Memphis Personal Injury Law Blog

It seems as if every time you get behind the wheel of your car, you are placing your life at risk. More vehicles than ever are on the roads, and Tennessee speed limits continue to increase. Throw in a fleet of truckers anxious to meet their deadlines, and you have a recipe for tragedy.

From time to time, TV news or safety advocates will warn drivers of smaller vehicles what they can do to avoid being in an accident with a truck. Avoiding blind spots, keeping your distance and trying not to cut off a tractor-trailer are all sage pieces of advice, but sometimes no precautions can prevent a collision with a truck if the operator makes a critical error.

In the wake of the tragic downing of cargo ship El Faro on October 1, 2015, the widow of a crew member now looks for new safety measures. The El Faro went down as it carried cargo from Jacksonville, Florida to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The catastrophic event took the lives of 33 aboard the ship, including Frank Hamm, the husband of Rochelle Hamm.

What she found out about the events that transpired those few days, encouraged her to lobby for improved safety measures to protect merchant mariners in the future. She wishes that protection would have been in place for her husband. 

In terms of employment law, you might say that longshoremen and harbor workers occupy a place between seamen and land-based employees. Because they are part of a vast maritime industry, but do not necessarily go out to sea, the federal government created the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act in 1927 to protect this niche class of hardworking men and women.

The LHWCA differs from both the Jones Act that protects seaman and Tennessee's workers' compensation insurance. Unlike these protections, the LHEWCA generally gives injured workers the ability to be fully compensated if they suffer a loss. There are fine lines between these types of worker protections.