 U.S.C. § 10601, before a voyage the owner, charterer, managing operator or their representative, including the master, of a fishing vessel, fish processing vessel or fish tender vessel must make a written fishing agreement with each seaman on board if the vessel is at least 20 gross tons (as measured under the statute) and on a voyage from a United States port. The agreement must state its period of effectiveness, include the terms of any wage, share or other compensation arrangement peculiar to the fishery, include a meal requirement for crew on certain larger catcher processors or fish processing vessels with more than 25 crewmembers, and include other agreed terms.

A crew or fishing agreement is one of the documents that helps show whether a person may qualify as a seaman, along with worker status and waterway facts. That is why it can shape which framework a review starts from. The page on commercial fishing injuries covers share pay and seaman status for fishermen.

Pay stubs, direct-deposit records and share settlement sheets show how a worker was paid and often show how long they worked. Workers usually have these in their own mail, email or banking app, or can ask the employer for them. If something is missing, a review can point out the gap and why it matters.

Medical Records and Why the Timeline Matters

If you were treated in an emergency room, then by a doctor you chose, then perhaps by a doctor the company sent you to, you may be holding three different stories about the same injury. Medical records from the date of injury forward, including emergency department notes, treating physicians' records, imaging and follow-up visits, document the nature and extent of the injury.

Treatment given on the vessel, such as first aid or an entry in a medical log, and treatment from a company-directed physician are separate records from care a worker chose independently. Both can be relevant, and the differences between them are often worth raising.

The timeline matters as much as the diagnosis. The sequence from injury, to first treatment, to ongoing care is part of what a legal claim must establish, and a gap or a delay can raise questions. A review can help explain why a gap exists, whether it was a long voyage home, a missed referral or a delay in getting off the vessel.

For a seaman, the medical record also bears on maintenance and cure, the maritime doctrine under which a vessel owner pays a seaman's medical treatment and daily living expenses during recovery. That obligation depends in part on the record connecting the injury to the seaman's service.

Photos, Video, and the Vessel's Name and Owner

Photos and video from the scene, the equipment involved and the injury itself, taken at or near the time of the incident, show conditions before they change. A wet deck, a frayed line or a broken rail may look very different a week later. Pictures on an injured worker's own phone are among the most commonly available pieces of evidence at the time of a review, and they often surprise people by how much they show. Falls are a frequent example, and the page on vessel deck fall injuries explains how worker status shapes those cases.

The vessel's name, and its official number where one exists, often appear on the vessel itself and on paperwork the worker received. The owner's identity is part of establishing who the potential parties are, since the employer, the vessel owner and others are not always the same company.

None of this involves taking company property, copying company files or breaking workplace rules. The records described on this page are ones an injured person typically already has in their own possession or can ask for.

Witness Names and What They Observed

Coworkers who saw the incident, or the conditions beforehand, can give accounts that stand apart from the employer's or operator's report. That independence is what makes them valuable.

Useful witness information is simple: the person's name, their role on the vessel or at the worksite, and a brief note of what they saw. A deckhand who watched a winch slip, or a crane operator who saw a load swing, can each add a different piece.

The involved persons and witnesses addendum to Form CG-2692, described earlier, may already list some of the people who were there. Injured workers also tend to remember names of coworkers on the same shift. Memories and contact details can become harder to recover as crews rotate and time passes, so many injured workers and families write down names while they are fresh, on their own, from their own memory.

Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act Claims: The Forms That Start the Process

The Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act is a federal compensation program for certain maritime workers, including longshore workers, harbor workers and others, who do not qualify as Jones Act seamen. Worker status and the facts of employment decide whether it applies. The pages on longshore worker injuries and offshore worker injuries explain where that line tends to fall.

The Department of Labor's Longshore claimant page lists the forms that start the process. It describes giving written notice of an injury to the employer within 30 days on Form LS-201 (Notice of Employee's Injury or Death), and says notice of death must also be given within 30 days, with additional time for certain hearing loss and occupational disease claims. It describes filing a written claim for compensation on Form LS-203 (Employee's Claim for Compensation) within one year after the date of injury or last payment of compensation, whichever is later, and says a claim for survivor benefits must be filed within one year after the date of death. The same page lists Form LS-1, which an employer provides to authorize treatment by a doctor of the worker's choice.

Copies of these forms, or knowing whether they were filed and when, show the official record of the claim and its status. For a family after a death, the page also lists Form LS-262 (Claim for Death Benefits).

What the Record Cannot Tell You — and What a Review Can

A stack of records shows what happened, who was there, and what the work and medical picture looks like. It does not, by itself, answer whether a legal claim exists or what that claim would have to show. Those answers depend on how the law applies to those exact facts.

Many seamen hesitate to report an injury because they worry about their job. Under 46 U.S.C. § 2114(a), a person may not discharge or in any manner discriminate against a seaman because, among other listed reasons, the seaman notified, or attempted to notify, the vessel owner or the Secretary of a work-related personal injury or work-related illness. The same subsection also protects, including, good-faith safety reports, cooperation with a Coast Guard or National Transportation Safety Board safety investigation, and accurate reporting of hours of duty. Whether it applies depends on the facts.

Once records are gathered, keeping them intact is its own subject, covered in this site's guide to preserving records for your review. If you would like to talk through which framework may fit, what your records show and what else may be worth requesting, you can request a case evaluation.