Question: I am a boat mechanic and I am trying to collect the unpaid balance owed to me from a large job that I completed last year. I recorded a lien against the boat with the Coast Guard and I was...
David Weil has been the proud author of the “Ask a Maritime Attorney” column in The Southern California Log Newspaper and Sea Magazine since 2006, with over 300 installments of the column. We have provided links in this section to those articles, covering a wide range of topics of interest to the California maritime and boating communities.
Ask A Maritime Attorney: Can you help explain the different rules that apply to U.S. territorial waters?
October 9, 2026
Question: I have been researching the concept of “U.S. Territorial Waters” and I must say I am completely confused. We don’t need to go into why I need this information (it’s complicated), but the bottom line is...
Question: I am in the middle of a dispute with my insurance company. They denied coverage after my boat caught fire during a recent harbor cruise. They blamed the fire on a worn impeller on an engine raw-water pump, but...
Question: I purchased a fifty-percent interest in a boat with a good friend a few years ago. He had access to a slip, and we titled the boat solely in his name so we could use that slip. Our agreement called for us to...
Question: We recently entered into a written agreement with a private party to purchase a boat. The “agreement” was a generic purchase agreement that the seller found online, and we realize now that it was missing a...