DOHSA’s Pecuniary Cap Beyond Three Nautical Miles
The Death on the High Seas Act is a federal wrongful-death statute. It applies when a fatal injury occurs on the high seas, more than three nautical miles from the United States shore. Congress wrote a narrow remedy. Families recover pecuniary loss. Many non-pecuniary heads of damage that Texas juries know do not travel with the case.
The three-mile line is the first filter. Inside that belt, general maritime law and state wrongful-death statutes often supply a wider menu. Outside it, DOHSA usually occupies the field for a death on the water. A crew change in the Houston Ship Channel is not a DOHSA case. A fall from a vessel on the outer continental shelf often is, if the event is on a vessel and beyond three miles.
Pecuniary loss means money the survivors would have received. Support and contributions are the core. Lost household services count. Loss of inheritance can count when the proof is real. Funeral and burial expenses are standard. Courts measure these items with work-life tables, tax adjustments, and personal-consumption deductions. Speculation does not replace numbers.
What the statute withholds matters as much as what it grants. Classic DOHSA does not pay the decedent’s pre-death pain. It does not pay the survivors’ grief as grief. Loss of society, companionship, and care is generally out, except where a later amendment expressly opens that door. Commercial-aviation deaths received a non-pecuniary add-on. Most vessel and offshore-worker deaths did not. Counsel who plead “mental anguish” as if the case were a Texas state-court auto wreck invite a motion to strike.
Beneficiaries are a closed list. The suit is for the spouse, parent, child, or dependent relative. A financially independent adult sibling may have no claim. Standing fights therefore start before quantum. So does the choice between a DOHSA count and a Jones Act survival claim when the deceased was a seaman. Those theories can sit in one complaint. They do not award the same dollars.
Location and vessel status still decide the statute. A fixed platform off Texas may pull OCSLA and Texas law instead of DOHSA. A jack-up that is a vessel may pull DOHSA once the site is beyond three miles. Misclassify the place or the unit and the damage model collapses.
Forum follows the statute. DOHSA cases often land in the Southern District of Texas. Admiralty procedure can limit the jury on some counts. State-court filing may still occur under saving-to-suitors when an in-personam theory exists, but the measure of damages remains federal if DOHSA governs.
Practically, families need early economic proof. Wage records, benefits, household-task studies, and a clean beneficiary chart beat a general plea for “full damages.” Defense files attack dependency, consumption, and the three-mile fact. Both sides should fix GPS, charts, and platform-versus-vessel status before experts spend a month on grief.
In short, beyond three nautical miles the federal rule is tight. DOHSA pays what the survivors lost in money. It does not pay every harm a state wrongful-death verdict would name. Draw the mile line first. Then build the pecuniary case, or plead a different statute that actually allows more.