Tugboat Crew Member — $800,000.00

Case Snapshot

Client

Tankerman and inland river towboat crew member

Residence

Not published — client identity protected

Worksite

Drydock facility near Vicksburg, Mississippi, in the Mississippi River towing corridor

Incident Type

Vessel shifted and dropped to port during a drydock lift; client was thrown onto the steel deck

Injuries

Left-shoulder diffuse labral tearing and fraying, joint instability, subluxation episodes, and arthropathy

Surgery

Left-shoulder labral and capsular repair, approximately July 20, 2021

Key Legal Issues

Jones Act negligence; vessel unseaworthiness; unsafe drydocking procedures; self-positioning without a shift boat; inadequate safety documentation; post-incident procedural changes

Case Result

$800,000.00

Case Page Summary

This tugboat shoulder injury case involved a tankerman who was thrown onto a steel deck when an inland towboat shifted and dropped to port during a drydock lift near Vicksburg, Mississippi. The accident caused immediate shoulder pain, worsening instability, diffuse labral damage, work restrictions, and eventually surgery.

Our investigation focused on a central question: why was a crew member riding a vessel through a drydock lift when the towboat had entered without proper assist-boat support and before the hull-support system had been confirmed safe?

The defense tried to blame the vessel captain. It pointed to our client’s prior shoulder surgery. It argued that self-positioning a towboat into drydock was an accepted practice.

We looked deeper.

We examined the drydock setup, the missing shift boat, the timber-block system, the shipyard’s safety materials, the testimony of the people involved, and the medical timeline that connected the accident to our client’s disabling shoulder condition.

This is how the case unfolded.

There Is Nothing Routine About a Drydock Lift

A drydock lift may look like a standard maintenance operation from the outside. For the crew riding the vessel through it, there is nothing routine about it.

On the inland river system, towboats enter drydock for hull inspections, repairs, and maintenance that cannot be done while the vessel remains in the water. When the process works correctly, the vessel enters the floating drydock, aligns over supporting timber blocks, ties off, and rises evenly as water is pumped from the dock.

When the process fails, the people aboard the vessel feel that failure first.

A towboat can shift, tilt, drop, or roll without warning. A crew member standing on a steel deck may have no time to brace, no stable footing, and no realistic way to protect himself.

Our client was a young towboat crew member who had worked long enough to earn his tankerman credentials. He knew the river. He knew the vessel. He knew the physical demands of maritime work.

What he did not know was that the drydock lift on May 22, 2019, would throw him onto the deck before the operation was complete.

Crew members helped him up. He immediately reported pain in his left shoulder. He told the people around him that something was wrong.

What followed was more than two years of medical appointments, diagnostic imaging, physical therapy, worsening instability, and restrictions that affected his ability to do maritime work. Conservative treatment could not repair the damage. He eventually underwent a left-shoulder labral and capsular repair.

From our perspective, this injury should not have required a years-long fight for recognition.

What Went Wrong During the Vicksburg-Area Drydock Lift

A drydock lift-out is a precision operation. The vessel must enter the floating drydock and come to rest above a series of timber blocks arranged along the dock floor. Those blocks support the hull as water is removed and the drydock rises.

The system depends on accurate alignment.

Guide rails and other positioning structures inside the dock help keep the vessel centered over the blocks. If the hull is off-center, if a timber is loose, if a support is improperly placed, or if an alignment structure is struck or displaced, the vessel may not settle evenly as the dock rises.

On the day of our client’s accident, the usual independent positioning support — a shift boat, fleet boat, or comparable assist vessel — was unavailable.

Instead, the towboat entered and attempted to position itself under its own power.

Shipyard personnel allowed that method to proceed.

After the towboat was tied off, the drydock began to rise. Then the vessel suddenly shifted and dropped to port. Witnesses described the movement differently. Some estimated a roll of approximately 20 to 30 degrees. Others described a more severe angle or a vertical drop of several feet.

No witness disputed that the movement was abrupt.

Our client was on the forward deck. He had no time to brace himself before losing his footing and landing hard on the steel surface. Crew members helped him up after the vessel stabilized, and he reported left-shoulder pain.

The drydock operation stopped. Personnel lowered the dock and pulled the vessel out.

A later inspection identified broken or loosened timbers, broken welds, and drydock components that had shifted. Some accounts attributed the event to a failed timber beneath the hull. Others suggested that the vessel had contacted or displaced a guide structure while entering under its own power.

The precise mechanical sequence remained disputed.

The practical result did not.

The vessel was not safely supported. It moved during the lift. A seaman was injured while performing his assigned work.

The Defenses Raised by the Company

The defense attempted to separate the unsafe vessel movement from the decisions that allowed the lift to proceed.

The shipyard maintained that self-positioning was an accepted practice. It argued that similar procedures had been used before, that the vessel operator was familiar with the facility, and that the method was acceptable. A maritime expert retained for the defense supported that position.

The defense also pointed toward the captain.

Its position was that the captain should have stopped the operation if he believed the vessel was misaligned or unsafe. Under that theory, responsibility rested with the vessel’s command rather than with the shipyard personnel involved in the drydock setup and lift.

Then came the medical-history argument.

Our client had undergone left-shoulder surgery years earlier after a football injury. The company emphasized that history and argued that degenerative findings on later imaging were pre-existing. It suggested that the prior surgery could explain his symptoms and that the drydock fall may not have caused a new injury.

In practical terms, the defense tried to blame the captain, blame our client’s medical history, and treat the drydocking procedure itself as blameless.

We examined each position against the operational documents, witness testimony, safety procedures, medical records, and changes made after the accident.

How We Uncovered the Operational Failures

Our investigation found that the shipyard manager had not personally verified the timber measurements or confirmed that the drydock configuration matched this vessel’s hull before the lift.

That mattered.

The drydock operation depended on the vessel being properly positioned over secure supports. Yet the person overseeing the operation could not establish that the support system had been checked and confirmed safe before pumping began.

The shipyard had also placed one of its workers aboard the towboat to handle lines and assist with positioning. That fact supported our position that shipyard personnel were not merely providing a passive location for the vessel. They were participating directly in the alignment process.

We then examined the shipyard’s written safety materials.

The safety manual contained no drydocking-specific procedure. The available checklist materials did not require personnel to inspect or document the security of the supporting timbers before beginning the lift.

This was not a case where a detailed safety procedure had been followed and an unforeseeable event occurred anyway. The written system failed to address the very positioning and support hazards implicated by the accident.

We also looked at what happened after the vessel dropped.

Post-incident procedural changes must be handled carefully. Depending on the issue and the governing evidentiary rules, later safety changes may not be admissible to prove negligence. But they can still help identify the hazards a company considered important enough to correct.

Here, the shipyard later required fleet-boat assistance for drydocking operations. The vessel operator also adopted a policy removing non-essential personnel during lifts.

Those changes did not decide liability by themselves. But they addressed two central features of the accident: controlling the vessel during drydock entry and limiting crew exposure during the lift.

How We Connected the Shoulder Injury to the Accident

The company tried to use our client’s prior shoulder surgery against him.

But a prior procedure does not automatically explain every later symptom. It also does not eliminate a maritime employer’s responsibility when a workplace accident aggravates, activates, or combines with an underlying condition.

The critical question was how our client’s shoulder functioned before May 22, 2019.

There was no documented pattern of left-shoulder complaints during the years between his earlier recovery and the drydock accident. He had performed physically demanding maritime labor. He had earned his tankerman credentials. He had continued working without documented instability that prevented him from doing the job.

Then the vessel dropped.

He landed on the steel deck, reported pain immediately, and began a medical course that ultimately revealed extensive pathology. His treating specialist documented diffuse labral tearing involving multiple regions of the shoulder, recurrent instability, and subluxation episodes.

Those findings led to significant work restrictions, including sedentary-only activity and restrictions on using the left arm until surgical correction.

Our position was straightforward: this was not simply an old injury appearing on an image. This was a functioning maritime worker whose shoulder became painful, unstable, and occupationally disabling after a violent workplace event.

Maritime law generally takes an injured worker as the employer finds him. When workplace negligence aggravates or activates an underlying condition, the existence of that condition does not automatically defeat causation or damages.

Jones Act Negligence and Unseaworthiness

This case implicated several maritime legal theories, including Jones Act negligence, vessel unseaworthiness, and potential shipyard negligence.

Under the Jones Act, a qualifying seaman may bring a negligence claim against his employer. The employer’s duties may include providing a reasonably safe workplace, using safe methods of work, supplying appropriate assistance, enforcing adequate procedures, and responding reasonably to known operational risks.

Here, the evidence raised several negligence questions:

Why was the drydock operation allowed to proceed without a shift boat or fleet boat?

Who verified that the vessel was centered over the supporting timbers?

Who confirmed that the timbers and associated structures were secure?

Why did the written safety program lack a drydocking-specific procedure?

Why were crew members exposed on deck during the lift?

The Jones Act’s causation standard is favorable to injured seamen. A worker does not have to prove that employer negligence was the sole cause of the accident. The issue is whether the employer’s negligence played any part, even a slight part, in producing the injury.

Unseaworthiness is a separate maritime claim generally asserted against the vessel owner. It concerns whether the vessel, its equipment, appurtenances, crew, or operative condition was reasonably fit for its intended purpose.

The application of unseaworthiness to a drydock event depends on the facts, including who owned or controlled the relevant equipment, whether the condition was connected to the vessel’s service, and whether the alleged defect involved the vessel or a shore-based facility.

We investigated those relationships rather than assuming the label attached to the location determined responsibility.

The shipyard’s own potential negligence also mattered. Its personnel participated in positioning, operated the drydock, prepared the supporting system, and controlled whether the lift proceeded.

Our client was not the captain. He did not control those decisions. He was a tankerman and crew member performing assigned work when the vessel moved beneath him without warning.

Why the Mississippi River Location Mattered

The accident occurred near Vicksburg, Mississippi, within the Mississippi River inland-towing corridor. But the legal analysis extended beyond the physical shipyard.

Jones Act cases can involve federal maritime law, multiple corporate defendants, competing venue choices, and evidence located across state lines. Towboats operating along the Mississippi River may move through facilities in Mississippi, Louisiana, and other Gulf Coast states while their crews live and work across the broader inland river system.

That mobility can complicate a maritime injury claim.

The applicable law may be federal, but forum, jurisdiction, witness location, maintenance records, contractual relationships, medical treatment, and corporate control can all affect how a case proceeds.

At The Young Firm, we represent maritime workers from Louisiana, Mississippi, the Gulf Coast, the Mississippi River corridor, and the inland towing industry. We understand the work, the waterways, and the defenses commonly raised when a seaman reports a serious shoulder injury.

Key Lessons for Injured Towboat Workers

Unexpected vessel movement during drydocking is a serious warning sign that deserves investigation. A towboat worker does not need to identify the exact broken timber, failed weld, or positioning error before speaking with a maritime lawyer.

Competing explanations involving timber failure, guide-rail contact, improper alignment, or vessel handling do not automatically defeat a claim. Those theories identify the evidence that must be preserved and the parties whose conduct must be examined.

The absence of a shift boat may be significant. Whether an assist vessel was required depends on the facility, vessel, conditions, and established safe practice. When a drydock later changes its policy to require fleet-boat assistance, the prior decision to proceed without one deserves close scrutiny.

A prior surgery does not end a maritime injury claim. A long period of symptom-free physical work can help show that an old condition was stable before a new accident aggravated or activated it. Medical records, employment records, witness testimony, and the timing of symptoms are critical.

A crew member is not responsible for command decisions he did not control. Companies may blame a captain, shipyard, vessel operator, or another contractor. Those disputes do not erase the rights of a tankerman or deckhand who was performing assigned duties when the vessel moved.

Delayed surgery does not necessarily weaken causation. Treatment delays can result from conservative care, disputed authorization, referral timing, diagnostic uncertainty, or attempts to avoid surgery. The complete medical chronology matters more than the surgery date alone.

Loss of maritime earning capacity can exceed immediate lost wages. A shoulder injury may prevent heavy deck work, line handling, climbing, lifting, and emergency duties. Damages may include the long-term difference between the maritime career the worker could have pursued and the work he can perform after the injury.

What to Do After a Drydock Injury

When a vessel shifts, rolls, drops, or throws a worker during drydocking, evidence can disappear quickly. Timbers may be replaced. Damaged structures may be repaired. Electronic communications may be deleted. Witnesses may return to vessels operating hundreds of miles away.

Early investigation can help preserve photographs and video of the vessel and drydock, timber measurements, block-placement plans, inspection records, repair records, welding records, safety manuals, drydock checklists, vessel logs, incident reports, crew statements, communications between the shipyard and vessel operator, and policies in effect before and after the accident.

A shoulder injury should not be dismissed because a worker is young, because an MRI includes degenerative language, or because he had an earlier procedure years before the accident.

The Young Firm represents injured deckhands, tankermen, towboat crew members, offshore workers, and other qualifying seamen in Jones Act, unseaworthiness, maintenance and cure, and maritime negligence claims.

Maritime attorney Tim Young and our legal team offer free consultations to injured seamen and their families. There is no attorney’s fee unless we obtain a recovery.

Reach out today. We can talk through what happened and what your options are.