Injured Working for Noble Drilling? Did They Cut Off Your Care?

The case of the seaman they stopped treating.

Nathan Deaver was a top-pick shakerhand assigned to the M/V Noble Tom Madden, a brand-new drillship Noble had launched from a Korean shipyard. His principal job was the rig floor; running the shaker house — two stories tall, twice the size of a courtroom — was a simultaneous additional duty. With adequate help, it was two jobs. Without it — and the Tom Madden did not have it — it was a stress injury waiting to happen. After about a week of doing both with help arriving "a handful of times," he reported his injury.

What happened next is why the case mattered. An onshore physician put him in a sleeping boot that made the pain worse. Three months later, a termination letter — drafted not by Noble's claims department but by outside counsel — cut off his maintenance and cure. About a year after that, a foot-and-ankle specialist finally ordered the MRI no one else had ordered. It showed peroneal tendon damage. Noble's risk adjuster forwarded the report to the company's testifying litigation expert — who, by his own admission, had never examined the seaman — and the company refused cure again.

The jury heard the whole sequence. It returned a unanimous verdict with three liability findings: unseaworthiness, unreasonable denial of maintenance and cure, and willful-and-wanton denial of maintenance and cure — apportioning 90% of the fault to Noble. The verdict was affirmed on appeal in a brief the firm authored at the Fourteenth Court of Appeals. Read the full Deaver v. Noble Drilling case study, or more of the firm's case work.

Noble offshore workers across the Gulf and worldwide.

Noble operates drillships and rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and internationally, crewed by workers doing some of the most demanding jobs offshore. If you were hurt doing that work — or if the company mishandled your injury afterward — you may have a claim, whatever your role:

What an injured Noble worker can recover.

If you are a seaman, you are not limited to a workers' comp check. You generally have three overlapping protections. A Jones Act negligence claim against your employer — understaffing and unsafe work methods are classic Jones Act negligence. An unseaworthiness claim against the vessel owner — the theory the jury found in Deaver, which does not require proving negligence. And maintenance and cure — owed from the moment you're hurt until maximum medical improvement, regardless of fault.

The Deaver case turned on that third protection. When an employer denies maintenance and cure without a reasonable basis — relying on a doctor who never examined you, or cutting off care through outside counsel — it exposes itself to compensatory damages, attorney's fees, and, where the denial is willful and wanton, punitive damages. That escalating exposure is explained on our willful-and-wanton denial page. And if you were told you're only a workers' comp case, read Jones Act vs. workers' comp first.