Dredge Engineer — $1,100,000.00

Case Snapshot

This Jones Act back injury case involved a longtime marine engineer who suffered a disabling lumbar injury while manually repositioning heavy oil drums aboard the dredge booster barge TEXAS JUNIOR at an employer maintenance yard in Morgan City, Louisiana. The job was supposed to be handled by crane, but the crane rigging could not reach the drums where they were stored beneath the vessel’s overhead hatch. That equipment gap forced workers below deck to manually roll and tip drums weighing as much as approximately 400 pounds into position before they could be lifted.

• Client: Dredge Engineer
• Residence: North Carolina
• Worksite: Dredge booster barge TEXAS JUNIOR at an employer maintenance yard in Morgan City, Louisiana
• Incident Date: December 14, 2015
• Incident Type: Lumbar injury while manually repositioning 55-gallon oil drums in a confined engine room beneath a misaligned overhead hatch
• Injuries: Lumbar disc herniation or prolapse, sciatica, lumbosacral radiculitis, lumbar radiculopathy, facet pain, chronic pain syndrome, gait impairment, leg weakness, and numbness
• Treatment and Procedures: Physical therapy; right L4-5 and L5-S1 epidural steroid injections; facet injections; right-sided radiofrequency ablation; rolling walker; trial spinal cord stimulator with approximately 50% relief; permanent spinal cord stimulator implanted October 15, 2018
• Key Legal Issues: Jones Act negligence, vessel unseaworthiness, unsafe work method, failed or incomplete job safety analysis, inadequate lift planning, comparative fault, and maintenance and cure
• Case Result: $1,100,000.00

Case Page Summary

A veteran dredge booster barge engineer was injured because the employer’s lift plan did not match the physical reality inside the TEXAS JUNIOR’s engine room. The assignment looked routine: remove approximately eight to twelve 55-gallon oil drums from the engine room using a crane positioned alongside the vessel at a Morgan City maintenance yard.

But the overhead hatch was small and did not line up with every drum. The available sling and barrel clamp could not reach the drums where they were stored. Before the crane could lift anything, workers had to manually roll and tip heavy drums across the engine-room floor and place them directly beneath the hatch.

No one stopped the job to obtain a longer sling. No one provided another mechanical solution. No meaningful safety plan addressed the manual repositioning that the crane setup inevitably required.

Our client suffered a disabling lumbar injury that led to years of physical therapy, injections, nerve procedures, use of a rolling walker, and ultimately implantation of a permanent spinal cord stimulator. A straightforward maintenance assignment aboard a company vessel created that reality. The company created it. Our job was to make sure the company was held responsible.

How an Unsafe Drum-Removal Job Caused a Disabling Back Injury

When you have spent your career as a marine engineer on dredge booster barges, you understand that the work is physically unforgiving. You also learn when a job plan does not account for what is actually happening below deck.

Our client knew that distinction better than most. He had spent decades serving as a watch engineer in the dredging industry, working aboard vessels such as the TEXAS JUNIOR. He knew what a properly planned lift was supposed to look like.

On December 14, 2015, he was not asking for anything complicated. He was doing what decades of service had trained him to do: showing up, following the assignment, and working. What the company failed to account for was that the drum-removal setup would place his lower back under forces from which it would never fully recover.

He is not offshore anymore. He is not aboard any vessel. He needs a rolling walker to move through his own home. He depends on his spouse for transportation to medical appointments. Those appointments now define much of his life outside the house.

He ultimately underwent implantation of a permanent spinal cord stimulator, a surgically placed device, because years of injections, nerve procedures, and physical therapy could not bring his pain under durable control.

This is the kind of preventable maritime injury a Jones Act back injury lawyer must be prepared to investigate, explain, and prove.

What Went Wrong Aboard the TEXAS JUNIOR

The lift failed at the planning stage.

A crane barge was positioned alongside the TEXAS JUNIOR at the Morgan City maintenance yard. The crane was fitted with a barrel clamp intended to grab 55-gallon drums one at a time, lift them through a small overhead engine-room hatch, and remove them from the vessel. On paper, it was a crane job.

Below deck, however, the job was materially different.

The hatch opening was small and was not positioned directly over every drum that needed to be removed. The crane rigging, using the available sling, could not reach the drums where they were stored. That created a dangerous gap between the written lift plan and the physical conditions inside the engine room.

Before a drum could be hoisted, someone below deck had to manually roll or tip it across the floor and place it directly beneath the hatch so the barrel clamp could reach it. Some drums were full or partially full and were described as weighing approximately 400 pounds.

Our client was working in that tight space, maneuvering drums by hand from an awkward position beneath the hatch, when he felt his back give out. That was the moment the injury occurred.

The safe response was simple: stop the job and re-rig. The employer could have obtained a longer sling, used equipment with greater reach, or provided another mechanical method of repositioning the drums.

Plaintiff-side evidence showed that our client requested a longer sling capable of reaching the drums where they sat. That request went nowhere. The operation continued, and our client paid for that decision with his body.

The Defenses Raised by the Company

The company attempted to shift attention away from the unsafe lift design by emphasizing delayed reporting, alleged comparative fault, pre-existing health conditions, and the absence of traditional lumbar surgery.

The defense leaned heavily on the reporting delay. Our client did not report the injury the same day. He returned approximately three days later. The company treated that gap as evidence that the injury might not have happened as described or that the engine-room drum assignment was not the true cause.

The defense also emphasized that no crewmember could clearly confirm seeing the precise moment he was hurt.

Next came comparative fault. The company argued that our client, as an experienced marine engineer, should have recognized the danger and refused the assignment, called for help, or stopped the job himself before moving a drum. The message was clear: an experienced seaman should have protected himself from the employer’s defective work plan.

The company also focused on his medical history, including diabetes, obesity, hypertension, hypothyroidism, and other pre-existing conditions. It repeatedly suggested that his back and leg symptoms were caused by his overall health rather than the work performed aboard the TEXAS JUNIOR.

On the medical side, the defense noted that his treating orthopedic surgeon had not recommended a traditional lumbar fusion or decompression procedure as of 2018. The company argued that the absence of that surgery meant the injury was not as severe as our client and his medical team claimed.

None of those arguments changed the central fact: inadequate rigging made hazardous manual drum movement foreseeable and necessary.

How We Uncovered the Unsafe Work Method

When maritime attorney Tim Young and The Young Firm took this case, we did not accept the company’s framing. We examined vessel records, the first notice of injury, job safety documents, deposition testimony from crew members and supervisors, and the physical geometry of the engine room and hatch as they existed on December 14, 2015.

The evidence showed that the hazard was built into the job design. The overhead hatch did not align with the locations where the drums were stored. The available rigging could not bridge that distance. Once those conditions made manual movement of near-400-pound drums necessary, there was no meaningful safety plan for that part of the assignment.

According to plaintiff-side evidence, the pre-job discussion did not adequately address how workers would physically move the drums into lift position inside the confined engine room. The job safety analysis addressed the crane operation but failed to account for the work being performed below the hatch.

Our human-factors analysis focused on that exact gap. When a crane cannot reach a load where it sits, manual repositioning is foreseeable. It is not an unusual complication. It is the logical result of inadequate lift geometry.

An employer that directs workers into a confined engine room containing heavy drums has a responsibility to plan for the actual handling required. This employer did not.

The request for a longer sling became one of the case’s most important evidentiary threads. Our client recognized the reach problem and asked for equipment that could have corrected it. The failure to respond to that request supported the Jones Act negligence claim.

On damages, we worked with treating physicians, a vocational rehabilitation expert, a life care planner, and an economist to document the full effect of the injury, from the first clinic visit a few days after the incident through years of escalating treatment that did not restore his function or eliminate his pain.

The Jones Act Negligence Claim

The Jones Act allowed our client to pursue his employer because he was a seaman whose work contributed to the function and mission of vessels in navigation. His status as a marine engineer aboard a dredge booster barge placed him within the class of maritime workers protected by the Jones Act.

The negligence theory centered on the employer’s failure to provide adequate rigging, a safe work method, a complete job safety analysis, and appropriate mechanical assistance.

The Jones Act permits a seaman to hold an employer responsible when workplace negligence contributes to an injury. Directing workers to manually reposition near-400-pound drums in a confined engine room because the supplied rigging could not reach them created a foreseeable lifting and material-handling hazard.

The employer’s plan did not adequately address that hazard. It did not provide a longer sling, an alternate reach configuration, or another mechanical method of moving the drums beneath the hatch. It also failed to ensure that the below-deck portion of the assignment was covered by a meaningful safety analysis.

That was the foundation of our Jones Act negligence claim.

The Vessel Unseaworthiness Claim

The unseaworthiness claim focused on whether the TEXAS JUNIOR, its equipment, and the work method used aboard it were reasonably fit for the drum-removal operation.

General maritime law requires a vessel, its appurtenances, and its crew’s methods of work to be reasonably fit for their intended purpose. Unseaworthiness can arise from defective equipment, inadequate equipment, or an unsafe method of performing assigned vessel work.

Here, the barrel clamp and short sling could not reach the drums where they were stored. Workers were left to compensate for that limitation by manually rolling or tipping heavy drums through a confined engine room.

That was not a technical defect without practical consequences. It was a fundamental failure in the vessel’s working condition and the method selected for the maintenance operation.

Why Morgan City and St. Mary Parish Mattered

The location mattered because the incident occurred at a vessel maintenance facility in Morgan City, within St. Mary Parish and Louisiana’s Gulf Coast maritime corridor.

Morgan City is a major center for dredging operations, inland waterway commerce, offshore support, marine construction, and vessel maintenance near the Atchafalaya River and surrounding Gulf Coast waterways. The area’s dredging, barge, inland-waterway, and vessel-repair industries shaped the work, the witnesses, the safety practices, and the maritime legal issues involved.

We understand how dredging companies operating in South Louisiana conduct maintenance projects. We know how job safety analysis procedures are supposed to work. We also know how employers often defend injuries they characterize as routine housekeeping or yard work.

Our client lived in North Carolina, but he built his career on vessels operating across rivers, ports, and coastal waters. We made sure that his distance from Louisiana did not become distance from accountability.

Key Lessons for Injured Maritime Workers

The Crane Plan Must Account for the Entire Job

A crane plan is incomplete when the equipment cannot reach the load from its actual stored position. When workers must manually move drums, cargo, or machinery before the crane can engage it, that manual-handling step must be evaluated, planned, and performed safely.

The paper plan is not the whole job. If the rigging cannot reach the load, someone has created an additional material-handling task that may expose workers to lifting, twisting, overexertion, and back injuries.

A JSA That Omits the Most Dangerous Step Can Be Evidence of Negligence

A job safety analysis fails when it covers the visible crane operation but ignores the manual work required below deck. The analysis should identify how the load will be reached, moved into position, controlled, and lifted under the vessel’s actual physical conditions.

When the pre-job discussion says nothing about moving near-400-pound drums through a confined engine room, the employer has left a foreseeable hazard unaddressed.

Requests for Safer Equipment Can Become Important Evidence

A worker’s request for a longer sling, different tool, mechanical aid, or safer procedure may show that the employer had notice of the hazard.

Our client’s evidence included a request for a longer sling that was not provided. That request helped demonstrate that the rigging problem was recognized before the injury.

Delayed Reporting Is a Challenge, Not an Automatic Bar

A delay in reporting may be used by the employer to dispute causation or credibility, but it does not automatically eliminate a Jones Act claim. Medical records, witness testimony, work assignments, symptom progression, and the physical mechanics of the incident may still establish what occurred.

A strong maritime legal team must explain the reporting timeline while keeping the focus on the unsafe condition that caused the injury.

Pre-Existing Conditions Do Not Erase Employer Responsibility

An employer cannot avoid responsibility merely because an injured seaman had diabetes, obesity, hypertension, prior degeneration, or another medical condition. A work incident may cause a new injury, aggravate an existing condition, or make a previously manageable condition disabling.

The legal question is not whether the worker was in perfect health. It is whether the employer’s negligence contributed to the injury or worsening condition.

Seaman Status Can Apply While a Vessel Is in a Maintenance Yard

A maritime worker does not automatically lose Jones Act protection because a vessel is tied to a dock or undergoing maintenance. Seaman status generally depends on the worker’s connection to a vessel or identifiable fleet and the nature and duration of that connection.

Dredge workers, marine engineers, deckhands, tankermen, and other vessel crewmembers may remain protected while performing maintenance aboard a barge or vessel at a shoreside facility.

About The Young Firm

The Young Firm represents maritime workers injured aboard dredges, barges, offshore vessels, workboats, and other commercial vessels throughout Louisiana, the Gulf Coast, inland waterways, and port communities. Our practice focuses on Jones Act negligence, vessel unseaworthiness, maintenance and cure, and the long-term consequences of serious maritime injuries.

We represent deckhands, engineers, tankermen, dredge workers, and other vessel crewmembers hurt because an employer cut corners on safety, failed to plan a job properly, or required work to proceed without suitable equipment.

Maritime attorney Tim Young has built his practice at the intersection of Jones Act negligence, vessel unseaworthiness, and the economic and human consequences of career-ending maritime injuries. This is not a side practice. It is what we do.

A reporting delay, pre-existing condition, or employer allegation of fault does not automatically end a maritime injury claim. What matters is what happened aboard the vessel, how the work was planned, whether safe equipment was provided, and whether the employer’s conduct contributed to the injury.

Speak with us today. There is no charge for the call, and we may be able to help get your life back on track.