Thursday, May 7, 2026

When Shore-Based Employees Qualify as Seamen

What vessel operators need to know about Maritime Employers Liability, and why standard coverage isn’t enough.

Byron Gizoni was a rigging foreman at a ship repair facility in San Diego. He worked on floating platforms, pontoon barges, crane barges, and diver’s barges that had no power or steering of their own. Tugboats moved them into position alongside vessels being repaired. Gizoni rode those platforms as they were towed, occasionally served as a lookout, gave maneuvering signals to the tugboat operator, and received lines from ships’ crews to secure the platforms to the vessels under repair.

He was injured when his foot broke through a thin wooden sheet covering a hole in a platform deck.

Gizoni filed for and received Longshore benefits, the standard response for a ship repairman. His employer, Southwest Marine, assumed that was the end of it. Ship repairman is a job specifically named in the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act (LHWCA), and Southwest Marine argued that made Gizoni a harbor worker with Longshore as his exclusive remedy. Gizoni disagreed and filed a Jones Act lawsuit, alleging he was a seaman injured due to his employer’s negligence.



The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Gizoni’s favor. In Southwest Marine, Inc. v. Gizoni (1991), the Court held that a worker’s job title does not determine whether they qualify as a seaman. What matters is the worker’s actual connection to a vessel. Because Gizoni worked on and rode the floating platforms, contributed to their operation, and had a substantial employment-related connection to those vessels, he could qualify as a Jones Act seaman, regardless of what his job was called. The Court also rejected the argument that accepting Longshore benefits barred a subsequent Jones Act claim.

Gizoni is the case that established that Longshore coverage alone is not enough for those working on vessels. The Court confirmed that the same employee can be covered by the LHWCA for compensation purposes and still qualify as a Jones Act seaman for negligence liability purposes. Those two frameworks are not mutually exclusive. Maritime Employers Liability exists precisely because of that overlap.

The practical implication for agents: an employer that has people working on a watercraft can have Longshore coverage in place and still face uninsured Jones Act liability if an employee qualifies as a seaman. Job title doesn’t determine which framework applies. The worker’s actual connection to a vessel does. MEL is the coverage that responds to the Jones Act side of that equation.


What MEL Is and Why It Gets Missed

Maritime Employers Liability is the coverage that protects employers who have employees working from vessels they don’t own from liability to employees who qualify as seamen under the Jones Act. Unlike workers’ compensation, which is a no-fault system with defined benefits, the Jones Act allows injured crew members to sue their employer. MEL is what responds to that liability. When an employee qualifies as a seaman, workers’ comp doesn’t apply, and Longshore doesn’t apply. Without MEL, the employer pays Jones Act claims out of pocket.

The Classification Problem Agents Face

MEL gets missed because the accounts that need it don’t always look like they do. The employees most likely to trigger MEL exposure are not always the obvious ones, like the full-time captain or regular deckhand. They’re the employees whose relationship to the vessel is partial, occasional, or ambiguous.

Courts have consistently held that crew status doesn’t require full-time vessel work. It requires a substantial connection to a vessel and work that contributes to the vessel’s function or mission, even if that work is not the employee’s primary job.
  • Shore-based employees who board vessels regularly, even occasionally, as a predictable part of their duties
  • Dual-role workers who split time between vessel and shore work, needing MEL for vessel injuries and Longshore or state comp for shore-side injuries
  • Independent contractors who work alongside crew on vessel operations, as maritime law doesn’t care how someone is paid, only their relationship to the vessel
  • Seasonal or project-based workers whose crew status changes with the work; coverage structured around permanent crew may not account for peak-season exposure
If coverage is structured without accounting for these employees and one of them is injured on a vessel, the result is a Jones Act claim with no policy to respond to it, and a conversation with a client about why the coverage everyone assumed was in place wasn’t there to respond.

How to Identify Accounts That Need MEL

You don’t need to make classification determinations yourself. You need to recognize when the question is worth asking:
  1. Does the client operate or charter any vessels?
    If yes, MEL should be on the table.
  2. Do any employees work on or from vessels as a regular part of their job?
    Regular means predictable, not constant.
  3. Are there employees whose duties change by season, project, or location?
    Variable duties create variable classification.
  4. Does the client use contractors for vessel-related work?
    Contractor status doesn’t eliminate Jones Act exposure.
  5. Has the workforce or operations changed since the last renewal?
    Growth and new projects create new exposure.     
A yes to any of those means MEL belongs in the coverage structure. If the answers are uncertain, that’s reason enough to get underwriting guidance before placing coverage. Our expert underwriting team is here to help. 
 
Contact us for a 15-minute account review call.
(727) 578-2800 | Ask@LIGMarine.com


Follow us on LinkedIn

Posted by at