A foreign employer tried to escape U.S. courts entirely. It couldn't.
A ninety-foot fall on a platform in U.S. waters. An employer registered in Mauritius that claimed no U.S. court could touch it. One federal rule answered that.
Case summary
A worker fell ninety feet on a rope-access job on a platform in U.S. waters. His employer, registered in Mauritius, claimed no U.S. court could reach it and moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, on forum grounds, and for failure to state a claim. The very contacts the company disclaimed turned out to be the answer; all three challenges were denied and the case stayed in U.S. court.
Ninety feet, on a rope-access job done wrong.
the technician, a South African Level 1 rope-access technician, fell ninety feet on the Hess-operated Stampede TLP — a deepwater tension-leg platform on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, roughly south of Fourchon, Louisiana. Rope-access work is engineered to be redundant: the whole point is that no single failure should drop a worker. Here, multiple safeguards failed at once. The Petzl I'D anti-error descender had been rigged backward. There was no stopper knot. And the independent double-checks the rope-access procedure required had been skipped. The redundancy that was supposed to save him was not there.
One motion, attacking three ways at once.
His employer, the Mauritius-based contractor Southey, did not answer the merits. It filed a single motion built to end the case before discovery — three theories stacked together:
No personal jurisdiction — Rule 12(b)(2)
A company declarant swore Southey had no minimum contacts with any U.S. state. If true, no state's long-arm statute could reach it, and the case would be dismissed for want of jurisdiction.
Forum non conveniens
The employment contract carried a Mauritius forum-selection clause, governed by the Mauritius Employment Rights Act — which, the defense argued, should send the dispute to Mauritius.
Failure to state a claim — Rule 12(b)(6)
And, in the alternative, that the complaint did not state a claim on which relief could be granted.
The contacts it disclaimed were the answer.
The jurisdiction argument carried the seed of its own defeat. By swearing it had no contacts with any U.S. state, Southey walked straight into Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(k)(2) — the federal long-arm provision that reaches a foreign defendant precisely when it has contacts with the United States as a whole but not enough with any single state. A foreign company that has disclaimed state-level contacts everywhere has, by that same admission, made the case for 4(k)(2). The defendant's own declaration supplied the predicate.
The forum clause failed on its own terms. It named only labor and employment statutes — it was a labor forum-selection clause, not a tort one, and did not reach a personal-injury claim for a ninety-foot fall. And underneath all of it sat a backstop: the Longshore Act's anti-waiver rule, 33 U.S.C. § 915, which voids agreements that purport to waive a covered worker's rights — a public-policy floor available if the contract analysis had ever come up short.
A foreign employer that swears off contacts with every U.S. state has made the argument for the one federal rule that reaches it anyway.
All three denied. The case stayed in U.S. court.
On August 13, 2024, the court denied all three branches of the motion. Personal jurisdiction held under Rule 4(k)(2). The forum-selection clause did not reach the tort. And rather than dismiss, the court transferred the case sua sponte to the Eastern District of Louisiana — the venue Mr. The technician had requested in the alternative, and the natural OCSLA adjacent-state forum for a platform fall off the Louisiana coast.
For an injured worker, the lesson is the same one that runs through the firm's cross-border cases: a foreign employer's first move is often to argue that no U.S. court can hear the case at all. That argument is not the end of the road. Between Rule 4(k)(2), the limits of a labor forum clause, and the Longshore Act's anti-waiver rule, there is usually a way to keep a U.S. injury in a U.S. court. See the firm's other complex maritime cases.
Legal lessons from this case
- A foreign employer can be subject to U.S. jurisdiction through its own contacts with the forum.
- A sworn 'no contacts' declaration can be tested and disproved against the record.
- Jurisdiction, forum, and pleading challenges are often raised together and can be met together.
- An injury on a platform in U.S. waters supports U.S. jurisdiction even against a foreign employer.
Frequently asked questions
Can a foreign employer be sued in U.S. court for an offshore injury?
Often, yes. A foreign company can be subject to U.S. jurisdiction where it has sufficient contacts with the forum, which an injury on a platform in U.S. waters can help establish.
What is personal jurisdiction?
A court's authority over a defendant, which generally requires that the defendant have minimum contacts with the forum such that being sued there is fair.
What if my employer says it has no U.S. contacts?
That assertion can be tested against the facts. A declaration disclaiming contacts can be contradicted by the company's actual dealings, which can defeat the motion to dismiss.
What happened in this case?
The employer's challenges to jurisdiction, forum, and the pleadings were all denied, and the case remained in U.S. court.
Hurt offshore, and your employer is based overseas?
Doyle Dennis Avery LLP litigates the jurisdiction, forum-selection, and choice-of-law fights that foreign employers and their carriers raise when a worker is hurt on U.S. or foreign waters. A case review costs nothing, and there is no obligation.
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.
