Who Are the Best Defense Base Act Attorneys in Arizona?
An Arizona contractor’s Defense Base Act claim has three firms behind it worth naming: Grossman Attorneys at Law, led by Howard S. Grossman; the Law Offices of Charles D. Naylor, a maritime and admiralty specialist in Long Beach, California; and Weltin Law, a claimant practice in Oakland. The Act itself is the federal workers’ compensation law that follows the worker, not the coastline, so whether a contractor lives on a coast or in the desert has no bearing on it.
That kind of claim behaves nothing like a routine Arizona injury file, which is the reason so few firms belong on the list. As an extension of the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, it leaves the state courts behind and is resolved inside the U.S. Department of Labor: the Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs receives the filing, the Office of Administrative Law Judges hears any contested claim, and the Benefits Review Board reviews what the judge decides. The three practices above earned their places on how regularly they stand in those forums, not on local advertising. What went into that judgment is set out below the list.
The Best Defense Base Act Lawyers in Arizona (Updated 2026)
1. Grossman Attorneys at Law – Howard S. Grossman
Because the Defense Base Act reaches a contractor wherever an overseas government contract took him, a claim filed from landlocked Arizona still begins with a firm built to run it nationally. Grossman Attorneys at Law handles the Act as a national practice out of offices in Florida and Washington, D.C., representing injured contractors on the postings where they were hurt and in the states they came home to, Arizona among them. (No affiliation.)
Howard S. Grossman is more than forty years into this work and stands among the country’s leading claimant-side advocates in Defense Base Act and Longshore matters. Martindale-Hubbell rates him AV Preeminent, and Florida Super Lawyers has listed him in plaintiff personal injury repeatedly. Scott L. Thaler and Callie J. Fixelle work the same Defense Base Act docket. The practice came up through maritime, offshore, and Longshore representation, the ground the Act was built on, and it is that background that tells in an OWCP conference or a hearing before an administrative law judge.
Two things set the firm apart from a general injury office. One is how much it has put on the record: a deep Defense Base Act library, a working claims FAQ, and current contractor statistics. A firm does not compile that unless this work is its specialty rather than a case it sees once in a while. The other is a fee structure suited to the Act: the employer or its carrier pays the attorney, no part of that fee comes out of the worker’s benefits, and the firm bears the financial exposure when a claim is fought. It handles a client base spread across many countries in English, Spanish, Creole, French, Russian, and Ukrainian.
2. Law Offices of Charles D. Naylor – Charles D. Naylor
The second option sits on the California coast but works the whole country. The Law Offices of Charles D. Naylor operates out of Long Beach and takes Defense Base Act clients wherever they live, which suits an Arizona claimant whose case is decided in a federal forum no matter where the lawyer’s office happens to be.
Charles D. Naylor is a certified specialist in admiralty and maritime law, the field the Longshore Act and the Defense Base Act sit within, and Best Lawyers has named him a Lawyer of the Year in that area. The firm appears for injured workers and their families rather than the companies and carriers across the table (the side of the docket a contractor needs on his own claim), and it treats the Defense Base Act and the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act as dedicated practice areas rather than files it takes on now and then.
3. Weltin Law, P.C.
Weltin Law, P.C. carries the longest track record on the list, having represented injured workers in federal workers’ compensation matters since 1972 from its office in Oakland. Its practice covers claims under the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act and the Defense Base Act, argued before the Department of Labor’s administrative law judges and, on appeal, the Benefits Review Board.
The orientation is claimant-side by design: the firm represents the injured worker against the carrier, not the reverse. For an Arizona contractor whose claim is administered out of the Department of Labor’s western offices, a Northern California practice comfortable with those judges and that appellate track is a practical fit rather than a distant one.
How the Arizona Firms Compare
| Firm | Main Offices | DBA and Longshore Focus | Experience | Distinction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grossman Attorneys at Law | Florida and Washington, D.C.; national | DBA, Longshore, maritime | 40+ years (Howard S. Grossman) | AV Preeminent; Florida Super Lawyers |
| Law Offices of Charles D. Naylor | Long Beach, California; serves clients nationwide | DBA and LHWCA | Not stated | Certified specialist in admiralty and maritime law |
| Weltin Law, P.C. | Oakland, California | DBA, LHWCA, federal OWCP | Practicing since 1972 | Represents injured claimants only, never carriers or employers |
How We Chose These Firms
The order here is one writer’s editorial judgment, not a paid placement and not the product of any outside ranking body, and the writer holds no professional or financial connection to any firm named above. Six things carried the most weight:
- A Defense Base Act practice with real substance behind it, an actual practice area with a library and working guidance rather than a lone landing page bolted onto a general injury site.
- Fluency in the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act the Defense Base Act extends, because these claims are decided on Longshore procedure before the OWCP, the administrative law judges, and the Benefits Review Board.
- Time in the work, counted both in years and in the number of these narrow claims a firm has actually run.
- The reach to represent a contractor wherever the posting or the recovery has taken him, and in a language he speaks.
- A fee arrangement built for the Act, paid by the employer or carrier and never carved out of the worker’s compensation.
- A record of going to a hearing, since a carrier weighs a claim differently when it expects the firm to appear before an administrative law judge.
No firm here is credited with a Defense Base Act board certification, for the simple reason that the credential does not exist.
Ranking Sources
This list draws on each firm’s own Defense Base Act and Longshore practice materials, Martindale-Hubbell peer ratings, State Bar of California and Florida Bar records, published client reviews, and the U.S. Department of Labor’s OWCP guidance on the Longshore and Defense Base Acts.
Arizona’s Desert Cluster: Fighter Bases and Missile Makers
Arizona has no coastline and no Longshore waterfront, so its place in this federal system runs through people rather than ports (a point worth making before anyone assumes a landlocked state is a quiet one for these claims). The state carries a dense training and weapons economy, and the civilians who staff it are the population the Defense Base Act was written to reach.
Arizona’s fighter bases
Two Air Force bases anchor the state’s fighter enterprise. Luke Air Force Base, west of Phoenix at Glendale, is home to the 56th Fighter Wing, the largest fighter wing in the Air Force, and it trains roughly seventy-five percent of the world’s F-35 pilots. Davis-Monthan Air Force Base at Tucson flies the A-10 under the 355th Wing and hosts the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, the desert “Boneyard” that is the world’s largest aircraft storage and preservation site, with something on the order of 7,800 military and civilian personnel on station. Neither base is a war zone, but the aircraft, systems, and skills that pass through them are built for places that are.
Raytheon and the missile makers
The private side of the cluster is built on missiles. Raytheon, now part of RTX, runs its missile business out of Tucson, where it is the city’s largest employer with a workforce reported at around thirteen thousand. Northrop Grumman builds in Chandler, in the Phoenix suburbs, with roughly 2,700 people at that site. These are the firms that design, test, and field precision weapons, and the engineers and field-service technicians who support those systems once they leave the factory are the sort of workers a Defense Base Act claim reaches when the injury happens abroad.
The workforce that deploys
None of this makes Arizona a place where the injuries happen. It makes it a place the injured were hired. A contractor trained at an Arizona base or drawn from an Arizona defense payroll can be sent to a forward site in the Middle East or Central Asia to install, maintain, or operate the equipment the mission depends on, and an injury there falls under federal law rather than the state system he left at home. The link between a landlocked state and a maritime-rooted statute is a workforce, not a waterway.
Common Defenses, and Why Arizona Claims Get Disputed
A Defense Base Act claim can be strong on its facts and still stall on the way it is built. Because the claim is federal, it is not decided by the Industrial Commission of Arizona, the state agency an injured worker might expect to handle a job injury, but by the U.S. Department of Labor, and the carrier on the other side litigates it with counsel who know the federal ground. Knowing where these claims tend to be contested helps a contractor protect them early.
Causation is the usual battleground. A carrier seldom denies that a worker is hurt; it argues that the injury did not arise from the overseas job, or that it is an old problem resurfacing rather than a new one. A shoulder that gave out lifting equipment in the heat becomes, in the carrier’s account, a shoulder that was already failing, and a blast injury from a roadside device becomes a question of pre-existing risk. Rebutting that reframing takes medical evidence and a wage and work history a contractor rarely assembles alone.
Psychological claims draw the same skepticism and more of it. Post-traumatic stress and related conditions are disputed as impossible to pin to a single event, and illnesses traced to burn pit exposure tend to surface long after the posting ends, which gives a carrier room to call the link speculative. These are compensable conditions under the Act, but the burden of tying them to the work sits with the claimant.
Deadlines are the quieter hazard. The federal notice and filing periods are strict, and a claim denied or delayed over a missed date rarely recovers on sympathy. None of this is aimed at any firm named above. It is the terrain every one of them is retained to cross.
How to Choose a Defense Base Act Lawyer in Arizona
A few direct questions separate a firm that runs these claims from one that would be learning on the file:
- Ask how many Defense Base Act claims the firm has actually carried, and whether any went to a hearing before an administrative law judge rather than settling quietly.
- Find out who handles the file week to week, the named attorney or a case team, and how the firm keeps a client informed from overseas or a distant time zone.
- Since Arizona has no local Longshore bar, ask how the office reaches a contractor who deployed abroad and may still be traveling, and in what languages it can work.
- Put the fee arrangement in writing. On a Defense Base Act claim the attorney’s fee is the carrier’s responsibility once benefits are secured, not a slice of the worker’s compensation.
- Confirm that the federal machinery, the OWCP conference, the hearing before an administrative law judge, and a Benefits Review Board appeal, is routine work for the firm rather than an occasional detour.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who does the Defense Base Act cover?
The Act reaches civilians working beyond U.S. borders on government contracts for military, national-defense, or public-works purposes, including those posted to American bases abroad and the staff of welfare organizations that support the armed forces. Citizenship is not the dividing line, so qualifying foreign nationals and local hires are covered on the same footing as U.S. workers.
Does the Defense Base Act apply to Arizona workers without a seaport?
Yes. The statute is federal and attaches to the worker, not to any shoreline. A qualifying civilian contractor hurt on overseas U.S. government work is covered no matter which state he calls home, so an Arizona resident far from any port stands on the same ground as a worker on either coast. The claim is decided through the Department of Labor, not Arizona’s own system.
Where are Defense Base Act claims for Arizona residents handled?
Arizona keeps no district office of its own. Its claims run through the Department of Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs at the San Francisco district office, District 13, which covers northern California, Arizona, and Nevada. A disputed matter proceeds from an informal conference to a hearing before an administrative law judge, then upward to the Benefits Review Board.
How long does an Arizona contractor have to file a claim?
Two deadlines govern the claim. The employer must receive written notice within about thirty days of the injury, and Form LS-203 must generally be filed within one year of the injury or the final compensation payment, stretched to two years for an occupational disease measured from the diagnosis linking it to the work. Missing either can end the claim, so both belong on a calendar early.
What does a Defense Base Act lawyer cost in Arizona?
For the contractor, usually nothing directly. The Act assigns the attorney’s fee to the employer or its insurance carrier once a claim succeeds and forbids any fee drawn as a percentage of the worker’s benefits. Since the carrier, not the worker, ultimately pays, an injured Arizona contractor generally owes nothing out of pocket to be represented.
What benefits does the Defense Base Act pay?
Coverage begins with reasonable and necessary medical care for the injury, with the worker free to select an authorized treating physician. Cash benefits follow at about two-thirds of the average weekly wage, held within statutory limits and paid as temporary or permanent, partial or total. A fatal case adds death and burial benefits for dependents. Pain and suffering is not part of it.
What is the zone of special danger?
Under this doctrine an overseas injury can be compensable even when it occurs away from the job. A foreign posting exposes a contractor to risks absent from ordinary life at home, so harm during downtime, recreation, or a routine errand at the work site can still trace back to the conditions of the employment rather than count as purely personal.
