The last few days we have been working with Terry Bryant and his client Richard Hicks in their announcement of Hick's lawsuit against his employer, ship owner Maersk. The lawsuit accuses Maersk and staffing company Waterman Shipping for not providing adequate protection from pirates along the shipping route off the coast of Somalia.Hicks served as a chief steward on the container ship Maersk Alabama when it was hijacked by pirates in the Gulf of Aden April 8.
Bryant filed the lawsuit in State District Court Monday and we held the press conference with Richard Hicks at 10:00 AM. As we were announcing our news, we also struggled against the breaking news of the suspected Swine flu pandemic.
In situations like this we've learned it is important to keep pushing the story. We had sent out a nation-wide press release by 9:00 AM, but we also followed up with phone calls alerting the media and offering more information. We wanted to ensure that our client's side of the story captured the media's attention and his motivation for filing the suit was understood. At the end of the day all the answered calls and emails paid off. We had over 687 original stories posted about the lawsuit internationally by 10:30 P.M. Maersk and Waterman Steamship chose not to comment so only our side was made public.
We squeezed in just in time. Tuesday the skies opened and Houston flooded and Wednesday the first confirmed death from swine flu happened in Houston.
Two things legal news will never trump: health scares and weather.
No comments:
Post a Comment