They tried to move his case to Bermuda. Three courts said no.
A crushing injury offshore. A lawsuit filed in Houston. And, two days before the answer was due, a paper maneuver designed to send the whole thing three thousand miles away.
Case summary
A career mechanic, hired through a Bermuda entity, was crushed when a lifeboat engine started with his hand inside it. He sued in Houston. Two days before the employer's answer was due, it executed a contract assignment designed to send the whole case three thousand miles away to Bermuda. The trial court, the court of appeals, and the Texas Supreme Court all rejected the maneuver, and the case stayed in U.S. court.
A career mechanic, hired through a Bermuda entity.
Our client is a Scottish offshore mechanic — a Class B operator who spent his career on twelve-hour rotating shifts aboard mobile offshore drilling units across the Gulf, West Africa, and Southeast Asia, responsible for engines, hydraulics, and the mechanical systems that keep a drillship running. He had roughly eighteen months on Diamond rigs. His employment contract, though, was with Diamond Offshore Drilling (Bermuda) Limited — not the Houston-based operating entities that ran the rig where he was hurt. That structural split became the entire fight.
A lifeboat engine started while his hand was inside it.
During a routine weekly lifeboat check aboard the Ocean Monarch offshore Myanmar, he was inspecting engine belt tension inside the lifeboat engine compartment when a second Diamond employee — not knowing he was inside — started the engine with its backup spring-wind starter. The belt-pulley system seized his left hand, causing a crushing injury that partially amputated two fingers. He was stabilized offshore and flown to the United Kingdom for specialized hand surgery — microvascular reconstruction, followed by hand therapy, treatment for PTSD, and lasting cold intolerance. He has not returned to offshore work requiring two-handed dexterity.
A contract assigned to itself, two days before the answer.
He sued in Harris County, naming the Houston operating entities and the Bermuda contracting entity. The Bermuda contract carried a forum-selection clause requiring disputes to be heard in Bermuda. Months after suit was filed — and two days before its answer was due — Diamond executed an Assignment of Contract from the Bermuda entity to the Houston operating entity, without notice to our client and without his assent. The entity that controlled the rig and caused the injury would now claim it had also become the holder of the forum-selection rights, and use them to push the case off the Texas docket.
It was the second time Diamond's lawyers had tried it — the same forum clause had been rejected in Black v. Diamond Offshore in 2018. The assignment was the workaround.
Three reasons the maneuver failed.
The response was built so no single ruling could save it — three independent grounds, any one of which sank the assignment:
The assignment was illusory
The contract required written notice of changes and assent to material modifications. Diamond gave neither — letting it rearrange forum rights whenever litigation made it convenient. Under Texas law, that is the textbook illusory promise.
Personal services cannot be assigned
Texas courts hold that personal-services contracts and contracts grounded in personal trust cannot be assigned without the employee's consent (Peniche; In re FH Partners). A mechanic hired for his skill and confidential operational knowledge cannot be silently transferred for litigation advantage.
Material adverse change under § 317
Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 317 bars an assignment that materially increases the obligor's burden or risk. A post-litigation pivot from Houston to Bermuda — for a Scottish resident in active reconstruction with Texas counsel retained — checked every box.
Three courts. One answer.
The maneuver was tested at every level the Texas system allows, and failed at each. The 11th District Court denied the motion to dismiss. The First Court of Appeals denied mandamus, adopting the trial court's reasoning that the assignment gave the operating entity no standing to enforce the clause. The Supreme Court of Texas denied mandamus without comment, leaving the ruling intact. The case stayed in the Texas court where it was filed, and resolved on confidential terms — the client avoiding Bermuda litigation and preserving his Texas remedy.
For offshore workers with any international dimension — a foreign passport, a job in another country's waters, a contract routed through a foreign entity — the first fight is sometimes just the right to be heard. A forum-selection clause is not automatically the end of the road, and a defendant's attempt to engineer one after the fact can be challenged. See the firm's complex maritime cases for more of this work.
Legal lessons from this case
- A forum-selection maneuver executed after a lawsuit is filed is vulnerable to challenge.
- Courts scrutinize post-litigation contract assignments engineered to move a case abroad.
- An injured maritime worker's choice of a U.S. forum is protected and not easily displaced.
- A forum fight can be won at the trial, appellate, and state supreme-court levels.
Frequently asked questions
Can my employer move my injury case to a foreign country after I sue?
Not easily. A forum maneuver, such as a contract assignment executed after suit is filed, can be challenged, and courts are skeptical of paper transactions designed to strip a worker of a U.S. forum.
Are forum-selection clauses always enforced?
No. They are presumptively enforceable, but that presumption can be overcome where the clause is unreasonable, the product of overreaching, or would deny a worker a meaningful day in court.
What is a post-litigation forum maneuver?
An attempt, after a case is filed, to invoke or create a contractual basis to move it to a different, usually foreign, forum, here a contract assignment made two days before the answer was due.
What happened in this case?
The trial court, the court of appeals, and the Texas Supreme Court all rejected the employer's maneuver, and the case remained in U.S. court.
Facing a foreign forum-selection clause? Talk to us first.
Doyle Dennis Avery LLP has defeated post-litigation forum maneuvers — including contract assignments executed after suit was filed — at the trial, appellate, and Texas Supreme Court levels. If your employer is trying to push your case to a foreign court, a case review costs nothing.
This page is attorney advertising and is for general information only. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. The matter is summarized without identifying the parties, and was decided or resolved on its own facts; prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome. Doyle Dennis Avery LLP · Houston, Texas.
