New Orleans Shipyard Worker Injury Lawyer
A shipyard injury in Orleans Parish rarely belongs to one legal system. Depending on where on the vessel you were standing, what your employer is, and whether the ship was afloat or sitting in dry dock, your claim may fall under Louisiana’s state workers’ compensation law or under a federal program that most people have never heard of. Getting that first question wrong can cost months. Lunsford, Baskin & Priebe PLLC is a workers’ compensation law firm that represents injured workers across Louisiana and Mississippi, and we look at a New Orleans shipyard worker injury lawyer engagement as a puzzle of jurisdiction, medical proof, and insurer tactics that has to be solved before the benefits conversation even begins.
Shipyards and fabrication yards along the river and the Gulf-connected waterways employ welders, fitters, pipefitters, riggers, crane operators, painters, blasters, electricians, and laborers. They work with steel plate, heavy rigging, confined compartments, and overhead loads, and the injuries that come out of that work tend to be serious: crushed hands, torn shoulders, herniated discs, fractures, burns, and hearing and respiratory damage built up over years. Some of those workers will recover under the Louisiana workers’ compensation system. Others may fall under a federal maritime or longshore framework, and some may have additional claims against parties other than the employer. Sorting out which applies is where good legal handling starts.
Why Choose Lunsford, Baskin & Priebe for a Shipyard Injury Claim
Lunsford, Baskin & Priebe PLLC serves injured workers across Orleans Parish and the rest of South Louisiana, including Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Lake Charles, and Shreveport, as well as communities throughout Mississippi. The firm has recovered more than $100 million in settlements for clients. Consultations are free, we advance the costs of the case, and we are paid only if we recover benefits or a settlement for you. Our phones are answered 24 hours a day, and Spanish-speaking clients can work with our team in their own language, which matters in a trade where many crews are bilingual.
Rob Lunsford, our Founding Partner, has spent his entire legal career representing injured workers. Partners Brad Baskin and Jennifer Priebe have been recognized by Best Lawyers, Super Lawyers, and The National Trial Lawyers, and the firm was ranked by Best Law Firms in 2026 for Workers’ Compensation Law, Claimants, in Jackson. Andrew Rueff has successfully tried dozens of jury and bench trials to verdict, which matters when an insurer will not move without a courtroom deadline. Keaton Belk and Erin Heimlicher round out the attorney team.
The results reflect the kind of injuries yard work produces. We secured $685,000 for a surgical tech with a lower back injury, $600,000 for a construction worker with a complex back injury, $385,000 for a project manager injured when he was struck in his work vehicle, and $221,000 for a land-based oil rig worker who suffered severe burns to the lower extremities. We also handled a $195,000 settlement for a derrickhand with complex shoulder injuries from pulling large pipe, and a $135,000 recovery for a diesel mechanic with a SLAP tear. Heavy-industry injuries to backs, shoulders, and burned limbs are familiar ground. Clients consistently describe an attorney who listened, stayed in contact, and fought the insurance company at every step.
Injuries and Claim Types That Come Out of Shipyard Work
- Back, Neck, and Spine Injuries: Lifting plate, dragging cable, and working bent over in tight hull spaces wear on the lumbar and cervical spine. Insurers routinely blame degenerative disc disease, and the answer is medical evidence showing how years of heavy work or a single incident caused or aggravated the condition.
- Shoulder and Knee Injuries: Overhead welding, grinding, and rigging produce rotator cuff tears and SLAP tears, while climbing ladders, crawling through compartments, and working on steel decks produce meniscus and ligament tears. Employers sometimes call these old sports injuries.
- Crush Injuries and Fractures: Struck-by and caught-between accidents involving suspended loads, cranes, and moving equipment can fracture feet, ankles, hips, and hands, often requiring specialist surgery and long recoveries.
- Burns and Catastrophic Injuries: Hot work, flash fires, electrical contact, and chemical exposure on industrial sites cause burns and other life-altering injuries, which can lead to permanent disability benefits.
- Falls From Height: Scaffolding, staging, vessel decks, and gangways create fall hazards, and falls often involve fractures, head injuries, and spinal damage that keep a worker off the job for a long time.
- Hearing Loss and Respiratory Illness: Years of grinding, blasting, and welding in enclosed work areas can damage hearing and lungs. These occupational conditions build gradually, which is exactly why insurers dispute when and how they began.
- Third-Party Injury Claims: When a subcontractor, equipment manufacturer, vessel owner, or negligent driver contributed to your injury, you may have a personal injury claim in addition to your comp benefits, and the two claims have to be coordinated.
The Jurisdiction Question: State Comp, Federal Programs, and Third Parties
This is the part of a shipyard case that separates it from an ordinary warehouse or construction claim. Louisiana’s workers’ compensation law covers nearly every employer in the state, but workers on or around navigable waters, vessels, and certain waterfront facilities may be covered by federal law instead, or may have rights under both depending on the facts. Your job title does not settle it. What matters is where the injury happened, what you were doing, who employed you, and what the employer’s relationship to the vessel and the dock is. A welder in a fabrication shop onshore and a welder on a vessel at the pier can land in different legal systems.
We raise this early because filing in the wrong forum, or missing a deadline under the framework that actually applies, can hurt a claim. Our practice is built around Louisiana state workers’ compensation, and where a case turns on federal or maritime questions we evaluate them candidly during the consultation so you know what path you are on. What we can tell you for certain is that the medical care and wage benefits the law allows exist somewhere in these systems, and our job is to find where they are and pursue them.
Under Louisiana’s state system, benefits include all reasonable and necessary medical treatment, wage replacement while you are temporarily unable to work, supplemental earnings benefits if you return at reduced pay, and additional benefits for permanent disability, catastrophic injury, or death. Supplemental earnings benefits apply when you cannot earn 90 percent or more of your pre-injury wages, and they are generally paid at two-thirds of the difference between what you earned before and what you are earning or able to earn now. They continue until you are released to full duty, are back to earning your pre-injury wage, or reach the 520-week maximum, and weeks of temporary total disability count toward that 520. Weekly compensation limits are set by the date of your accident and are not adjusted afterward.
What to Do in the Days After a Shipyard Injury
Report the injury to your employer right away, in writing if you can, and no later than 30 days after it happens. In Louisiana that notice requirement is a hard rule, and failing to meet it can sink a claim. The formal claim deadline is separate: generally one year from the date of the accident, though the period can extend to three years from the last compensation payment when benefits have already been paid. Do not let a verbal report to a foreman or a supervisor’s reassurance stand in for something documented.
Get medical care immediately and tell every provider that the injury happened at work and how. The first medical record often becomes the most heavily scrutinized piece of paper in the case, and insurers look for any gap between the event and the treatment, or any sentence suggesting the problem started somewhere else. If you work around steel and moving loads, name the specific task, the equipment, and the location on the yard. Save photographs of the area if you can safely take them, get the names of co-workers who saw it or who worked the same job, and keep your pay stubs, schedules, and any messages from supervisors about the incident.
Be careful about recorded statements to the insurance adjuster. Adjusters are collecting information to evaluate the claim, not to help you build it, and an offhand answer about a prior back problem or an old injury can be turned into a denial. Be equally careful about returning to work before your doctor clears you, and about signing forms you have not read.
When benefits are disputed, Louisiana claims are decided by workers’ compensation judges at the Office of Workers’ Compensation Administration, and the worker chooses the hearing venue among three options: the parish where the injury occurred, the parish where you lived when you were hurt, or the parish where the employer has its principal place of business. The New Orleans district office is one of ten OWC district courts around the state. If a treatment request is denied through utilization review, you have 15 calendar days from receiving the written denial to file Form 1009, and the OWC medical director then has 30 calendar days to issue a decision. If you disagree with that decision, you have 45 days from the date it was issued to file Form 1008. Those windows are short and they run from the date of the paperwork, not from when you got around to opening the envelope. A final judgment by a workers’ compensation judge can be appealed to the court of appeal, generally within 30 days, and for Orleans Parish that is the Fourth Circuit.
How Insurers Fight Shipyard Claims
Insurers use a familiar set of arguments, and shipyard cases give them extra material. They argue the accident did not happen at work, especially when no one saw it or when a worker finished the shift before reporting pain. They blame a pre-existing condition, which is a natural argument for older workers whose backs and shoulders show wear on imaging. They argue the injury was caused by something other than the job, or push a worker back to light duty before the doctor has cleared them, or stop paying without warning.
A pre-existing condition does not end a claim. If the job caused, worsened, or accelerated the condition, benefits may still be owed, and a persuasive answer to that argument is usually built from a treating physician’s opinion, imaging, work history, and co-worker testimony about the physical demands of the job. A fitter who has spent twenty years bent in hull compartments and a welder who has worked overhead for most of his career have a work history that explains the wear on their bodies, and we build the record to say so.
Contractor structures add their own complications. Yard work often involves staffing agencies, subcontractors, and general contractors on the same site, and each may carry a different insurer. Figuring out who your legal employer is, which carrier owes benefits, and whether another company’s negligence also contributed is routine work for us. If a negligent third party contributed to the injury, you may pursue a separate injury claim alongside comp, and Louisiana’s fault rules matter there: for causes of action arising on or after the start of 2026, a claimant found 51 percent or more at fault recovers nothing, while lesser fault reduces an award proportionally. The deadline for most injury lawsuits in Louisiana is two years from the day the injury is sustained for injuries on or after July 1, 2024, which is different from the comp deadlines above, so the two tracks have to be managed together.
Shipyard Injury Questions Workers Ask Us
Do I need a lawyer for a shipyard injury claim in New Orleans?
Not every claim requires one, but if benefits have been denied, delayed, reduced, or cut off, or if your injury will keep you out of work for a long stretch, an attorney can make a major difference. Shipyard cases can also raise a question about which legal system covers you, which is a good reason to talk to a lawyer before you commit to a path.
Will I be covered by Louisiana workers’ compensation or a federal program?
It depends on the facts: where you were injured, what you were doing, who employed you, and your employer’s relationship to the vessel or waterfront. Some yard workers fall under Louisiana’s state system and others under federal law. We review those facts at the start so the claim is filed in the right place.
How long do I have to report a work injury in Louisiana?
You should report it to your employer immediately and no later than 30 days after the injury. The formal claim generally must be filed within one year of the accident, and that period can extend to three years from the last compensation payment if benefits have been paid.
What if my employer says I was not hurt at work?
Disputes about whether an accident occurred on the job are common. Co-worker statements, early medical records describing how you were hurt, incident reports, and the physical nature of your job all help answer that. A denial is a starting position, not the end of the claim.
What if I had back or shoulder problems before this injury?
Pre-existing conditions do not automatically defeat a claim. If your job caused, worsened, or accelerated the condition, you may still be entitled to benefits. Strong medical evidence connecting the work to the injury is the key.
My treatment request was denied. What can I do?
You can dispute it through the utilization review process by filing Form 1009 within 15 calendar days of receiving the written denial. The OWC medical director then has 30 calendar days to decide. If you disagree with the decision, Form 1008 must be filed within 45 days of its issuance. Missing these windows can cost you the treatment, so call right away.
Can I be fired for filing a workers’ compensation claim?
Louisiana and Mississippi both protect workers from retaliation for filing a comp claim. If you were let go or punished after reporting an injury, tell us during your consultation so we can review your options.
What if I only go back to work at lower pay or on lighter duty?
Supplemental earnings benefits may apply if you cannot earn at least 90 percent of your pre-injury wages. They are calculated as two-thirds of the gap between your earlier and current earning capacity, and they can continue up to 520 weeks, counting any weeks of temporary total disability already paid.
Can I bring a separate claim against someone other than my employer?
Possibly. If a negligent contractor, equipment maker, vessel owner, or driver helped cause your injury, you may have a personal injury claim in addition to comp. Louisiana’s fault rules and deadlines for that claim differ from the comp rules, so the two should be handled together.
How are weekly benefit amounts decided if I was out of work a long time?
Louisiana sets weekly compensation limits each year based on the statewide average weekly wage, and the limit that applies to you is fixed by your date of accident. Your own rate is based on your average wage before the injury, up to that cap.
Will my claim be heard in New Orleans if I was hurt at a yard outside the city?
You choose among the parish where the injury happened, the parish where you lived when hurt, or the parish where your employer’s principal place of business is located. That choice can affect convenience and, in some cases, strategy, so we discuss it before filing.
What does it cost to hire your firm?
Nothing up front. Consultations are free, we advance the costs of your case, and we are paid only if we recover benefits or a settlement for you. Attorney fees in workers’ compensation cases are limited and approved under state law.
Serving Shipyard Workers Across Orleans Parish and South Louisiana
We represent injured workers from New Orleans and the neighborhoods around it, including the Bywater, the Marigny, Algiers, Gentilly, Lakeview, Mid-City, Uptown, the Garden District, Central City, New Orleans East, and the Lower Ninth Ward. We also serve workers who live in neighboring parishes and commute into the city’s industrial corridor, such as those in Jefferson Parish, St. Bernard Parish, Plaquemines Parish, St. Charles Parish, and St. Tammany Parish, with communities including Metairie, Kenner, Harvey, Gretna, Marrero, Chalmette, and Slidell.
Our work reaches across South Louisiana and the rest of the state, including Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Lake Charles, Houma, and Shreveport, and north Louisiana. We also represent injured workers in Mississippi, from Jackson and Madison to the Gulf Coast, Hattiesburg, Southaven, the Delta, and north Mississippi. Wherever you were hurt or live, the same free consultation and no-fee-unless-we-recover arrangement applies.
Talk With a New Orleans Shipyard Injury Attorney Today
If you were hurt in a shipyard, you should not have to guess which benefits you are owed or which deadline is running. A New Orleans shipyard injury attorney at Lunsford, Baskin & Priebe can look at where you were hurt, who employed you, what the insurer is saying, and what your medical records show, then tell you plainly where your claim stands. Our phones are answered around the clock, the consultation is free, and you pay no fee unless we recover benefits for you. Call us and tell us what happened. We help injured workers, and that is all we do.
