Vents de Carême – Cajun French term for "strong spring winds, 'March winds'" (Dictionary of Louisiana French: As Spoken in Cajun, Creole and American Indian Communities (Univ. of Miss. Press, 2010, p. 646); literally...more
Nearly a year after issuing its most direct broad-scale guidance on maritime cybersecurity in the context of certain shoreside facilities, the U.S. Coast Guard has followed up with guidance and compliance parameters for...more
Representatives Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) and Peter DeFazio (D-OR) have recently introduced the Maritime Transportation System Emergency Relief Act (MTSERA) to provide financial relief to the maritime industry for losses...more
On May 18, 2020, the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) published its Final Interpretive Rule on Demurrage and Detention Under the Shipping Act (“Demurrage/Detention Rule”), 85 Fed. Reg. 29638, 29638 (May 18, 2020). This...more
As the COVID-19 pandemic continued its spread across the United States in the second and third weeks of March, numerous states instituted stay-at-home/shelter-in-place orders in efforts to "flatten the curve" and prevent...more
In the midst of the chaos generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, on March 20, 2020, the United States Coast Guard (USCG) released an important Navigation and Vessel Inspection Circular (NVIC 20-01) concerning “Guidelines for...more
All aspects of the maritime industry, from global ocean-going shipping to domestic inland brown water transportation and offshore energy, have been and will continue to be profoundly affected by the COVID-19 crisis, perhaps...more
UPDATED: March 19, 2020: HHS Authorized to Direct Production and Distribution of National Health Supply Chain -
After invoking the Defense Production Act for the COVID19 pandemic, President Trump issued an "Executive Order...more
Murky waters swirl in the legal gulf that separates the absence of any “genuine dispute[s] as to any material fact” (in which case summary judgment is appropriate); and the presence of non-speculative “evidence [on which] a...more
Of modern standers-of-mast-heads we have but a lifeless set; mere stone, iron, and bronze men; who, though well capable of facing out a stiff gale, are still entirely incompetent to the business of singing out upon...more
The slumberous snare had scarce unbound [Palinurus’s] limbs, when, leaning o’er, the god upon the waters flung him forth, hands clutching still the helm and ship-rail torn, and calling on his comrades, but in vain.! …Yet were...more
Yet now, federated along one keel…
MOBY DICK, HERMAN MELVILLE, Chap. XXVII -
In the wake of Justice Thomas’s landmark decision in Atlantic Sounding Co. v. Townsend, American maritime jurisprudence was left with its...more
The Supreme Court of the United States, on writ of certiorari in Dutra Group v. Christopher Batterton, 588 U.S. ___ (2019), has resolved a circuit split between the Fifth and Ninth Circuits regarding whether a seaman can...more
In a rare decision applying the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (43 U.S.C. §1331 et seq.(“OCSLA”), the United States Supreme Court has clarified, re-affirmed and perhaps (given the breadth of its opinion) expanded the...more
6/19/2019
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Choice-of-Law ,
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) ,
Federal Enclave Rules ,
Federal Labor Laws ,
Federal v State Law Application ,
Offshore Drilling ,
On-Call Employees ,
Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act ,
Parker Drilling Management Services Ltd v Newton ,
Popular ,
Preemption ,
Putative Class Actions ,
Reversal ,
SCOTUS ,
State Labor Laws ,
Unpaid Wages ,
Wage and Hour
Operators in Texas have a duty to market their gas and seek the best reasonable price available for purposes of calculating and paying royalties, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in a February 20,...more
Despite perennial complaints from lower and appellate courts that the Limitation of Liability Act (“LLA,” 46 U.S.C. §§30501 et seq.) is “now hopelessly anachronistic” (Cont’l Oil Co. v. Bonanza Corp., 706 F.2d 1365, 1376 (5th...more
In an important decision of first impression construing the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (“OPA,” 33 U.S.C. §§2701 et seq.), the Fifth Circuit has held the owner and operator (“Nature’s Way”) of a “dominant mind” tugboat liable...more
With the eddies still spinning in the wheelwash of its landmark en banc opinion in In Re Larry Doiron, Inc., the Fifth Circuit in In re Crescent Energy Servs., L.L.C., 2018 WL 3420665 (5th Cir. July 13, 2018), — F.3d —, has...more
Steady, helmsman! Steady. This is the sort of weather when brave hearts snap ashore, and keeled hulls split at sea. Moby Dick, Herman Melville, Chap. XL -
Since the Supreme Court’s (Justice Thomas’s) landmark decision in...more
The Fifth Circuit’s recent decision in Sangha v. Navig8 Shipmanagement Private Limited, No. 17-20093, — F.3d —-, 2018 WL 706518 (Feb 5, 2009) has continued the recent jurisprudential renaissance of personal jurisdiction...more
As previously reported, the Fifth Circuit in September ruled that the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) has no criminal jurisdiction under its current regulations over offshore contractors (USA v. Moss,...more
The Fifth Circuit en banc (In re Larry Doiron, Inc., 2018 WL 316862, at *7 (5th Cir. Jan. 8, 2018)) has handed down an historic re-working of the test for determining whether oilfield contracts are maritime or non-maritime in...more
In two issues of first impression, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals read the complete defense provisions for oil spills under the Oil Pollution Act (“OPA”) to strictly construe the defenses and make them only very narrowly...more
In a chillingly apropos follow-on to the mid-summer global Petya and WannaCry cyber/ransomware attacks, which crippled businesses and government interests around the world, October has been dubbed “National Cyber Security...more
Since October 2011, when the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) issued its first-ever Incidents of Non-Compliance (INCs) against offshore contractors (Halliburton and Transocean) in the wake of the...more