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Difficulties in payment of compensations

Currently I have been working on several cases, in which the difficulties occurred where nobody expected them to be. This difficulty is a ship master.

The trading upon the sums concerning all these cases has already started, but I’ll tell in details about it after achieving the result.

So, what has come as an unexpectedness in my cases. Everything is easy – the ship master’s actions, and to be exact, complete lack of any actions and his unwillingness to disturb the ship owner.

  1. The seafarer had been injured badly aboard the vessel, after that he was delivered to the hospital, and according to the doctor’s instructions was sent home. As a result, the third invalidity group and inability to continue performing his duties. The difficulty of the case is that the ship master deliberately hasn’t compiled the Incident report and fudged the crew evidences, to be exact, just faked them. Moreover, he hadn’t informed the ship owner and the P&I about the incident. In other words, he didn’t want to put his head on the block and spoil his own reputation of an ideal ship master. Presently, the ship owner has proposed the compensation to the seafarer, but the sum of compensation doesn’t satisfy neither me nor my client. The battle must go on.
  2. In the other case, the master’s acts or to be exact, his omission brought to the death of one of the crew member. The omission was in the following: the master refused to call the doctors aboard when they were extremely needed and when there was a real opportunity to do it and therefore save life of the crew member. Nowadays, after long negotiations we have been offered a compensation much above the sum stipulated in the contract. We refused. We expect even bigger sum.
  3. Another case concerning the ship master’s interference. The seafarer gets hard chemical poisoning aboard and stays alive only by miracle. In order to suppress what has happened aboard and exonerate himself from responsibility, the master does his best to persuade everybody that there was no chemical poisoning at all and he hasn’t the slightest idea about the happening aboard. It’s a clear matter, that there is no any incident report. Currently the discussion takes place between the parties in order to find out the truth. The sum of compensation hasn’t been risen yet.

It’s only a small part of the cases I have to deal with. But I deliberately combined several cases into one article in order to show, that sometimes the ship masters, the persons who must be responsible for your safety, can deliberately do all to disserve to those who were one family with him.

As for me, it’s a nonsense, but as the practice shows – your own shirt is closer to the body. The matter of money, nothing personal.

A little bit later I’ll dwell upon each of these cases, in which the master did something extraordinary. I’ll point out what laws have been broken by the master and what was the sum of compensation for this.

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