This guide covers maritime personal injury from the first report through trial. It begins with seaman status, because the answer determines which of three entirely different regimes applies, and works through the two-part test, the vessel definition, the identifiable fleet requirement, and the vessel-in-navigation question. Maintenance and cure is treated next: what it covers, how the rate is set, what maximum medical improvement means, and the escalating consequences of refusing to pay, including the punitive damages available for willful refusal. Jones Act chapters cover the incorporated railway employee statute, the featherweight causation standard, comparative fault, and emotional injury. Unseaworthiness chapters distinguish a defective condition from an isolated negligent act and explain why punitive damages are unavailable. Later chapters address defenses, death actions, limitation of liability, jurisdiction and the savings clause, damages accounting, and the operational protocols that prevent most punitive exposure.