Industry
Maritime and Transportation
Montgomery McCracken’s Maritime and Transportation Industry Group attorneys are globally recognized leaders in major casualty litigation, marine pollution, and cargo defense. We represents our clients in a broad range of litigation, arbitration, corporate, and regulatory matters with substantial experience handling agency investigations and proceedings as well as charter party arbitrations. We are available to assist you anytime, day or night.
We are first-and-foremost our clients’ trusted advisors. Whether it is a litigation matter or a business transaction, big or small, we leverage our extensive experience and industry knowledge to get the best results for our clients. As each engagement evolves, we continuously reassess changing circumstances to determine whether new developments require new strategies.
Our attorneys have decades of real-world maritime and transportation industry experience, including a former general counsel from a major ocean container line, a naval architect and marine engineer from a boutique design firm, and an environmental economist from a maritime consulting firm. We have foreign barred and language speaking attorneys. We are accustomed to providing clear, precise, and actionable legal advice to our international clients.
Capabilities include:
- Casualties – vessel collisions; allisions; groundings; limitation; explosions; fire; heavy weather; salvage; General Average; loss of life and injury; and cargo defense
- Disputes – bankruptcy; Charter Party; Contract of Affreightment; contract of carriage; freight, detention, and demurrage; and off-spec bunkers
- Enforcement – recognition of awards and judgments; Rule B attachment; Rule C arrest; discovery in aid of a foreign proceeding; and security
- Environmental – pollution; natural resource damages; OPA 90; and OSLTF claims
- Investigation – port state and agency inspections; personal injury; vessel damage; and cargo damage or contamination
- Regulatory – corporate governance; agency subpoenas and proceedings; and cabotage
Our clients include:
- International marine insurers
- Shipowners and operators
- Charterers
- Traders
- Carriers
- NVOCCs
- Freight forwarders
- Shippers
- Terminals
- Truckers
- Mariners
We are completing all modules of the International Group of Protection and Indemnity Clubs’ P&I Qualification (P&IQ) program, with our practice group co-chair having earned his Advanced Diploma in 2021. We are local correspondents for international marine insurers.
MARITIME AND TRANSPORTATION LAW TRAINEE PROGRAM
Montgomery McCracken continues to sponsor an intern program for foreign lawyers and law graduates. The firm’s maritime and transportation trainee program has afforded more than 110 foreign lawyers (and a few P&I Club claims handlers) an opportunity to observe firsthand the practices of maritime and transportation law in the United States. The program is designed to allow graduate law students or attorneys from outside of the United States to be involved in maritime and transportation cases, including, when possible, the attendance at court hearings, trials, arbitrations, depositions and settlement conferences, while receiving informal instruction on American law and procedure, as well as an opportunity to improve their English language skills.
Interested candidates should send an email with the subject: “[Your Name] – MMWR Trainee Program” to Vincent DeOrchis or Kaspar Kielland. Applicants should include their résumé and indicate the time period in which they are interested in participating in the three-month program.
Experience
Maritime and Transportation Leadership
SHARED THINKING
Firefighter’s appeal victory shows shipowners can face seaworthiness claims from non-seafarers
A firefighter from New York state has won a court appeal that opens the door for seaworthiness complaints from non-mariners who board vessels. The US Second Circuit Court of Appeals […]
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Second Circuit Revives Sieracki Seaman Unseaworthiness and Maritime Negligence Claims for Volunteer Firefighter
The United States Court of Appeals recently reversed a grant of summary judgment in favor of a volunteer firefighter’s employer, finding that the firefighter, who was injured while aboard a […]
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Supreme Court Strips Freight Brokers of Federal Preemption Defense
In a unanimous 9-0 decision issued today in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, the Supreme Court has fundamentally altered the liability landscape for the freight brokerage industry. The Court, […]
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Redefining Package Limitation in the United States
For nearly a century, the United States Carriage of Goods by Sea Act (COGSA) has granted ocean carriers the right to limit their liability to $500 per package. Yet,because the […]
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