“Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.”
– Hunter S. Thompson
A Half Century of Maritime Law Excellence
Admiralty law is considered one of the most complex areas of American law.” Calhoun v. Yamaha Motor Corp., U.S.A., 216 F.3d 338. 340 (3rd Cir. 2000). It is made up of the centuries-old but still evolving statutory and judge-made rules that govern the legal rights and duties of all who venture onto navigable waters.
State and Federal trial judges used to place the “‘Silver Oar of the Admiralty’ on or near the bench” when they heard a maritime case, “indicating to all [who] drew nigh that his [or her] honor was sitting in a matter involving maritime and admiralty jurisdiction.” Hark v. Antilles Airboats, 355 F. Supp. 683, 684 (D.V.I. 1973). Now, more than ever, it takes a great deal of specialized learning and decades of hard-won experience to practice successfully under the “Silver Oar.”
Since opening our doors in 1968, McGuinn, Hillsman & Palefsky has built one of the West Coast’s premier admiralty and maritime practices. We appear in State and Federal Court not just in the San Francisco Bay Area or greater California, but across the country from Seattle to San Diego and Honolulu to Fort Lauderdale.
Outside California, we join forces with John T. O’Connell in snorkeling and scuba diving cases to provide one of the strongest plaintiff’s-side, maritime legal teams in the country.
We are one of the few plaintiff-side practices in the country to be touted by Chambers USA. We have been repeatedly named Northern California’s best Admiralty and Maritime Law Firm by Best Lawyers in America, U.S. Business News, and Finance Monthly and have received a Legal Elite Award as the “Best Admiralty & Maritime Law Firm in the Bay Area.”
We routinely secure seven- and eight-figure verdicts and settlements for commercial divers, merchant seamen, marine-construction hands, fishermen, tugboat hands, dredge hands, offshore oil workers, recreational scuba divers, snorkelers, longshore workers, and shipyard workers in Jones Act cases, Death on the High Seas Act cases, and Oil Pollution and Clear Water Act.
We champion our clients’ rights at every level of decision all the way up to the California and United States Supreme Courts, where we have helped shape the maritime law establishing those rights.
We were in the forefront of the fight for maritime punitive damages and were invited by the victims of the Alaska Oil Spill to brief the United States Supreme Court in Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, 554 U.S. 471 (2008). We also played a key appellate role in Atlantic Sounding, Inc. v. Townsend, 557 U.S. 404 (2009), and fought to the bitter end in Dutra Group v. Batterton, 588 U.S. 358 (2019). In Ranger v. Alamitos Bay Yacht Club (2025) 17 Cal. 5th 532, we persuaded the California Supreme Court to invest California waterfront workers not covered by the Longshore and Harbor Workers Act with the right to sue vessel-owning employers under federal maritime law, and in Scheuring v. Traylor Bros., Inc., 476 F.3d 781 (9th Cir. 2007), we got the courts to give dredge hands, crane operators, pile butts, and other marine-construction hands the heightened legal protections of Jones Act seamen.
But we are trial lawyers first and foremost. The seafaring corporations and international insurance companies and P&I clubs we face are among the most battle-hardened litigants on the planet; they never pay fair value for a claim unless they believe the victim’s lawyer is willing and able to go the distance and beat them in court. Being ready and determined to try a case is the best – indeed the only way to settle a case. We are.
MHP Uses Innovative Technology and Presentation Tools to Represent Clients
McGuinn, Hillsman & Palefsky has pioneered the use of CGI exhibits and innovative presentation tools both in both the courtroom and in mediation proceedings.
Jurors live in a world that relies increasingly on screens and visual communication. Today, information is streamed universally and endlessly over computers and smart phones. McGuinn, Hillsman & Palefsky understands that a jury trial is a presentation that largely reaches the factfinder via visual media. We are therefore committed to using technology that illuminates and explains the significant elements of a case in a visually compelling way.
We have found 3D modeling and animation is an extremely effectiveway to present issues in a case. 3D imagery allows a jury to understand spatial relationships in a way that is impossible with ordinary 2D pictures. BELOW are examples of 3D modeling that can be manipulated by the witness while testifying on the stand. Furthermore, 3D exhibits can be provided to the jury on a laptop or iPad for use during their deliberations.