Trial Spotlight: Maritime Client Cleared from All Liability in $22 Million Crane Barge Capsize

October 17, 2024

A Hinshaw legal team led by Lexi Holinga and Angela Hess recently secured a complete defense verdict absolving their maritime client, LA Carriers, LLC., from all liability in a claim of $22 million in damages over the capsize and loss of a crane barge in the Gulf of Mexico. LA Carriers was providing tow services to the crane barge when it capsized.

The action was filed as a Limitation of Liability action pursuant to maritime law.

Holinga and Hess represented their client in a bench trial held before Honorable Judge Darrel Pappillion in the Eastern District of the federal court of Louisiana from December 2023 through January 2024. The court’s judgment dismissed Hinshaw's client from all liability, finding that the loss of the crane barge was caused by its own unseaworthiness and ruled that the proximate cause for the accident was the barge’s severely weathered and corroded hull, whose condition had not been disclosed to LA Carriers. 

Read the court’s Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law (PDF).

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