Maritime law overrides state law and is designed to protect maritime activities on navigable waters. It is very powerful and very confusing.

Maritime law includes: negligence, unseaworthiness, maintenance and cure, longshoremen and harbor workers, collision, limitation of liability, in rem proceedings, and many other concepts affecting recovery.

Maritime law only applies in admiralty jurisdiction, which includes waters that are navigable between two or more states or countries. Maritime law also only applies to traditional maritime activities, such as navigation, . . . . This is called the two pronged test of both lexus and nexus.

A seaman injured on a voyage is entitled to “maintenance and cure” and to compensation for injuries caused by any unseaworthiness of the vessel.

Traditional concepts of negligence, wrongful death, good samaritan, product liability, joint and several liability, apply in maritime law. Other concepts, such as state government immunities, and limitatio0ns on joint and several liability, do not apply in maritime law.

Illustrations of maritime law include:

Two children drowned off Morro Bay when their ski boat overturned in high seas, after a Morro Bay Harbor Patrol officer told the novice boat captain that it was safe to go out onto the ocean and failed to disclose that a Small Craft Advisory was in effect. Result: pending . . .

Published decisions in Maritime Law include:

Complaint of Midland Enterprises, Inc., 886 F.2d 812 (6th Cir. 1989).

Three Buoys Houseboat Vacations U.S.A., Ltd. v. Morts, 878 F.2d 1096 (8th Cir. 1989).

Three Buoys Houseboat Vacations U.S.A. Ltd. v. Morts, 921 F.2d 775 (8th Cir. 1990)