After you are injured at sea, you might be unable to work and earn a wage, and your medical bills can quickly stack up, leaving you uncertain about how to pay all your bills. That can be incredibly stressful to deal with at a time when you’re trying to focus on reclaiming your health and getting back to your normal life, but you don’t have to let it paralyze you into inaction. In fact, procrastinating on acting on your injury can lead to a poor outcome where you’re denied the financial support that need. So, if you’ve been harmed at sea, then now is the time to take legal action.
But how do you even go about building your legal claim? There are a lot of moving parts to a maritime injury case, and cumulatively it can feel overwhelming. But you don’t have to try to do everything at once. Instead, focus on breaking down your claim into manageable pieces so that you can slowly but surely generate and gather the evidence needed to position your claim for success.
The first part of building your maritime law case is simply taking appropriate action after being harmed. This includes doing the following:
- Seeking out medical care: While you need to seek medical help after suffering an injury to ensure that you adequately treat and recover from the harm imposed upon you, visiting your doctor also creates a paper trail of the medical care you’ve received, your diagnosis and your prognosis. All of this can be powerful evidence in a maritime law case. So, be sure to seek timely medical care for your injuries and follow your doctor’s recommendations for follow up testing, care and rehabilitation.
- Report the incident to your employer: Your employer needs to be put on notice of the harm caused to you. Depending on your circumstances, there can be strict timelines in place as far as reporting the harm caused to you, so be sure to understand the timeframes in place and notify your employer accordingly.
- Gather additional evidence: Before succeeding on your maritime claim, you’ll have to present evidence to support your allegations. While your medical records can help establish your damages, they won’t prove causation. So, talk to witnesses who saw your accident, and see if you or someone you trust can take pictures of the scene of the accident. Make sure you have a command of the evidence that’s available and be aware of evidence that may not be favorable to your case. This will allow you to better anticipate defense arguments, thereby giving you a better opportunity to effectively counter them.
While there’s certainly a lot more that you can do to build your maritime injury case, this is a good starting point. Also, be sure to avoid giving recorded statements, as those are often used against claimants and sometimes serve as a justification for denied compensation.
If so, then we encourage you to continue reading up on the process so that you know what to expect and what it takes to be successful. Doing so will also leave you better positioned to make successful arguments that could lead to the recovery of compensation that you need and deserve. If you need additional guidance in figuring out the best way to build your case, then please continue to read our blog and consider seeking out any guidance that you may need.