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Hello, I'm maritime attorney Tim Young, Our office represents exclusively injured maritime
workers. In this brief video I want to speak to you a minute about what's called Joint
and Several Liability, which applies in maritime laws as well as under the Jones Act. This
is a critical game changer for cases where you have multiple defendants or you have bankrupt
defendants. The way Joint and Several liability works is let's say that you have three defendants
who all contributed to your injury or accident but you can only get one defendant into court
because the other two defendants may be foreign entities that aren't licensed in the United
States and never come to the United States or the other entities may have gone bankrupt
and you may not be able to collect anything from them. If you have that one defendant
in an American court and you obtain a verdict whereby there 1% or more at fault if the jury
comes back and says we do believe this one defendant in court was at least 1% at fault
for this injury, under maritime law and under the Jones Act, you are allowed to collect
all over your damages that were caused by all three of those defendants. So what the
law basically says is; we're not going to hurt the injured *** or the injured maritime
worker, we're not going to make them lose all that compensation they're entitled to
just because two of the companies may have gone bankrupt or two of the companies may
be foreign overseas companies that this poor *** cannot get into an American court.
What the law does is that it shifts that burden and it says to the one responsible party,
if you did anything wrong and a jury or a judge finds you 1% or more a fault, that that
injured *** can then collect all of his damages due to all of those three companies
from that one defendant that was found to be at fault. It's a little bit of a complicated
rule in maritime law on the Jones Act but it really protects injured ***, it especially
protects injured *** who work overseas because there are a lot of situations where
you may have two or three foreign overseas companies that you're never going to be able
to file suit against in the United States, but if you do have one United States company
then you may be in very good shape. Call us if you have any questions about your rights,
choices, or options.