Offshore Injury

Offshore activities are not for the faint-hearted. They can be ruinous, not only to national exchequers and company balance sheets, but also to people’s lives. ¹ Furthermore, employers and their P&I clubs are very aware of this. Major offshore employers habitually insert in workers’ contracts fairly munificent provisions for compensation for injury and death ² on (and to some extent off) the job, which often pay out more on a no-fault basis than a court would award even on proof of fault. Furthermore, even if commercial liability insurers generally are apt to argue the toss with regard to liability and quantum, in very many cases P&I clubs do not do this with the same enthusiasm; in the majority of cases they prefer, in their members’ interests, to pay up without being too strict in putting the claimant to proof of his entitlement. Nevertheless, this does not mean that questions of liability can be forgotten about. Very serious injuries short of death are happily rare in the offshore context, but where they happen the sums at stake can be very big. Furthermore, not all offshore contractors are necessarily as scrupulous in safeguarding their workers as the best of them: not all, for that matter, are insured or entered in P&I clubs. Furthermore, issues as to actual legal liability to pay damages may well arise in (for example) contribution or indemnity proceedings, ³ where it has always been open to a defendant to put in issue the legal liability of the claimant to make the payment in respect of which he now seeks relief. ⁴ For all these reasons it is worth spending a little time on questions that may be thrown up in English litigation dealing with liability for personal injury arising out of activities of this sort.