How to Sue for Accidents Caused by Poor Boat Maintenance in Florida
Boats and other ships/vessels need to be seaworthy. This is essentially the bare minimum for a boat, and if people are injured or involved in accidents because of dangerous conditions or poor maintenance on a boat, they can often sue for injuries. These cases can be a bit complex depending on who is suing whom, but our maritime injury lawyers can help.
First, it is important to look at who was involved and who made the boat unsafe. If it was the boat owner’s mistake and you were injured as a passenger or a passenger on another boat, you can sue the owner. If the maintenance issue was caused by negligent care from a third party, like a mechanic/technician, then it may be their fault. The process of suing is somewhat similar across cases, but it might involve taking your case to federal court for maritime jurisdiction, which our lawyers can help with. However, some cases can still be filed in Florida state court.
For a free case evaluation, call the Florida boating accident attorneys at Rivkind Margulies & Rivkind at (305) 204-5369 today.
Liability in Boating Accidents Involving Negligent Maintenance/Upkeep in Florida
In a lawsuit, you – the plaintiff/victim – will have to prove who was at fault and bring the case against them – the defendant. In determining fault, courts look for a mistake or problem that the defendant caused, but there also has to be a duty that they owed the plaintiff. How exactly this works and what facts will support your claim depend on who you were in this situation and what your relationship to the defendant was, so it is important to have our Miami boating accident lawyers look at your specific case.
Passengers Injured by the Owner’s Mistake
If you are a passenger on a boat and the owner was responsible for negligent upkeep and maintenance, this is generally a clear-cut case. The boat owner owes crewmembers and passengers a duty to make sure the boat is safe and seaworthy, and dangerous conditions, engine problems, or simple holes in the boat can all make it unseaworthy and patently unsafe. In these cases, the defendant boat owner’s violation of this duty can be shown through maintenance logs, photos of the boat, and interviews with the owner about when they learned of the boat’s dangers. If they had scheduled maintenance appointments but let you on the boat in the meantime, that would be good evidence they knew about the problem but let you get injured anyway.
Other Boaters Injured by an Owner’s Dangerous Boat
If you were an operator or passenger on another boat and the defendant hit you with their boat, the accident might have been caused by problems with their boat’s condition. Like in the other situation discussed above, you need to prove that the owner knew about their maintenance issues, but the issue of seaworthiness and reasonable safety is still the core duty in question. In this case, the boat owner owes it to others on the water to make sure their boat is in good operating condition.
If they crashed into you because of problems with their rudder or steering system, if their speed control locked up and prevented them from letting up on their speed, or if pieces of their boat started coming off and crashing into your boat, these would all be clear instances of the boat owner’s poor upkeep causing your crash.
Victim vs. Technicians
Many boat owners do not know too much about boat maintenance and upkeep, instead leaving that to their technicians or mechanics. In the same way that a car owner might be able to identify maintenance issues like a flat tire or a strange engine sound, every boat owner should be able to identify issues like an active leak or weird engine sounds. Even so, many issues are instead left to experts.
If a boat was recently serviced and the owner relied on the expert’s skill to make sure the boat was in good working order, then it might be their fault instead of the owner’s fault that the accident happened. This would apply equally to any third-party victim, like a passenger on the defective boat or the operator of another boat that the broken boat crashed into.
In these cases, it may be more difficult to sue the technician, but the fact that passengers and other boaters are foreseeable victims of their negligence might help you bring your case.
How to Bring a Case Against a Defective Boat Owner in Florida
In many boat accident cases, the claim will be filed in federal court. Federal court has jurisdiction over “maritime and admiralty” cases, meaning that most injury claims involving boat accidents and injuries out on the water will be handled in federal court.
Maritime lawyers often need special training and experience in order to handle these cases, and our attorneys almost exclusively practice maritime law. When pursuing an injury case for a boat accident, our attorneys can look into where the accident happened and whether the case is best filed as a maritime injury claim.
In some cases, you can still file in state court. This might lead to a more convenient filing location or different filing fees and evidentiary rules. However, our lawyers will need to examine the specifics of your case before we can file it in the proper court.
The Lawsuit Process for a Boat Accident Due to Dangerous Maintenance in Florida
When you file your case, it will start with a “complaint” that details what happened and why the defendant is at fault. From there, we will have responses from the defendant and eventually move to “discovery.” At this stage, we can request maintenance records and other evidence in the defendant’s possession to help show they failed to properly maintain their vessel. If the case does not settle, it will eventually be scheduled for trial, where we can present evidence and witness testimony to prove your case to the jury.
Call Our Boat Accident Attorneys in Florida Today
Call (305) 204-5369 for a free case review with the Fort Myers boat accident attorneys at Rivkind Margulies & Rivkind.
