What obligation does a vessel have to advise an injured seaman of their legal rights?

Because Orsini was not represented by counsel, the vessel's owner or agent was obligated to advise him of his undisputed legal rights and possible causes of action against the ship. Waters v. United States, 191 F.2d 212, 216-17 (9th Cir. 1951); United States v. Johnson, 160 F.2d 789, 795-96 (9th Cir. 1947), cert. granted, 332 U.S. 754 (1947), rev'd in part on other grounds, 333 U.S. 46 (1948). Where an injured seaman is not represented by counsel, it is the owner's obligation to make a "full, fair and complete disclosure as to all of [a seaman's] rights, including his right to sue for damages under the Jones Act, and his right to wages, maintenance and cure under the applicable Seamen's Law." Blake, 176 F.2d at 513 n.1. These rules are designed to protect seamen injured at sea, usually far from home, who, particularly when injured, are to be treated as wards of the vessel. In admiralty, law imposes a restraint on what normally on land might be viewed as hard bargaining between employer and employee. Applying these principles, we have held a vessel's legal advice to an unrepresented seaman to be inadequate, as one factor in a Garrett analysis, where, if informed, he would have been less likely to make a deal. We thus rejected a release where the seaman "might have been less eager to sign away his rights had he more fully understood the level of responsibility that vessel owners bear under the Jones Act and the doctrine of unseaworthiness, and the differences between these remedies, the general law of torts, and workers' compensation schemes." Resner, 83 F.3d at 274. For legal advice to be considered adequate in a Garrett analysis, an unrepresented seaman is entitled to a fair discussion of his or her entitlements to maintenance and cure, and alerted to the possibility of tort remedies including those for negligence and unseaworthiness. ⁷