Chris Hart
About Chris
Chris’s practice focuses on shipping, marine, and energy companies, including litigation and commercial transactions. He is an experienced trial lawyer, resolving disputes in federal and state courts and in arbitration. He advises clients in transactions involving charter parties, maritime contracts, offshore energy and master service agreements, and infrastructure projects with maritime law concerns. Chris also advises on regulatory compliance, including Jones Act coastwise trade and shipping regulations.
He has broad experience with maritime liens, ship arrests, maritime attachment and garnishment remedies, transport and sale of goods contracts, cargo claims, shipping casualties, and marine pollution. For energy companies, Chris has experience with upstream and midstream commercial disputes and casualties, offshore and onshore, and with eminent domain condemnation cases for pipelines, including disputes arising from joint operating agreements, gas processing and gas measurement, mineral leases, and various conveyances of royalties and oil and gas interests.
Chris has been a speaker and author for presentations and articles on topics including offshore drilling, coastwise trade laws, OSV charter parties, and many maritime law issues.
Chris is admitted to practice in Texas, in the US District Courts for the Southern, Eastern, and Western Districts of Texas, in the US Courts of Appeal for the Fifth and Tenth Circuits, and in the US Supreme Court. Before practicing law, Chris sailed as a professional mariner.