Article by Lord Donaldson of Lymington
I have seldom been so puzzled as I was when invited to talk on the “Sources of Recovery for Maritime Personal Injury and Death under British Law.” My first reaction was to look towards a small statue of a lawyer that always stood on my desk when I was practicing at the Bar. Its base bore the legend, “Sue the Bastards.” It was certainly the source of recovery that immediately sprang to mind.
On reflection, I realized that American law must have some special significance or complication that would not be apparent to a British lawyer unversed in that law. This led me, with considerable assistance from Mr. George W. Healy III and Mr. Geoffrey Brice, Q.C., to a superficial appreciation of what has been described by Professor Thomas J. Schoenbaum as “a crazy-quilt pattern,” comprising the Death on the High Seas Act, the Jones Act, and the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act, supported and explained by numerous decisions of the courts.
No such expressive description could be applied to British law, which, so far as liability is concerned, makes no distinction between maritime and nonmaritime claims for personal injury or death. The sole exception is Section 26 of the Merchant Shipping Act, 1970, which provides:
If a person, while employed in a ship registered in the United Kingdom, receives outside the United Kingdom any surgical or medical treatment or such dental or optical treatment (including the repair or replacement of any appliance) as cannot be postponed without impairing efficiency, the reasonable expenses thereof shall be borne by the persons employing him; and if he dies while so employed and is buried or cremated outside the United Kingdom, the expenses of his burial or cremation shall also be borne by those persons.
Apart from this exception, all liability under British Law is fault based and applies equally to maritime and nonmaritime claims, although the material circumstances will usually be different.
About the Author
Lord Donaldson of Lymington. President, British Maritime Law Association. Formerly, Master of the Rolls.
Citation
68 Tul. L. Rev. 367 (1994)