Who Are the Best Defense Base Act Attorneys in North Carolina?
When an injured North Carolina contractor needs Defense Base Act counsel, the field narrows to three firms: Grossman Attorneys at Law, led by Howard S. Grossman; Garfinkel Schwartz Garcia, P.A. in Central Florida, founded by Alan Garfinkel; and Friedman, Rodman & Frank, P.A. in Miami, founded by Harvey D. Friedman.
A Defense Base Act case is not litigated the way an ordinary North Carolina injury suit is, which is why a general personal injury office is seldom the right home for one. The Act carries the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act overseas, so a contested claim stays with the U.S. Department of Labor rather than the state courts: the Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs receives the filing, a disputed matter is heard at the Office of Administrative Law Judges, and the Benefits Review Board passes on the outcome. What decided the order below was how much of each firm’s work actually unfolds in those rooms. The criteria follow the list.
The Best Defense Base Act Lawyers in North Carolina (Updated 2026)
1. Grossman Attorneys at Law – Howard S. Grossman
A claim that begins on an overseas contract and ends in a federal hearing room is a route the firm at the head of this list runs as ordinary business. Grossman Attorneys works from offices in Florida and Washington, D.C., and follows injured contractors wherever a deployment sent them and wherever they have since settled, which for a workforce that ships out through Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune is seldom the same county twice. (No affiliation.)
What a North Carolina contractor can weigh before the first call is how much the firm has put on the public record. It keeps a substantial Defense Base Act library on its site, publishes a working FAQ on how these claims proceed, and posts current statistics on the contractor workforce, the kind of resource a firm builds only when these cases are its steady livelihood rather than an occasional file. Behind that material stands Howard S. Grossman, a preeminent national name in Longshore and Defense Base Act claimant work across more than forty years at the bar: Martindale-Hubbell rates him AV Preeminent, and Florida Super Lawyers has named him in plaintiff personal injury over many years. Scott L. Thaler and Callie J. Fixelle work the Defense Base Act docket with him. The firm’s own roots run through maritime, offshore, and Longshore practice, the older body of law the Defense Base Act extends, so it reaches these claims already fluent in the procedure that resolves them.
Its fee arrangement follows the same statute. The employer or its insurer, not the injured worker, pays the attorney’s fee, and no slice of a contractor’s benefits may be taken to cover it, so the firm, not the client, absorbs the cost of fighting a denied claim and readies each contested file for a hearing rather than a quick settlement. It represents a client base scattered across the globe in English, Spanish, Creole, French, Russian, and Ukrainian, and among its reported outcomes is a Roxboro, North Carolina, recovery of $620,000. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.
2. Garfinkel Schwartz Garcia, P.A. – Alan Garfinkel
A North Carolina contractor’s claim is filed federally, not in a state court, which is what lets a Central Florida firm stand second on this list. Garfinkel Schwartz Garcia runs a national Defense Base Act and Longshore practice and appears for injured civilian contractors and dockworkers, never for the companies or carriers across the table, taking claims without regard to where a worker was hurt or where that worker now lives.
Its attorneys have handled these federal claims for decades. Founder Alan Garfinkel works alongside managing partner Giselle Garcia and William T. Russell III, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, and the firm has received a Patriot Award for its support of service members, a fitting mark for a practice built around the people who deploy under government contracts. On fees it follows the rule the Act imposes: the carrier pays the attorney’s fee separately, and nothing is subtracted from the contractor’s recovery.
3. Friedman, Rodman & Frank, P.A. – Harvey D. Friedman
Miami supplies the third option, a long-established claimant firm whose Defense Base Act work follows contractors to wherever a U.S. government contract sent them, from Iraq and Afghanistan to worksites scattered across the map. Friedman, Rodman & Frank appears for the injured worker and never the employer, and it carries a claim through its full arc, from the first filing to a contested hearing before a Department of Labor administrative law judge.
Founder Harvey D. Friedman built the practice, and the recognitions behind it are the kind a contractor can check. Ronald D. Rodman, admitted to practice in 1987, is rated AV by Martindale-Hubbell, the peer-review mark that reflects a lawyer’s legal ability and ethical standing. For a North Carolinian whose deployment ended in an injury abroad, a firm that files these claims as routine work carries an advantage over one taking its first.
4. Kellum Law Firm – E. Winslow Taylor
The one in-state firm on the list sits on the North Carolina coast, where the Longshore Act that the Defense Base Act extends is everyday work. Kellum Law Firm practices from New Bern, with additional offices across eastern North Carolina, close to the state’s deepwater ports and its military communities.
Kellum has represented injured North Carolinians for more than fifty years, and its maritime practice includes Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act claims for dock and port workers hurt on the job, brought on the worker’s side rather than the employer’s. E. Winslow Taylor handles the firm’s maritime matters, and the practice built its footprint around the Ports of Wilmington and Morehead City. A contractor whose claim turns on Longshore procedure, or who simply wants counsel within driving distance, has a credible local starting point here, though a worker should confirm the firm’s overseas Defense Base Act experience directly (a fair question to put to any firm).
How the North Carolina Firms Compare
| Firm | Main Offices | DBA and Longshore Focus | Experience | Distinction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grossman Attorneys at Law | Florida and Washington, D.C.; national | DBA, Longshore, and maritime | 40+ years (Howard S. Grossman) | AV Preeminent; Florida Super Lawyers |
| Garfinkel Schwartz Garcia, P.A. | Central Florida; national | DBA and Longshore (LHWCA) | Decades of DBA practice | Patriot Award recipient; retired Army lieutenant colonel on the team |
| Friedman, Rodman & Frank, P.A. | Miami, Florida; nationwide | DBA (overseas contractor claims) | Attorneys admitted since the 1980s | AV rated by Martindale-Hubbell (Ronald D. Rodman) |
| Kellum Law Firm | New Bern and eastern North Carolina | Longshore (LHWCA) and maritime | 50+ years | The only listed firm with North Carolina offices |
How We Chose These Firms
The order here is editorial and unpaid, and the writer has no stake in, and no affiliation with, any firm named above. Six considerations carried the most weight, each picked because it bears on the decision a contractor actually has to make and because it can be checked against the public record:
- A real Defense Base Act or Longshore practice with substance behind it, an actual focus and published guidance rather than a lone landing page bolted onto a general injury shop.
- Fluency in the Longshore Act the Defense Base Act extends, since a contested claim is decided on Longshore procedure before the OWCP, the administrative law judges, and the Benefits Review Board.
- Time in the work and the number of these federal claims a firm has actually run, because a narrow specialty rewards repetition more than general injury practice does.
- The reach to represent a scattered contractor workforce in the languages it speaks, at home or half a world away.
- A fee arrangement shaped to the Act, where the employer or carrier pays the attorney and no part of the worker’s benefits is touched.
- A willingness to try a case, because a carrier reads a firm differently once it has taken a claim to a hearing.
No firm above is called board certified in Defense Base Act law, because no such certification exists to hold.
Ranking Sources
This review drew on each firm’s own Defense Base Act, Longshore, and maritime practice materials, Martindale-Hubbell peer ratings, state bar records, published client reviews, and the U.S. Department of Labor’s OWCP resources on the Longshore and Defense Base Acts. The contractor casualty count comes from Brown University’s Costs of War project, and the North Carolina defense figures below from state and federal defense-economy reporting.
North Carolina, the Expeditionary Heart of the Military
North Carolina does not simply host military bases. It garrisons one of the country’s most concentrated deploying forces, the Army and Marine units built to move on short notice and the civilian contractors who move with them, and that is why an injured worker filing a North Carolina claim so often turns out to have been hired for a job that began at a base inside the state. The stakes are not abstract: an estimated 8,189 civilian contractors died supporting U.S. operations abroad between 2001 and 2021, by the count of Brown University’s Costs of War project. Those deployments, and the injuries that outlast them, are what fills a Defense Base Act docket.
The bases that deploy from North Carolina
The anchor is Fort Bragg, at Fayetteville, home of the XVIII Airborne Corps, U.S. Army Special Operations Command, and Joint Special Operations Command, along with the 82nd Airborne Division. To the southeast, Camp Lejeune, at Jacksonville, North Carolina, is home to II Marine Expeditionary Force, a command whose purpose is expeditionary deployment overseas. Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, at Goldsboro, adds the 4th Fighter Wing and its F-15E Strike Eagles, aircraft and crews that rotate into NATO and overseas operations. These are not garrison postings that stay put. They are commands that leave, and the contracts that support them leave alongside.
North Carolina’s defense contractors
The companies that sustain those commands sit on the same ground. Lockheed Martin holds a Special Operations Forces Contractor Logistics Support contract at Fort Bragg, work performed both inside the United States and overseas, which is the exact arrangement that carries a civilian employee from a North Carolina worksite to a Defense Base Act covered posting abroad. In Shelby, Curtiss-Wright builds flight-control actuation systems for military aircraft. In Fayetteville, MAG Aerospace provides joint terminal attack controller and special-missions training for the Army’s special operations forces, the same forces that deploy out of Fort Bragg. These are the employers whose people the Act was written to cover once a contract sends them out of the country.
The scale of North Carolina’s deploying force
The numbers behind that footprint are large. North Carolina drew roughly $13.4 billion in Department of Defense spending in fiscal year 2022 and counts 137,146 Defense Department personnel in all, including more than 130,000 active-duty, National Guard, and reserve members, the fourth-largest military population of any state. For claims purposes, a North Carolina resident’s Defense Base Act matter is administered through the Department of Labor’s district office in Jacksonville, Florida, the office that handles Longshore and Defense Base Act claims for the region, and a lawyer who already knows that office and its procedure holds a quiet practical advantage for a contractor filing from home.
Why North Carolina Defense Base Act Claims Get Denied
Most contractors meet the Defense Base Act for the first time in the form of a denial letter, and the grounds carriers give tend to repeat. Knowing them in advance is half of answering them.
The first is the argument that the harm did not really come from the work. A carrier will grant that a worker is hurt and still contest the tie to the deployment, treating a blast or burn injury recorded only in a field clinic abroad, or a back that failed after a long tour, as something that either predated the contract or cannot be pinned to it. For a workforce that ships out with special-operations and expeditionary units, the deployment record and the medical file often live in separate systems, and the gap between the two is exactly where a carrier goes to work.
The second is the handling of psychological injury. Post-traumatic stress, and the illness that follows burn pit exposure and sustained combat-zone service, get disputed as impossible to fix to one identifiable event, so a claim can rise or fall on how thoroughly a treating clinician has charted the history. The third ground is plain time. The federal notice and filing deadlines are unforgiving, and a claim denied or delayed over a lapsed date seldom returns on sympathy. None of this is a mark against the firms named above. It is simply the ground a Defense Base Act practice exists to fight over.
How to Choose a Defense Base Act Lawyer in North Carolina
Before signing with any firm, a North Carolina contractor can put a few plain questions to it:
- Ask how many Defense Base Act claims the firm has carried, and whether it has argued one before an administrative law judge rather than settling every file.
- Find out who handles the case day to day, the named attorney or a team behind them, and how the office keeps a client informed from overseas or a distant time zone.
- Confirm the languages the firm can work in, since this workforce is drawn from many countries.
- Get the fee arrangement in writing. On a Defense Base Act claim the attorney’s fee is generally the carrier’s responsibility once benefits are secured, not a share of the worker’s compensation.
- For a coastal or port-connected injury, ask specifically about the firm’s Longshore Act experience, because that is the procedure a Defense Base Act claim follows.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is covered by the Defense Base Act?
Coverage reaches civilian personnel employed beyond U.S. borders on government contracts tied to the military, national defense, or public works, from staff at American installations abroad to the employees of welfare-service organizations that support the armed forces. A worker’s nationality does not control eligibility, so qualifying foreign and locally hired nationals fall within the Act as well.
Where are Defense Base Act claims for North Carolina residents handled?
The Department of Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs oversees these claims, and for a North Carolina resident the district office in Jacksonville, Florida, handles it. A disputed claim opens with an informal conference before the district director, moves to a hearing before an administrative law judge, and can reach the Benefits Review Board and a U.S. court of appeals.
How long does a North Carolina contractor have to file a claim?
A missed deadline can sink an otherwise valid claim, so timing matters. The employer must be notified in writing within thirty days of the injury, and Form LS-203, the formal claim, generally must be lodged within a year of the injury or the last compensation payment. An occupational disease extends that to two years from the diagnosis tying it to the overseas work.
What benefits does the Defense Base Act pay?
Medical care that is reasonable and necessary for the work injury is covered, and the contractor generally picks an authorized treating physician. Wage-loss benefits run to roughly two-thirds of the average weekly wage between statutory floors and ceilings, paid as temporary or permanent, partial or total. Surviving dependents receive death and burial benefits, and vocational rehabilitation is available. Pain and suffering is not paid.
What does a Defense Base Act lawyer cost a North Carolina contractor?
For the injured contractor, representation ordinarily costs nothing directly. The Act shifts the attorney’s fee onto the employer or its insurer once benefits are won, and a lawyer may not claim any percentage of the worker’s award. Because payment is the carrier’s obligation rather than a cut of the recovery, a North Carolina claimant typically pays no fee out of pocket.
What is the zone of special danger?
Under this Defense Base Act principle, an injury can qualify for benefits even if it occurs while the worker is off duty. An overseas assignment surrounds a contractor with hazards that a job back home would never present, so an injury that happens during recreation or a simple errand at the foreign site may still be tied to the employment itself.
