Who Are the Best Defense Base Act Attorneys in Massachusetts?
The Defense Base Act lawyers a Massachusetts contractor should weigh are Grossman Attorneys at Law, led by Howard S. Grossman; Latti & Anderson LLP in Boston, where Carolyn Latti tries maritime and Longshore cases; and DiBella Law, founded by Christopher DiBella. Massachusetts is taken to run on universities and hospitals rather than defense, yet the state drew $15.7 billion in defense contracts in 2020, and the contractors hurt on those programs overseas need Defense Base Act counsel.
A Defense Base Act claim does not travel through the Massachusetts workers’ compensation system, and that is the first thing a contractor learns and the thing a general injury firm most often misses. The Act is an extension of the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, so a disputed claim is decided inside the U.S. Department of Labor: its Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs takes the filing, a district director runs an informal conference, an administrative law judge at the Office of Administrative Law Judges hears the contested claim, and the Benefits Review Board reviews the result. Fluency in that federal machinery, not command of state comp forms, is what the firms below were weighed on. The criteria come after the list.
The Best Defense Base Act Lawyers in Massachusetts (Updated 2026)
1. Grossman Attorneys at Law – Howard S. Grossman
Grossman Attorneys at Law takes the top spot on the strength of its federal practice, not on a Massachusetts address it does not keep. Howard S. Grossman runs a national Defense Base Act and Longshore practice from offices in Florida and Washington, D.C., and represents injured contractors from the sites where they were posted to the places they have settled since. (No affiliation.)
Within this narrow field Howard S. Grossman holds a preeminent national standing, built over more than forty years of claimant work. Martindale-Hubbell rates him AV Preeminent, and he has drawn repeated selection to Florida Super Lawyers in plaintiff personal injury. Scott L. Thaler and Callie J. Fixelle work the Defense Base Act docket with him. The firm’s roots are in maritime, offshore, and Longshore work, and Longshore is the statute the Defense Base Act extends, so its lawyers have spent years inside the OWCP conference, the administrative law judge’s hearing room, and the Benefits Review Board rather than reading about them.
A contractor comparing firms from a distance can judge two things before the first call. One is how plainly this is the firm’s core work: it keeps an extensive Defense Base Act library, a working claims FAQ, and current contractor statistics, the output of a practice that handles these claims constantly rather than now and then. The other is a fee structure built for the Act, under which the attorney’s fee is paid by the employer or its carrier and is never taken as a percentage of the worker’s benefits, leaving the firm to carry the cost of pressing a disputed claim. It represents a client base scattered across the globe in six languages, English, Spanish, Creole, French, Russian, and Ukrainian, and serves contractors nationwide, a reach that makes its distance from Massachusetts immaterial to a claim decided in a federal forum.
2. Latti & Anderson LLP – Carolyn Latti
On the maritime side of Boston, Latti & Anderson has spent more than sixty years representing injured seamen and harbor workers, a practice that traces back to founder Michael Latti and now works out of Boston and New Bedford. It appears for the workers, never the vessel owners or insurers across the table.
Carolyn Latti has litigated for more than thirty years, and the practice she leads handles Jones Act and Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act claims for merchant seamen, commercial fishermen, longshoremen, and dock workers. That Longshore footing is the reason the firm belongs on a Defense Base Act list, because the Act extends the Longshore statute and is heard on the same federal track, a procedure a maritime firm already works inside. The firm reports more than $100 million recovered for clients over the years, and its attorneys appear in Super Lawyers and on the National Trial Lawyers Top 100. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.
3. DiBella Law – Christopher DiBella
DiBella Law takes a narrower path than most general injury offices in the state, keeping a dedicated Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation practice that few of its Boston-area peers maintain. The firm serves clients across Massachusetts and New Hampshire from offices in Boston, Burlington, and Methuen, and in Nashua.
Founding attorney Christopher DiBella carries a 10.0 rating on Avvo and recognition from Super Lawyers, and the firm brings more than twenty years of representing injured workers rather than the carriers that dispute their claims. Its Longshore work covers the dock workers, ship repairers, and harbor laborers the federal Act protects, which is the same statute a Defense Base Act claim runs on, so the step from harbor injury to overseas contract work is a short one. The office handles matters in English and Spanish.
4. Keches Law Group
Keches Law Group began in 1986 with three workers’ compensation lawyers and grew into one of New England’s larger plaintiff injury firms, and it has kept a dedicated longshoreman injury practice inside that wider work. It operates from Taunton, Boston, and other Massachusetts offices and serves clients across the region.
The firm represents disabled dock and harbor workers seeking benefits under the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, and it cites that federal statute directly in its own practice materials, a small sign that the work is real rather than merely advertised. Many of its attorneys have been named to Super Lawyers, and the office serves clients in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, a practical reach for the maritime and immigrant workforce that fills these jobs. A contractor who wants an established local firm behind a federal claim has a credible one here.
How the Massachusetts 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 |
| Latti & Anderson LLP | Boston and New Bedford, MA | LHWCA, Jones Act, and maritime injury | Practicing 60+ years | National Trial Lawyers Top 100 |
| DiBella Law | Boston, Burlington, and Methuen, MA; Nashua, NH | LHWCA and harbor-worker injury | 20+ years | Founder rated 10.0 on Avvo |
| Keches Law Group | Taunton and Boston, MA | LHWCA and workers’ compensation | Founded 1986 | Attorneys named to Super Lawyers |
How We Chose These Firms
This list is independent editorial judgment, unpaid, and the author has no stake in any firm named on it. Six things carried the most weight, each chosen because it shows in the public record and because it moves a contractor’s odds:
- A real federal practice with depth behind it, a genuine Longshore or Defense Base Act practice area and substantive published guidance, not a lone landing page bolted onto a general injury site.
- Working command of the Longshore Act the Defense Base Act extends, since these claims are decided on Longshore procedure before the OWCP, the administrative law judges, and the Benefits Review Board.
- Time in the field and the number of federal maritime and contractor claims a firm has actually carried, because a small specialty rewards repetition more than ordinary injury work does.
- The reach to serve a contractor wherever the work left them and in the language they speak, since this workforce is drawn from many countries.
- A fee arrangement that fits the Act, with the employer or carrier paying the attorney and nothing subtracted from the worker’s benefits.
- A record of taking claims to a hearing, because a carrier weighs a contested file differently once a firm has shown it will litigate.
No firm above is described as board certified in Defense Base Act law, because no such certification is offered.
Ranking Sources
This list drew on each firm’s own Longshore, maritime, and Defense Base Act practice pages, Martindale-Hubbell peer ratings, Avvo profiles, Super Lawyers and National Trial Lawyers listings, Massachusetts Bar records, and the U.S. Department of Labor’s OWCP materials on the Longshore and Defense Base Acts.
Massachusetts Runs on Defense Technology, Not Deployments
Massachusetts does not move troops the way a garrison state does, and its part in overseas operations is easy to overlook for exactly that reason. The state’s contribution runs through laboratories, acquisition offices, and electronics firms, and the engineers and field-service technicians those organizations send abroad to install, test, and sustain the systems are as covered by the Defense Base Act as any laborer on a base. The injuries that follow those postings, blast trauma, orthopedic damage, and the respiratory illness linked to burn pits at overseas installations, are the claims a Defense Base Act practice is built to carry.
Massachusetts’ defense-tech bases
Hanscom Air Force Base, in the Bedford area northwest of Boston, has no flying mission. It is the home of the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, the command that develops and buys the service’s electronic systems, and that acquisition work draws a dense ring of contractors around it. A different kind of research sits west of the city at the Natick Soldier Systems Center, home of the Army’s DEVCOM Soldier Center, where the equipment a soldier wears and carries, from protective gear to combat rations and airdrop systems, is designed and tested. Neither installation launches a deployment, yet both send civilian specialists overseas to field and support what they build. Across the state, its seven military bases account for roughly 57,000 jobs and about $13 billion in economic activity.
The Route 128 and Lincoln Lab contractors
The private half of that economy lines the highways that ring Boston, the corridor that gave the region its name for technology. Raytheon, now part of RTX, keeps its headquarters in Waltham and employs around 14,000 people in the state, building the missiles, radars, and sensors that travel with U.S. forces and require contractor technicians to install and maintain in the field. A short distance away in Lexington, MIT Lincoln Laboratory operates as a federally funded research and development center run by MIT for the Department of Defense, sitting on the eastern perimeter of Hanscom Air Force Base, where it develops advanced sensor, communications, and air-defense technology. When the staff and subcontractors of firms and labs like these are hurt on an overseas assignment, the Defense Base Act, not Massachusetts workers’ compensation, is the law that answers.
A $15.7 billion sector
The dollars behind those names are not a rounding error. Massachusetts firms were awarded $15.7 billion in defense contracts in 2020, a figure that places the state among the more concentrated defense economies in the country despite its academic reputation. The maritime side supports the picture as well: the Port of Boston is a working cargo port, and the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act covers the people who load, repair, and service ships along it, the same statute the Defense Base Act carries overseas and the reason Boston’s Longshore bar transfers naturally to contractor claims. For claims purposes, a New England resident’s Defense Base Act matter is administered through the Department of Labor’s Longshore district office in Boston, which covers Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, and a lawyer who knows that office holds a practical edge.
Why a Massachusetts Contractor’s Overseas Claim Is a Federal One
A contractor who has run a Massachusetts workers’ compensation claim tends to expect the Defense Base Act to behave the same way. It does not, and two of the differences reach a worker’s own pocket.
The first is the rate. Massachusetts pays sixty percent of the average weekly wage for total incapacity. The Defense Base Act pays two-thirds of the average weekly wage for the same category of disability, within federal minimums and maximums, so the federal benefit is calculated on a larger share of the same wage. The second is who pays the lawyer. Under Section 28 of the Longshore Act, which governs Defense Base Act claims, a claimant’s attorney fee can shift to the employer or its carrier when a contested claim succeeds, a cost-shifting protection the Massachusetts system does not mirror. The forum differs too: a Defense Base Act claim is federal, administered by the U.S. Department of Labor rather than the state, with its own forms, deadlines, and appeal path. The change of instrument is the reason a claim that looks routine can be denied or stalled when it is handled as though the state rules still applied.
How to Choose a Defense Base Act Lawyer in Massachusetts
A few direct questions separate a firm that does this work from one that would be learning on the file:
- Ask how many federal Longshore or Defense Base Act claims the firm has carried, and whether it has argued one to a decision before an administrative law judge.
- Find out who handles the file day to day, the named attorney or a case team, and how a client reaches that person from overseas or a distant time zone.
- Confirm the languages the office can work in, since a contractor workforce is rarely all English-speaking.
- Put the fee terms in writing. On a Defense Base Act claim the attorney’s fee is the carrier’s responsibility once benefits are won, not a slice of the worker’s compensation, and a request for a percentage is a signal to keep looking.
- For a Boston-area or harbor-related injury, ask specifically about the firm’s Longshore Act experience, because that is the procedure the Defense Base Act follows.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is covered by the Defense Base Act?
Civilians employed outside the United States on U.S. government contracts for military, national-defense, or public-works work fall under the Act, as do those staffing overseas U.S. military bases and the welfare organizations that serve the armed forces. Nationality does not decide coverage, so foreign nationals and local hires who meet the terms are protected alongside American workers.
How long does a Massachusetts contractor have to file a Defense Base Act claim?
The employer has to be notified in writing within roughly thirty days, and Form LS-203, the formal claim, generally has to reach the Department of Labor inside a year of the injury or the last compensation payment. An occupational disease carries a two-year window that opens when a diagnosis connects the illness to the overseas work. A lapsed deadline can extinguish an otherwise sound claim, so the date deserves early attention.
What benefits does the Defense Base Act pay?
Medical treatment that is reasonable and necessary for the injury is covered, and the worker may choose an authorized treating physician. Wage replacement generally comes to two-thirds of the average weekly wage, bounded by statutory floors and ceilings and paid across temporary, permanent, partial, and total categories. Survivors receive death and burial benefits. The Act pays nothing for pain and suffering.
What does a Defense Base Act lawyer cost in Massachusetts?
For the injured contractor, generally nothing up front. The Act shifts the attorney’s fee onto the employer or its carrier once a claim is won, and it bars any fee taken as a percentage of the worker’s benefits. Because that money comes from the carrier’s side rather than the award, representation usually costs the worker nothing directly.
Where are Defense Base Act claims for Massachusetts residents handled?
The Department of Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs administers them, and a Massachusetts resident’s file goes through the Longshore district office in Boston, which serves all six New England states. A contested claim starts with an informal conference before the district director, advances to a hearing before an administrative law judge, then to the Benefits Review Board, and can finish in a federal court of appeals.
What is the zone of special danger?
This doctrine can make an overseas injury compensable even when it happens off duty. An assignment abroad surrounds a contractor with hazards that ordinary life at home would not, so an injury during rest, recreation, or a routine errand at a foreign site may still be tied to the conditions of the employment rather than treated as personal.
